The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

Sow Crap Policy, Reap Policy Crap

Posted on | November 23, 2012 | 33 Comments

by Smitty

If you think having the ship list to port is a bad idea, I have news for you about the efficacy of mustering the crew on the port midships quarterdeck to form a union and fight the list:

On Tuesday, CCAC employees were notified that Obamacare defines full-time employees as those working 30 hours or more per week and that on Dec. 31 temporary part-time employees will be cut back to 25 hours. The move will save an estimated $6 million.
“While it is of course the college’s preference to provide coverage to these positions, there simply are not funds available to do so,” said CCAC spokesperson David Hoovler. “Several years of cuts or largely flat funding from our government supporters have led to significant cost reductions by CCAC, leaving little room to trim the college’s budget further.”
The solution, says United Steelworkers representative Jeff Cech, is that adjunct professors should unionize in an attempt to thwart schools seeking similar cost-savings efforts from avoiding Obamacare.

You can have your opinion about forming a union. I have a one-word rebuttal: “Michigan”.

However the issue isn’t so much the idea of unions as Cech’s non-approach to analysis. CCAC isn’t the bad guy here. The pencil-necks of DC that excreted ObamaCare are. The wrong-headed notion that law == magic, and that ObamaCare could somehow has a positive effect, is at the root of the problem. As I had noted in the post “Mini Jobs Blow” we’re seeing nothing other than the importation of failed policy ideas from Europe.

Can’t tell if this is the Hope, the Change, or the Forward.

via Insty

Update, also via Instapundit: “Letter: Employers using loopholes in ACA”

When my better half told me that her boss was thinking about cutting all full-time employees to part time in order to avoid the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act insurance requirements (for full-time employees), my initial response was, “Surely the federal government wouldn’t have allowed such a blatantly obvious way of getting out of the requirement.” But that turned out to be false.

In fact, major names in the service/hospitality industry (e.g., Denny’s, Olive Garden, Red Lobster and Longhorn Steakhouse) are already in the process of going to a part-time employee schedule for all employees. Thus, as a very possible consequence of the short-sightedness of the Affordable Care Act legislators, more people will be working two jobs to make ends meet.

Read the whole thing, and cue Ray Davies

Update: thanks, Instapundit!

Update II: linked at Hogewash.

Category: Health Care

Comments

33 Responses to “Sow Crap Policy, Reap Policy Crap”

  1. Gringao
    November 23rd, 2012 @ 9:43 am

    I think a little Adam Smith would go well right now:

    “The man of system, on the contrary, is apt to be very wise in his own conceit; and is often so enamoured with the supposed beauty of his own ideal plan of government, that he cannot suffer the smallest deviation from any part of it. He goes on to establish it completely and in all its parts, without any regard either to the great interests, or to the strong prejudices which may oppose it. He seems to imagine that he can arrange the different members of a great society with as much ease as the hand arranges the different pieces upon a chess-board. He does not consider that the pieces upon the chess-board have no other principle of motion besides that which the hand impresses upon them; but that, in the great chess-board of human society, every single piece has a principle of motion of its own, altogether different from that which the legislature might choose to impress upon it. If those two principles coincide and act in the same direction, the game of human society will go on easily and harmoniously, and is very likely to be happy and successful. If they are opposite or different, the game will go on miserably, and the society must be at all times in the highest degree of disorder.’

  2. Rich Knudsen
    November 23rd, 2012 @ 10:01 am

    All is as we have foreseen here on the conservative side of the country so in answer to all our liberal friends who’s livelyhood is about to take a turn for the worst, GO F YOURSELVES,You voted for this Crap.

  3. Michael Maller
    November 23rd, 2012 @ 10:20 am

    http://kxm.209.mwp.accessdomain.com/2012/11/23/sow-policy-crap-reap-policy-crap/

    how Obamacare will “work”, plus the Kinks “predictable”

    the people have spoken, and they will get what they voted for, good and hard

  4. dr kill 20th Century Man
    November 23rd, 2012 @ 10:27 am

    Ray Davies chronicled the swift decline of the British people so perfectly; I can’t believe I’m witnessing it here in the USSA.

    I was born in a welfare state
    Ruled by bureaucracy
    Controlled by civil servants
    And people dressed in grey

    Happy T Day, Smitty and Stacey

  5. David C. Johnson
    November 23rd, 2012 @ 10:34 am

    Amen! The disastrous unintended consequences of this catastrophe (Obamacare) are only starting to glimmer in the distance. Just wait.

  6. Lightwave
    November 23rd, 2012 @ 10:45 am

    The vast majority of all jobs created under Obamee are part-time positions. This was true before Obameecare. As of his second term, I’m betting that number goes northwards of 90%.

    Pretty soon we’re going to be at 5% unemployment…and 25% underemployment.

  7. submandave
    November 23rd, 2012 @ 10:52 am

    For years in France a full-time job with full benefits has been the brass ring so many grab for but few can achieve. This is a factor of both the huge government mandated costs for a full-time position and the union protections that make such an employee practically a permanent fixture, regardless of performance. Yes, we, too, are on that path, starting with the public sector and now spreading to general industry courtesy of ACA.

  8. Diggsc
    November 23rd, 2012 @ 11:05 am

    But at least Sandra Fluke, a soon-to-be Georgetown Law graduate, gets free birth control that would have cost her upwards of $4/month at Walmart. So see, the law was a good thing.

  9. Matthew W
    November 23rd, 2012 @ 11:10 am

    Right on !!!!
    They own it !!!

  10. danheskett
    November 23rd, 2012 @ 11:23 am

    This is a side-effect. And it wasn’t unknown.

    An employee working 30 hours a week at a service level job is already working two jobs (or more), and does not have health insurance benefits.

    The practical reality is that they still will have a crappy job, they will still have crappy pay, but now they are going to get a large – probably 80% or more – subsidy to buy private market health insurance facilitated by a State or Federal exchange.

    Meanwhile, employers will have a marginally more expensive hiring and scheduling problem. The hours cap is an average, so it will have to be managed to make sure that the employee on average does not meet the threshold.

  11. Finding Out What Was in the Bill They Passed | hogewash
    November 23rd, 2012 @ 11:49 am

    […] now we are beginning to find out. (H/T, Instapundit) Share this:TwitterFacebookLinkedInEmailPrintLike this:LikeBe the first to like […]

  12. Zilla of the Resistance
    November 23rd, 2012 @ 11:56 am

    Smitty got an Instalanche!

  13. Evi L. Bloggerlady
    November 23rd, 2012 @ 12:10 pm

    That is common in Hawaii. Because of onerous state regulations on benefits for full time employees, most tourism based industries employ part time to avoid the regs.

  14. John Yesford
    November 23rd, 2012 @ 12:44 pm

    http://kxm.209.mwp.accessdomain.com/2012/11/23/sow-policy-crap-reap-policy-crap/

  15. If All You See… » Pirate's Cove
    November 23rd, 2012 @ 1:01 pm

    […] blog of the day is The Other McCain, with a post on more Obamacare […]

  16. Brad Bettin
    November 23rd, 2012 @ 1:09 pm

    So what’s the Democrats next step/

    Excoriate employers who do such a thing and insist the coverage point be reduced to, say, 20 hours of work per week?

    Or say “See, this is why the ‘private sector / insurance approach’ doesn’t work – we need to go to government run, single payor”?

  17. Challeron
    November 23rd, 2012 @ 1:31 pm

    Can’t be done: By language specifically written into the PPACA by the clever Democrats (snort, giggle), the PPACA is Unchangeable, Inviolable, and can only be revoked during a very narrow window in 2013.

    One wonders how many Democrats will actually vote to revoke the PPACA once they realize that they’ve built their own political downfall into it.…

  18. Matthew W
    November 23rd, 2012 @ 2:11 pm

    “One wonders how many Democrats will actually vote to revoke the PPACA”

    Exactly zero will.
    Democrat “leadership will NOT allow any dissent.

  19. Challeron
    November 23rd, 2012 @ 2:21 pm

    I dunno.… When the ship is sinking, the rats don’t follow any “leader” while they’re abandoning it….

  20. Bonzo
    November 23rd, 2012 @ 2:56 pm

    That clause can’t stand. A future Congress can undo anything this one does, unless the Constitution gets changed to prevent it (and is obeyed this time).

  21. Bonzo
    November 23rd, 2012 @ 2:58 pm

    That last is part of the plan, but not until the law’s “everyone is insurable!” provision has had time to wipe out the private health insurance industry.

  22. Bonzo
    November 23rd, 2012 @ 3:01 pm

    The labor “protection” laws in France and Germany, which make it very hard to fire a permanent employee, have similarly caused a huge number of jobs to become either temporary or underground, but that hasn’t deterred their governments, and both laws have been in place for years.

    But something tells me Obama isn’t displeased. He hates the rich (unless they’re his pals) and wants to turn America’s economy into 1970 Argentina. He’ll probably succeed.

  23. richard mcenroe
    November 23rd, 2012 @ 3:09 pm

    This will of course, help unemployment because everyone will have to have twice as many jobs as they did before, even if only a quarter of the people can get them…

  24. Challeron
    November 23rd, 2012 @ 3:30 pm

    You presume a “future Congress” is going to be sufficiently different from the current one to actually care about obeying laws … like the one which requires Congress to pass a Federal Budget every year.…

  25. Obama’s Part Time Economy | The Lonely Conservative
    November 23rd, 2012 @ 5:56 pm

    […] is bad now, just wait. But it’s not like nobody saw this coming, as Smitty said, “Sow crap policy, reap policy crap.”In sort-of related news, did you see the Black Friday headlines from earlier today? Via […]

  26. Crunkomatic
    November 23rd, 2012 @ 5:57 pm

    France isn’t armed like us. You may be surprised what happens down the road.

  27. Bob Belvedere
    November 23rd, 2012 @ 6:20 pm

    Where is that quote from Gringao? If it is from one of his books, could you name the chapter. I could use this is something I’m writing and will, of course, give you proper credit. Thank you.

  28. Bob Belvedere
    November 23rd, 2012 @ 6:22 pm

    Gives me hope for America.

  29. Oldcrow
    November 23rd, 2012 @ 6:51 pm

    “Thus, as a very possible consequence of the short-sightedness of the
    Affordable Care Act legislators, more people will be working two jobs to
    make ends meet.”

    God how blind do you have to be? ACA was written with exactly this in mind, to force employers to stop providing private insurance to there employee’s, the shortened hours are just a side affect. ACA was a long term plan to force the country to accept single payer ie.. government run healthcare. Stop under estimating how smart the Lib’s are yes Obama is an idiot and empty suit just a talking head but the staff members and others in the lib camp are not!

  30. Quartermaster
    November 23rd, 2012 @ 9:34 pm

    I’m afraid the Murican people may have become Poodles. Time will tell, but what I see does not give me hope.

  31. Gmama
    November 24th, 2012 @ 12:31 am

    Everything you say is probably true but you leave out one thing, instead of getting a subsidy to purchase an insurance plan that is affordable they’ll have to pay 20% on a cadillac plan with all the bells and whistles, and the rest of us will be paying the other 80% via taxes. When our taxes make it impossible to afford meals out or shopping, we’ll cut back and they’ll loose their part-time jobs for a lack of customers.

  32. From around the blogroll « THE FIRST STREET JOURNAL.
    November 24th, 2012 @ 7:29 pm

    […] It isn’t just the hospitality industry, either. Community colleges and small to medium sized businesses are all going to have to rethink their business models. The reelection of Obama pretty much sealed the deal. If you think the economy is bad now, just wait. But it’s not like nobody saw this coming, as Smitty said, “Sow crap policy, reap policy crap.” […]

  33. Affordable Care Act = fewer hours for low-wage workers | Something Fishy
    December 1st, 2012 @ 8:40 pm

    […] an entirely predictable move, employers are Unexpectedly! moving to staff their businesses entirely in part-time wage earners, […]