A "Big Apple" Medical Solution?

By David Kramer :

Let’s say you have a city that currently has one of the highest unemployment rates in the country, e.g., New York City. And let’s say you are an economically-ignorant New York City politician (but I repeat myself). What would you do to “help” alleviate the unemployment situation in New York City?

Would you:
a) Cut or—perish the thought—abolish corporate taxes so that employers have more money to hire people?
b) Push for a law that requires (i.e., forces) employers to spend more money than they would have, thereby having less money to hire more people, or to at least keep their current workforce employed—especially in these economically challenging times?

If you guessed “b,” go to the head of the class. It seems that economically-ignorant New York City Councilwoman Gail Brewer has come up with a “progressive” idea mandating earned sick time for New York City workers. This would cover all low-paid workers who are currently not paid for sick leave and, therefore, sometimes have to work while they are sick—thereby possibly giving other workers or customers the “sniffles” (i.e., they also get sick and can’t go to work—therefore, productivity is cut down).

Of course, as you’ve been hearing in the media for the last 100 years, New York City has had an “epidemic” of people getting sick from other people at work, so this mandate should really make a “big dent” in improving the health and financial well-being of every New Yorker. Or perhaps, depending upon the number of employees an individual employer has, even more New York City employees will be collecting unemployment after they lose their jobs because their employers couldn’t afford to keep them on anymore due to this added cost. (Obviously, the thought has never occured to Brewer that all of the employers, who are obviously smart enough to still be in business, know what works best for their own companies regarding their employees’ health and productivity—and their customers’ needs, if it is a service company.)

Someday, perhaps in the next millenium, politicians will take the time to read Henry Hazlitt’s Economics in One Lesson.