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| Economy |
| Champ slams Staples, big companies on healthcare: 'Shame on them' |
| 2015-02-12 |
| [Rooters] - The Champ singled out office supply giant Staples Inc as undercutting his healthcare reform law and said large corporations should not use the health insurance issue as an excuse for cutting wages, the news website BuzzFeed reported. "It's one thing when you've got a mom-and-pop store who can't afford to provide paid sick leave or health insurance or minimum wage to workers but when I hear large corporations that make billions of dollars in profits trying to blame our interest in providing health insurance as an excuse for cutting back workers' wages, shame on them," Obama said in an interview with BuzzFeed. The Affordable Care Act requires companies with more than 50 employees to pay for health insurance for people who work 30 hours a week or more. Reuters has reported that some businesses are keeping staffing numbers below 50 or cutting the work week to less than 30 hours to avoid providing employee health insurance. Staples, the No. 1 U.S. office supplies retailer, has told its employees not to work more than 25 hours per week, according to a Buzzfeed report on Monday. No surprises here, petulant vindictive anger at work. Tom Stemberg, co-founder of Staples was a big supporter of Romney and Romney's contributions to Staples. Stemberg is not a supporter of the ACA, calls it a "disincentive to work." |
| Posted by:Besoeker |
| #18 "His Nibs" shall not be denied. |
| Posted by: Hupineger Glomomp15043 2015-02-12 20:47 |
| #17 Large companies own their staff about as much as countries do, which is to say, not at all. |
| Posted by: Bright Pebbles 2015-02-12 19:05 |
| #16 no mo, when you get down to the very bottom you're, of course correct, the public voted for this. I think it was Adam Smith that first said that a democratic system would work only until the public realized they could vote themselves other peoples money. By putting in place a constitutional republic the founders slowed the momentum but the brakes eventually failed. How about we go back to the State legislators appointing the Senators? |
| Posted by: AlanC 2015-02-12 17:41 |
| #15 So here is a guy that has never run a business, not even a hot dog stand. Someone that in 6 years has yet to balance the budget, or even propose one. Once bankrupt he proceeded to write bade checks, IE Quantitative easing, and borrow money from the global loan shark-China. And now I'm supposed to listen to him lecture a solvent company about fiscal responsibility? I would be better served to ask a 10 year old for advice... |
| Posted by: 49 Pan 2015-02-12 17:33 |
| #14 We need an industry unification plan and have those industries doing well to pay for the ones that don't. They have millions and they can support it. Only problem is that when you lose money long enough you go bankrupt. Then you ain't got jack sh*t. Anybody who voted for the Affordable Care Act is delusional, lazy, stupid, or malevolent. And that was a majority of congress. How f*cked are we? We're really really f*cked. |
| Posted by: Alaska Paul 2015-02-12 15:18 |
| #13 To quote Ayn Rand, "Fuck You" Everytime this guy mentions a private individual or organization, the dogs come out. He knows that; he counts on that; like Zeus casting bolts. No. That isn't fair. More like Mokey, siking the mission of fraggles. Question for those out there who are on the groung - is it worth it to become full time and take a pay cut to compensate for insurance costs? |
| Posted by: swksvolFF 2015-02-12 12:46 |
| #12 Two words - Fiduciary Responsibility |
| Posted by: DepotGuy 2015-02-12 11:30 |
| #11 AlanC- They still believe. Because they WANT to believe. Voting in politicians who will use the police and taxation power of the state to take money from your more wealthy and productive neighbors and give you some of that money in amounts that aren't justified by the value of your labor is very much what all Democrats and a significant number of Republicans do. To be sure, there is a symbiosis there. But in the end, demand creates supply. At other times in history a politician promising this would have been laughed off stage at best and in all likelihood strung up, even by the type of people he was pitching this scheme to. I doubt very much that if you told an most adults alive in 1910 that they should thuggishly band together to demand more wages than their work justified, or that they should take out a loan to own a house that they couldn't afford to pay for, they would have thought either was a good idea. Something has changed in 100 years. Not for the better. Politicians made it worse by pandering (and delivering on their pandering). But the public itself seems to have no governor on its divorced-from-reality notions about income stream and guarantees thereof. The politicians we have are a reflection of that, not vice versa, IMO. A British MP has said (I paraphrase) that very nearly all of the problems facing the West today stem from the populations of Western countries vastly overvaluing the worth of their labor in terms of material standard of living and security of the same. I think that will go down as the epitaph for the Anglosphere unless huge changes occur in the next 5-10 years. When a public schoolteacher makes more than the average private worker, when Boston cops average six figures, and when UAW guys are making $80.00 an hour to watch robots build cars, we've lost our mind as a society. Millionaire CEO's are annoying, but their cumulative effect on our downfall is nothing compared to scores of millions of overpaid union members and government employees sucking the life out of the economy. Even the welfare sector is less of a problem than that. Let's redefine "working class" and "middle class" back to what our grandparents did, adjust lifestyles accordingly and you'll see the country recover in not too many years. Don't do this, and it's the Mad Max times for sure. |
| Posted by: no mo uro 2015-02-12 11:23 |
| #10 Businesses will react to regulations to maiximize their bottom line. Apple, Google and Microsoft sell copr bonds for billions of dollars yet have hundereds of billions on the balance sheet. Why? Because regulations make it costly to on-shore the dollars. so they sell a bond at 2.5% and use the money on-shore. Is obama ashamed at his liberal buddies at google, apple and microsoft? |
| Posted by: airandee 2015-02-12 10:52 |
| #9 The regime can't balance a budget, so they print more money. Terms like "Balance Sheet" is beyond their sphere of comprehension. Ignorance on display front and center. |
| Posted by: Ebbomosh Hupemp2664 2015-02-12 10:36 |
| #8 no mo uro, I don't think it was the public that told itself. It was the progressives in academia and politics that sold this bilge...... When Welfare was introduced, Roosevelt said, "Lay down your shovels, sit on your asses, and light up a Camel, this is the Promised Land." The low info voters heard this and believed. |
| Posted by: AlanC 2015-02-12 08:46 |
| #7 You didn't build that! Remember one of the fundamentals of the Left - Thou shall covet. |
| Posted by: P2Kontheroad 2015-02-12 08:24 |
| #6 Politicians spewing this nonsense? Symptom, not cause. The cause is a public which has told itself to one extent or another that showing up to a job which doesn't require a lot of skill to do, or that lots of other people can do equally well, is a magic ticket to a standard of living not justified by the amount they produce. A public like that will cheer on, and vote for, any politician who tells them that their job should pay more than it does. Never mind the facts. Sorry, but your work isn't worth the lifestyle you have convinced yourself you deserve. And if you keep voting in politicians who will coerce, regulate, and steal to take money from your boss and neighbors to prop up the lie, sooner or later the whole thing collapses. And then you nave NOTHING. Right now, it looks like sooner. You voted away your jobs to other countries basically for beer money. |
| Posted by: no mo uro 2015-02-12 08:17 |
| #5 In somewhat related cause and effect news; another company is pulling out of Seattle due to the $15 an hour minimum wage issue. Another "no one could have predicted this" moment. |
| Posted by: USN, Ret 2015-02-12 07:03 |
| #4 I seriously doubt that Staples makes "billions of dollars in profits" |
| Posted by: Mikey Hunt 2015-02-12 03:18 |
| #3 "No one could have predicted this." -- someone with a Ph.D. in B.S. said this. |
| Posted by: Anguper Hupomosing9418 2015-02-12 02:59 |
| #2 As one might expect from the extreme left, a highly successful, profit making private business is anathema to the Champ. |
| Posted by: Besoeker 2015-02-12 01:32 |
| #1 Gee, who would have guessed such things would happen? Only damn near every one of us that was shouting it from the treetops when Pelosi and Reid rammed this thru with legislative trickery and outright lies. |
| Posted by: OldSpook 2015-02-12 00:28 |