Liberals are fond of calling Republicans “the stupid party.” That might need revision. It appears to me that Democrats have checkmated themselves. Here is the logic:
If Obamacare makes it through the Senate, American small businesses will continue to shrink their payrolls to avoid the awful choice of paying higher health care insurance premiums or the 8% added payroll tax. Unemployment is sure to rise. The Dems will face the November 2010 elections with 12% unemployment ... closer to Depression levels of 20% by the so-called broader measures.
If Obamacare fails to pass, the left-wing base will be so demoralized as to not show up at the polls in 2010. Or they will be so angry that they might start a 1968-like interparty war.
My Checkmate Theory is based on small-business fear of Obama’s signature issues--health care, cap-and-trade and union card check. Health care is at the plate now. The fate of health care in the U.S. Senate will set the passage odds for cap-and-trade and union card check next year. All three of Obama's signature issues are opposed by most small businesses, including the American Chamber of Commerce.
Here are two revealing stories reporting the economic struggles and political fears of small businesses:
USA Today
Small businesses often lead the nation out of recession. Not this time.
The unemployment rate jumped to 10.2% in October from 9.8% in September, and economists say a big reason is small businesses. With sales weak, they're still slashing jobs and faring worse than their larger rivals.
"Small business tends to lead the way out, and that's just not happening here," says Mark Zandi of Moody's Economy.com.
The Wall Street Journal
W. Michael Brown has scaled back hiring plans in his Virginia auto-parts stores. Carl Redman halted an expansion project at his Oregon contracting business. Bill Hammack is preparing layoffs at his road-construction company in Georgia.
The economy remains unsteady 22 months after the recession began, with banks restricting credit and consumers hunkering down. For these small businesses, and many others across the country, there's an additional dark cloud: uncertainty created by Washington's bid to reorganize a wide swath of the U.S. economy.
If American small businesses stay hunkered down, unemployment will stay up. That’s because small businesses historically have created the majority of net jobs in any economy. They've created almost all net jobs in the first two years of a recovery. But not this time. Not yet.
The liberal writer Michael Lind is happy to see government put the screws to small businesses. In Lind’s opinion, small businesses are nothing more than a collection of Scrooges and Marleys. No doubt his opinion of small business is shared by many in the Democratic Party’s activist wing:
The solution may be corporatism or corporate paternalism--by which I mean the mandatory universalization of private employer benefits. If the politics of ethnic diversity makes movement in a universalist, social democratic direction impossible in the U.S., then the alternative might be to mandate that all employers provide certain benefits to all employees, with no exceptions. The costs of such unfunded mandates might drive some small businesses out of existence. But small-business owners are the most vocal opponents of wage and benefit reform in the U.S. The replacement of Scrooge & Marley by a smaller number of bigger private and public employers who treat Bob Cratchit and Tiny Tim better would not necessarily be a tragedy.
Not a tragedy? Don't be so quick, Democrats. You can’t have it both ways. Stick it to small businesses (through higher payroll taxes, cap-and-trade and union card check) and the assaulted will trim their payrolls until conditions clear, if ever. But if you don't stick it to small businesses, your party’s activist base will go nuts.
You have checkmated yourselves, Democrats.
Post your comments below.
The price of socialism is failure.
Could not agree with this more. Democrats set themselves up – Checkmate – Bobby Fischer style.
There is a point to which small business owners can be pushed before resorting to conformity with and ultimately revolution from egalitarian demagogy. For better or worse, however, the small business owner’s resiliency may peak beyond the immediately present debate. And so, our unfortunate ecosystem inches ever closer to the cliffs of socialism, without ever realizing the lessons of the fall. A far more tragic place to be.
Undeniably true but politics is the art of impossible because it rides on emotions. And these emotions defy logic on the election day..
Thus, no matter how logical this conclusion is, election results will show different results.
Here is why. Our electorate is composed of three classes – (i) blinds (ii) partially awake and (iii) actives (the fringe). Its the (ii) class that swings elections. And they have been voting on sentiments rather than on logic.
This class does not yet understands the complexity of our global economy. They believe ‘uniformity’ – in services, opportunity and sharing cost is a right. Third, they believe we are the richest country in the world ‘just because our economy is the largest’.
Democrats have done very well with this class and will continue to do so. There is a unfortunate dichotomy to this whole thing – the same class that think ‘it knows’ is the most ignorant. Its being manipulated in the name of uniformity and social justice.
Thus, sentiments will defy logic and we will see minor disruptions in the outcome in 2010.
We have the most bloated healthcare system in the world — and it’s private. Tens of millions of our fellow citizens are without medical care.
And Rich/Forbes is oppossed to fixing these.
Choose your sides carefully, boys and girls.
The health care system is already socialized, this is just a continuation of a process that began in 1964. The real hammer fell on medicine in 1983 when the supreme court ruled that hospitals may not turn away people who can’t pay. In the current system, those who do things right are paying for freeloaders.
Therefore we need two systems, a public one and a private one. The public one will be for all the freeloading losers who don’t care about their health, and the private one can be for the rest of us. (Sort of like paying extra to use the smooth new toll lanes while the people in their beaters go 5mph in the other lanes.)
The middle class is on it’s way out. The middle class is the heart of the Republican base, so long term, the chess game is already over. I’m saying this as a conservative Republican.
Go to the supermarket some time and take a look at the freaks who put people like Barney Frank into office.
Checkmate signals game over. Ever the optimist, Rich is wishing for an end to Democratic control of Congress. Not gonna happen – our country is too far down the slippery slope of welfare for all (business and citizens) to ever hope to get back to real constitutionally limited government, which was the key ingredient for the phenomenal success of the USA for the last 150 years.
I’ve come to that conclusion lately Don. I used to think that enough economic pain (through capital flight) would light a fire under the imbecile majority in this country. Now, I actually think that they will stew in shanties while grifting and looking for government money.
This is no different than Brasil or a hundred other countries. Generational poverty, being manipulated by a government, and happy that they are manipulated because they don’t have to take responsibility for themselves.
Abhi You said “we are the richest country in the world”
Brian, You said “Tens of millions of our fellow citizens are without medical care.”
John, You said “The price of socialism is failure.”
Rich, You said “Don’t be so quick…you can't have it both ways.”
But we sure do try. If we have failed kidneys then we will die very quickly without dialysis. No matter how much money we have, dialysis will take it all away fast and our insurance providers have exempted themselves from that business. Chronic dialysis can go on indefinitely if there is nothing much else wrong with you…but, of course, there always is so you won’t last forever. However, the doctors can keep most people alive for 20 years or longer. Therefore, the government steps up and covers the cost of dialysis 100%. Socialized medicine is our reality when we’ve got to have it or we'll die and we really can’t afford to pay for it.
Similarly, the H1N1 vaccine is provided to one and all at no cost by the government. And we complain that they are moving too slowly. This is socialized medicine again and we've become pretty snotty about it as an entitlement. Our reasonable expectations regarding health care goods and services imply that we are already living under socialism. In the wealthiest nation on Earth.
What if they charged us $300 for an H1N1 shot? And we found out it only cost them $3 to produce…while the FDA simply got out of the way? At that price some families would try to do without it and we would have dead (pregnant) women and children all over America in 2010…in the wealthiest nation on Earth during an election year.
But at $10 a pill Lipitor already costs us $300 a month. And that is every month for the rest of our lives. It costs Pfizer less than a dime to make that $10 pill. Fully loaded with all their research, development and manufacturing costs. They will never disclose those cost accounting numbers, of course. But count on it. Medicine is cheap and easy to make.
If we don't step in and take away the industry's “what the market will bear” pricing strategies…as they do not seem to be able to regulate themselves the way Adam Smith, Ayn Rand and Alan Greenspan insisted that they would…then for certain they will continue pushing health care costs up, taking away more of America’s immense wealth as quikly as they can and socialism will be our only option.
This health care insurance foolishness is only a cover for the fact that all our politicians are being underwritten by one or more industry players through their PACs and taken care of by their lobbyists.
Instead we might expect the prices for health care goods and services to move lower just like they must for any mature high-tech industry with a broad consumer market to sell into. The industry and the government have purposefully created barriers to competitive entry into health care goods and services during the Supply Side consolidation of these businesses, in spite of the sacred obligation we entrust to patent holders to make their life-saving products reasonably available and our well-meant anti-monopoly waivers (at the state level mostly) suppressing competition from capitalists and physicians who seek to open new clinics.
If we won't let capitalism work its magic and drop the cost of health care goods and services in an orderly economic process then we must accept socialism. And that is exactly what this President is trying to pull off. If our leaders don't understand how to correct this then we need more working capitalists in the Congress instead of so many career politicians, mediocre lawyers (who went into government to make a living) and millionaires who always wanted to be President.
Forest Baker, you have hit the nail on the head!!! The problem is the “regulation” of the industry. Instead of encouraging competition, which invariably forces down prices (witness the $1 menu at EVERY fast food joint), we tell the companies how much they can charge and who they must accept as customers (and this cuts across many industries, not just insurance).
The Founders of this Country intended business people and others to serve for a term or two in the government, just like you might serve in the military, and then go home. That is why George Washington wisely refused to accept a position as the “king” of the natal country. He insisted on elections. If lifetime in Congress was intended to be the norm, he would have graciously accepted.
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