WOULD MR. OBAMA REALLY WANT LOWER EMPLOYMENT?

Let’s be fair: The president and Democrats in Congress before the 2010 elections did not intend for the Affordable Care Act to reduce jobs and workers’ incomes.

Appears, however, such  reductions are true.

Aggregate figures may not yet be available, but evidence mounts that small businesses are reducing hours or refraining from new hires to avoid paying for health insurance for employees or fines for not buying coverage.

A columnist online wrote about a restaurant worker who was cut to 30 hours, losing $400 a month, leaving him with $27 to live on after expenses. Others arguing the case against Obamacare offer similar evidence.

So how many people might possibly be affected by this part of the legislation being put off for a year?

A little rudimentary research shows that in 2008 some 6 million firms had payrolls. (But there were 21.7 million with no payrolls, meaning those self-employed or people operating unincorporated businesses.) Those figures come from the U.S. Census Bureau.

The bureau does not keep statistics for businesses with fewer than 50 employees.  For employers of 1-4, 5-9 and 10-19 the total was 21.6 million paid employees. For 20-99 the figure was 20.9 million. Therefore, the 1-49 total might conservatively be estimated at 21.6 plus something less than half of the 20.9. A good guess is about 30 million employees in firms paying up to 50 employees.

Say 10 million bosses decided to cut hours to 30 a week and our example for lost wages is reasonable on average, the economy would lose some $4 billion a month. Total: $48 billion a year.

That’s pretty rough as estimates go, yet reasonable.

Unreasonable would be an assumption that the administration and Congress wished the economy to take a hit from mandating that uninsured Americans be covered for health expenses through insurance. What is reasonable is some thought given to fixing the problem.

Interestingly, the Teamsters have asked Democratic leaders to do something about Obamacare, claiming the law will create an incentive to keep work weeks below 30 hours when the middle class is founded on the 40-hour work week. Also, the union wants relief for non­-profit health plans established under Teamster contracts with employers.