Friday, January 21, 2011

Catron: A Natural Born Job Killer

David Catron has a new piece in AmSpec, "A Natural Born Job Killer". In it, he describes the many ways in which ObamaCare will destroy jobs and worsen unemployment in this country.

I especially liked this point he raised:
...[R]emember that reform-induced job losses will not be limited to the health care industry. As health care economist John Goodman points out, the various mandates imposed by Obamacare will effectively raise the cost of labor across the economy.

He estimates that they will add "$2.28 an hour for full time workers (individual coverage) and $5.89 an hour (family coverage) for fulltime employees." Many businesses simply cannot absorb such increases without cutting labor costs. This is why we have heard so many cris de coeur from low-margin employers like White Castle, which says the financial hit "will make it hard for the company to maintain its 421 restaurants, let alone create new jobs."
(Read the full text of "A Natural Born Job Killer".)

This is a vitally important point. As economist Frederic Bastiat pointed out many years ago in "What Is Seen and What Is Not Seen", we must not focus only on the immediately visible jobs that are destroyed by ObamaCare. We must also consider the jobs that would never be created by businessmen who choose not to expand.

Instead of letting ObamaCare kill our economy, Congress should kill ObamaCare.