In a free society, protections like health coverage, short-term disability insurance, and retirement savings should be personal choices—portable products bought on the open market from competing providers, customized to individual needs and risk tolerance, and completely independent of any job.
Instead, a thicket of tax preferences, regulations, and mandates has turned these into employer-tied “benefits.” This is not free-market capitalism. It is corporatism: government power creating artificial dependencies that hand private employers leverage over citizens’ most fundamental needs while loading unsustainable costs onto businesses and distorting how companies hire and staff.
The Job Lock That Gives Bosses Power Over Your Life
When health insurance, disability protection, and retirement contributions flow primarily through employment, leaving or losing a job carries outsized personal risk. Families with ongoing medical needs, children, or pre-existing conditions face the prospect of expensive individual-market coverage or dangerous gaps.
The predictable result is job lock—workers tolerate poor pay, toxic management, stagnant careers, or even outright mistreatment because the alternative threatens their family’s access to care. Your employer doesn’t just sign your paycheck; under this system, they effectively control leverage over whether you can afford to see a doctor or protect your income if you get sick or injured.
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