Alberta’s Child, I’m not arguing one thing you wrote. And I was going to give a lengthy response and a question or two, but I’m not.
Everything you wrote can be solved with two words .... Free Market
If you want to provide some type of benefit for your employees, etc go ahead. You want to provide them health insurance, go ahead. You don’t want to, don’t. And I’m not being condescending when I say that. I’m not a class warfare person. You own the business, run it the way you want. Your business plan will either succeed or fail, right? And that is what it’s all about. And that’s good.
But, I think everything you documented, is born in some form or fashion from government intervention and businesses being forced to do this or that. And then, the businesses are able to go to Congress, get a carve out specific to them, that isn’t allowed to be used by the individual. And it doesn’t just go for the private sector.
As for my acquaintance’s dog, she pays for it to have pet insurance.
On a side note, AOC, who i’m not a fan of by any stretch, gets a lot of blame for Amazon. I’m sure there was more to Bezos’ decision than just her running her mouth. I’d bet that there were quite a few “community and civic leaders” starting to show up with their hands out and Bezos finally said....the hell with this place, I’m out.
There's something I should mention here that relates to what you posted, and is also relevant to the discussion about employee benefits.
Employer-paid medical insurance is subject to special tax rules that apply to almost nothing else I've come across in 20+ years of managerial experience. It's the only substantial employer-paid benefit that is deductible for the employer as a business expense but is NOT subject to taxation for the employee as a benefit with a cash value. The only other thing that remotely comes close to this would be employer reimbursement of education expenses, and these are really only relevant to work-related education expenses.
So if I lease a company car for an employee, I can deduct it on my company's taxes but my employee has to report it as a taxable benefit. The same holds true if I buy a life insurance policy where the employee's family or estate is the beneficiary of the policy. These are TAXABLE benefits.
For some reason medical insurance is treated differently ... which distorts the entire market and is a major incentive for employers to offer this even if they offer no other benefits to their employees.
The other angle of this that pisses me off to no end is that this tax treatment does NOT apply to sole proprietorships where the owner of the business is the only insured person. So my competitors can deduct their medical insurance costs as business expenses, but I cannot. Count this as one more reason why I use contractors and part-time staff only.
On a side note, AOC, who i’m not a fan of by any stretch, gets a lot of blame for Amazon.
AOC had nothing to do with the Amazon debacle, despite what you might read about it here on FR. The deal was killed when two New York State legislators in that district who had previously supported the deal changed their tune under pressure from organized labor groups. That was a fatal blow to the deal because under the protocols of New York’s state tax incentive program, the support of the state legislators in the district where a potential project is located is one of the necessary elements of the tax incentive application process.