The Daily Show on whining by business owners


Before and after the election we saw plenty of business owners whining about how the re-election of Barack Obama would sound the death knell for business and would require them to shut down their businesses or fire people or make them part-time so as to not have to provide them with health care benefits.

In the next segment, Jon Stewart points out the hypocrisy of such claims.

(This clip appeared on November 13, 2012. To get suggestions on how to view clips of The Daily Show and The Colbert Report outside the US, please see this earlier post.)

Comments

  1. Francisco Bacopa says

    So Murray fired people just to make good on their threat. Watch them fail. Coal market will be pretty much the same and economists predicted that the jobless Obama recovery will produce the 12 million jobs Romney talked about whatever happens. And Murray won’t have the labor base to exploit this recovery. Sucks to be them.

  2. Tim says

    Re: the second clip …

    I’m SO glad Jon’s calling it what it is: an excuse.

    This nonsense these owners are spewing is a variation of the same BS they gave in 2008 for laying of enormous numbers of people and demanding that remaining workers do more with less.

    In 2008, they blamed the economic downturn. Now they blame Obama.

    Little has changed.

  3. sunny says

    I think Bank of America was calling the firing of employees ‘delayering’.

    I would love to have a quick reference guide to Corporate euphemisms.

  4. smrnda says

    I work for a small business, but my employers are not Americans (they are Israeli and European) and find the attitude of US businesses -- who think any government regulation or call to social responsibility is some huge, insulting “how dare you!” imposition, to be utterly disgusting, a sign of immaturity and brattyness in people who ought to act like adults. They’ve actually discussed how the absence of a national health care system makes the US a less attractive place to start a business.

    What I don’t understand are two things -- why anybody thinks that business owners can’t just lie. Plenty of people who suspect Obama of lying even when he makes a completely mundane, non-controversial statement accept anything that comes from a person in ‘business’ as if it were just impossible they weren’t telling the absolute truth.

    The other thing is, not that many people are business owners and CEOs. Most people work for other people. Does anybody actually believe their employers are anything but shameless liars when it comes to issues involving any sort of compensation? Most business owners will always complain about costs, regardless of their profit margin.

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