Shipping Potentially Crippled by ObamaCare Tax
by Dave Blount | February 11, 2015 1:03 pm
The economic damage that ObamaCare will inflict is incalculable, will strike every corner of society, and will continue to unfold for years to come. For example:
The slow-roll implementation of Obamacare threatens to close U.S. commercial ports on the West Coast. The 29 ports, which handle 70 percent of maritime imports from Asia, were closed over the weekend after months of contentious contract negotiations. The ports reopened Monday, but 20,000 longshoremen are still threatening to strike over a new Obamacare tax.
Obamacare imposes a 40 percent tax on health benefits deemed too generous by the government. Health benefits exceeding $10,200 a year in value for individuals or $27,500 for families are defined as “Cadillac” plans and are subject to the tax. Health benefits for longshoremen exceed $40,000 per employee, meaning the union would be served an enormous tax bill when the penalty is imposed in 2018.
As with all things related to ObamaCare, the price tag for this strike will be high.
The longshoremen last went on strike in 2002, causing a shutdown of West Coast ports that cost the economy more than $2 billion a day in lost output.
Shipping isn’t the only area where confiscatory ObamaCare taxes will wreak havoc.
“This will come up in just about every contract negotiation out there,” J.D. Piro, a health-benefits consultant, told Bloomberg News. “Every employer is going to be calculating when and if they hit the threshold and how they’re going to pay for this.”
The full ramifications of the new “Cadillac” health care tax won’t be felt until 2018, two years after the next presidential election. Obamacare was constructed in a deliberate manner, front-loading the “benefits” of the law and pushing implementation of its “costs” far into the future, usually after critical elections.
Likewise, the full effects of the massive debt Obama has run up, which already has surpassed a staggering $18 trillion, will not be felt until he is safely out of office, like an arsonist who prepares a fuse so that others but not himself will be caught inside the conflagration he creates.
On a tip from Wiggins. Cross-posted at Moonbattery.
Source URL: https://rightwingnews.com/obamacare/shipping-potentially-crippled-obamacare-tax/