A former Reagan adviser has asked how it is possible that with more than 93 million Americans out of work, how can we possibly have 5% unemployment? He contends that with only 210 million Americans eligible to be in the workforce, it leaves us with 42% unemployed.
With millions of Americans unemployed and businesses facing oppressive regulations which are growing by the day, Barack Obama has decided to implement a rule under federal labor law that will raise the salary threshold below what workers automatically qualify for time-and-a-half overtime wages to $50,440 a year from $23,660..
This is another redistribution of wealth from business owners and investors to lower-wage workers to make things “fair” and “equal” according to social justice tenets. He says he is helping the middle class, which is code for Marxist redistribution. It has more to do with destroying the middle class than helping it.
In order to make this happen, Obama will direct the Labor Department to change the classification of workers such as fast-food restaurant managers, loan officers, computer technicians and others currently classified as “executive or professional” employees, which provides a means for employers to avoid overtime pay, the New York Times reported.
It will be popular with unions, leftists, and Americans who are focused on individual needs, but it will kill jobs. Small businesses, the backbone of Capitalism, will balk.
The president is using populist language to sway opinion. “Right now, too many Americans are working long days for less pay than they deserve,” he wrote in an editorial on The Huffington Post.
This rule will make about 5 million eligible for overtime using the force and might of Big Government. He claims to have the power to do it under the Fair Labor Standards Act. That will be challenged in court and perhaps by Congress but no one can count on the politicized Supreme Court to render a fair decision.
The National Retail Federation, a trade group, has argued that expanded overtime will “add to employers’ costs, undermine customer service, hinder productivity, generate more litigation opportunities for trial lawyers and ultimately harm job creation.”
It will apply to employees who work 40 hour weeks. Expect workers’ hours to be cut.
It is a way to get around resistance to the minimum wage limit and make Republicans look worse.
The White House Council of Economic Advisers member, Betsy Stevenson, said they will have to study how this overtime rule will affect households over a minimum wage increase.
She doesn’t know where this will lead or what the threshold will be as of yet. They will allegedly seek input from stakeholders.
Aside from the fact that this puts Big Government in charge of how businesses pay out overtime, it mimics the policies that have made other socialist economies fail and flounder, like Greece for instance.
The free market needs to make these decisions.
If you google this issue, you will get three pages of the NY Times, followed by HuffPo, Mother Jones, and Media Matters attacking Fox News, before you find articles by The Washington Times and the blaze. The media is all in on Obama’s agenda.
Socialism is not the Answer 
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