CEO to Workers: I May Fire You if Obama Wins | Hacker News Reader

CEO to Workers: I May Fire You if Obama Wins

finance.yahoo.com

7 pointssnampall11 comments

Funny that it's illegal to explicitly coerce your employees to vote a certain way, but perfectly legitimate to implicitly threaten your employees' livelihood based on election results.

Also, he seems a little confused as to whether he's upset as a business owner over taxes and health care, or as a wealthy individual who fears class warfare ("people that overspent their paychecks suddenly feel entitled...", etc).

The former might have some legitimacy in terms of hiring costs (though I suspect the numbers are overblown); but the idea that the latter would affect hiring is laughable. Business owners hire people for exactly one reason: that they can make more money from an employee's labor than what they pay out. The idea that a move from a marginal rate of 36% to 39% would mean no longer wanting to make money at all is simply absurd.

Begrudging 3% of profits is not absurd when it is in terms of risk. Imagine you paying 3% of profits on a 50/50 coin toss game. Even a single percent will teeter you to a losing proposition. Businesses do not make money every year, thus they want to be compensated with higher returns when they do make money. Unless the IRS compensates you during losing years, every dollar taxed demands that your odds of winning must be much higher. And, while there are loss carry-forward rules, it doesn't help your risk profile because it's game over if you hit bankruptcy by not having enough cash at hand to pay debts and expenses (and your assets get sold at a steep firesale discount).

Now, to be fair, we have no way of knowing if 3% is too much for his risk profile. It may or may not be. But, business risk is also difficult to estimate. As it is, it is difficult enough for the business owner. What chance does a bureaucrat who never owned a business or worked a normal job have?

3% of profits would be one thing. But we're talking about his top marginal personal income tax rate increasing. (Obama's tax plan calls for lowering corporate taxes.) If he fires people over that, it would be a purely vindictive action. His personal income tax rate has no impact on the financial health of his company.

He owns the company, he has invested his time, effort and money into the company. I think it is completely fair that if feels its not going to be worth the time, effort or money. It is his call if he wants to scale back or shutdown the company.

Absolutely.

But it's also a straightforward breach of both regular and business ethics to attempt to use one's position of authority to intimidate one's employees into voting a particular way.

And it's just plain incontinent to issue a letter like that, considering that both Obama and Romney are planning to cut the corporate tax rate. By about the same amount, too.

If it were just another republican a-hole "going Galt", that wouldn't be surprising. But the fact that this is the guy who is building the house in the Queen of Versailles documentary IS SOOOO DELICIOUS!

I assume this means that if Romney wins everybody gets a raise?

Nah, their jobs will get outsourced, then they'll get fired.

He's such a dick

"Thomas Jefferson, the author of our great Constitution, once said, “democracy” will cease to exist when you take away from those who are willing to work and give to those who would not.”" - David Siegel

> Thomas Jefferson, the author of our great Constitution

Ha. Thanks for calling attention to that, I had totally missed it. Perhaps Mr. Siegel had a habit of napping during civics class?

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