People in business can only try to make a profit given the totality of the incentives and regulations they are forced to successfully navigate.
If you punish an employer where the margin on low skilled employees between their pay and their productivity is very low, when government mandates that full time employees must have an expensive fringe benefit, but allows part time employees to escape the mandate, guess what? Employees at the lower end of the skills and productivity matrix are going to be part timers.
So yet another Blue model breaks down: all the social justice activists who thought that ObamaCare was going to bring out the magic unicorns all traversing the golden rainbow while defecating Skittles and Arizona Tea are going to be shocked to find out that instead of workers getting a more easy life with free health care, the full time job is going to disappear.
Instead of one full time job and a 40 hour week, workers at every level up to valuable management and those with high skills (like programmers and doctors) are going to work two part time jobs and have a 50 hour week, and no benefits.
The instant this new reality dawns on the low-information voters, they are going still blame greedy insurance companies! And as sure as the sun rises, you know that community activists and the social justice crowd are going to find a way to explain (er, lie) this reality to their advantage. And so the social struggle for the soul of the “worker” continues. Sadly, economic reality is the first thing to be cast aside.
For my part, my startup will never have 50 employees as long as ObamaCare is in effect. I’ll offshore and outsource and set up related businesses somewhere else to avoid the limit.
ObamaCare is an affront the Constitution. The very idea that a person can be forced by government to buy something is anathema to the Declaration of Independence and especially to “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness”, which the last time I checked is still the law of the land, if not in legal reality then at least as a timeless principle from the Creator.