Under a new rule announced by the White House on May 17th, 2016 anyone
making less than $47,476 will automatically get paid overtime when they work more than 40 hours a week.
Federal Control of Your Life Continues
Isn’t this another method the Obama Administration is using for government to control businesses and the economy? Rather than letting people come together based on supply and demand to work out those details themselves?
So the unintended consequences is businesses will likely be extra careful about how they use employees who are in this salary bracket.
So employees who may have seen an opportunity to work additional hours under a fixed salary model may not be allowed to work those extra hours.
More Money to the Workers, Right?
Now that sounds great, right? Shouldn’t they be paid to work overtime? Who should work for free?
Well what really will happen is salaries will be cut (either directly or when they backfill a role) so that when the normal 45-50 hours a week someone is worked, the same dollar amount is earned as before.
Or they don’t work them as hard. And what happens is that person doesn’t get to really show off their ability and commitment. And as a result they get passed over for promotions or don’t further develop their skills so they can get a raise.
This is the exact same problem you learn about in Econ 101 – how minimum wage cases low end workers to lose jobs to higher skilled workers and then raise prices to the consumers. So the low end worker who was struggling to make ends meet now must ask for a hand out from the government or stand on a street corner begging for food and money from the people driving by on their way to and from work.
Yeah, that makes a whole lot of sense (see sarcasm).
So what seems at first as a great idea turns into a pile of poo.
Now this may seem obvious to you. But I’m sure there are lot of people out there who’ve been trained by the government-educational complex (i.e. Common Core) who think that everyone just gets more free money.
This goes along with the other idea that just emerged from the same administration – giving summer government jobs to refugees. Not to kids who have just been priced out of a summer minimum wage job by an older, more experienced person who can now compete for that job because the wage isn’t lower.
This world is going backwards. We need to figure this out. Don’t know if getting Trump into office will reverse the trend, but something needs to change or we’ll find ourselves with a few rich people who run the government (aka Hillary Cash) and everyone else in the poorhouse waiting for the next government handout.
And a dead middle class. Courtesy of the do gooders inside the Beltway.
Go figure…
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