THE HAND THAT FEEDS HIM?

The point of Michael Fleischer's Wall Street Journal op-ed, "Why I'm Not Hiring," seems to be that Fleischer and his company, Bogen Communications, Inc., would add lots of new workers if that nasty old government would just do the right thing and cease to exist. Here's Fleischer writing about a person he describes as a typical employee:

... When you add it all up, it costs $74,000 to put $44,000 in Sally's pocket and to give her $12,000 in benefits. Bottom line: Governments impose a 33% surtax on Sally's job each year.

Because my company has been conscripted by the government and forced to serve as a tax collector, we have lost control of a big chunk of our cost structure....

We can't pass the additional costs onto our customers, because the market is too tight and we'd lose sales. Only governments can raise prices repeatedly and pretend there will be no consequences....

Now, I believe that government existed, and maintained policies that had a similar effect on paychecks, throughout all the years Bogen Communications has existed, and yet somehow the company managed to hire Sally and quite a few other people in that time. (Fleischer and his defenders seem to be implying that government added zero to the cost of hiring a worker until, oh, say, January 20, 2009. If that is, in fact, correct, I'll be happy to acknowledge my error. The company was founded, incidentally, in 1932.)

But never mind. Since Mr. Fleischer despises government so much -- after all, all it does is take, take, take, and never give -- and since it is the sole reason he can't hire anyone ever again, shouldn't he write a follow-up op-ed explaining to us why his company actually collaborates with the government in order to enable its evil institutions to exist and function?







(Click to enlarge. Originals viewable in PDF format here, here, and here.)

And why is his company seeking the opportunity to install its products in public transit systems and museums? Isn't that also collaboration with the devil, given how much filthy government money those parasitic institutions get? I certainly hope that will also be explained in Mr. Fleischer's next op-ed.

(More discussion of Fleischer at Memeorandum.)

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UPDATE: Guess I missed the real hypocrisy in all this. TBogg:

Since I am at MY REAL JOB right now I can’t wade into Michael Fleischer’s Why I’m Not Hiring in the WSJ, until this evening, but I should note that Fleischer, who is brother of Ari (yeah, that guy) has an interesting history of involvement as a member of Paul Bremer’s Iraq CPA which involved his helping to destroy what little economy Iraq had left over after we bombed the shit out of their country....

Oh, but I forgot: taxes only go to pay for wasteful liberal domestic programs. Elves and fairies cover the cost of all wars, nation-building, failed nation-building, etc.