Dr. J.’d rather see Obamacare upside-down than the economy upside-down…

Gentle Readers,

If you needed more proof that Obamacare is the Albatross™ brand millstone around the neck of the US economy, one needs only look to the most recent jobs news. Three quarters of the jobs created (or saved? muah ha ha ha) in 2013 thus far are part time positions? Why is this?

Well, Obamacare requires that employers of 50 or more full time employees must provide government approved health care for their employees or face a fine.

Smart money says that if you are the employer, you hire part time employees and leave it up to them to buy government subsidized insurance plans from state or federal run exchanges, many of which are not yet up and running.  So a million jobs would work out to be 812,000 FTEs (assuming 30 hour work weeks for the part time jobs), in other words, the average job represents 20% less productivity per job bragged about.

While the original strategy was to economically ‘slut shame’ those who publicly said this was what they were doing as smart business, in hopes that peer pressure could stave off the invisible hand. Now it appears that the invisible hand wins again as everyone who is hiring is doing it.

It was bad enough that Obamacare had to be passed to find out what was in it.

It is far worse that it had to be passed to show the economic havoc an Econ 101 student could have predicted if asked on the midterm exam…

Dr. J.