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Wednesday, September 28. 2016

Killing the American Dream

Only government has the power to kill growth. Government can not make the economic pie larger, but it can easily shrink it.

Posted by The News Junkie in The Culture, "Culture," Pop Culture and Recreation at 16:46 | Comments (4) | Trackbacks (0)

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I used to work for a company that was not busy between Christmas and New Year. The hourly folks used to work extra hours before Christmas so they could take that week off as comp time. Then the Labor Dept. tried to help them by making employers pay overtime instead of comp time so they ended up either taking vacation or working instead of being with their families which they would have prefered to taking overtime.

Our church is currently trying to figure out how to deal with the new overtime rules from the Labor Dept. If you make below a threshold salary and you work more than 40 hrs a week, your employer must pay you overtime pay even though you may have been hired with the agreement that you would have to work over 40 hours/wk from time to time. Our church can't afford to pay the overtime and the employees are not asking for it. Our church will implement new overtime policies requiring time cards for impacted employees and a requirement that overtime be approved by a supervisor. Those employees will not be able to donate their time to the church for doing similar work to their job description if that pushes them over the 40 hr/wk threshold even if they turn in a time card with 40 hours on it and they are not approved for overtime. The church is not worried about action from the employee, but from the Labor Dept. or the IRS.

Land of the free (stuff)...
#1 mudbug on 2016-09-28 19:34 (Reply)
Government's knee jerk response to entrepreneurial initiative is, "You can't do that."

Is it any wonder that companies are being destroyed faster than they are being created with that attitude?
#2 feeblemind on 2016-09-28 20:04 (Reply)
I'd vote for the devil, himself, if he scuttled Dodd Frank.
#3 Anonymous on 2016-09-29 06:40 (Reply)
QUOTE:
What's Killing the American Dream?


The essay states the U.S. is a leader in new business creation, then argues that the U.S. economy is being strangled by regulation.

Another problem is that it admits some regulation is necessary, but doesn't provide a metric for how to know which regulations are necessary and which are not.

The essay provides some anecdotes, but there's no discussion of why they are more than normal economic pangs or temporary strains due to new regulations. For instance, the baker has to change his recipes, but as all bakers have to meet the same dietary requirements, it's not clear why he would be at a competitive disadvantage. Indeed, a good marketer would make that a selling point.

"It's Toasted!"
#4 Zachriel on 2016-09-29 09:38 (Reply)

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