Or not. But it’s nice to have a scapegoat.

The job market appears to be doing what it would otherwise have done, irrespective of the enactment of the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare:

Opinion: Obamacare isn’t destroying jobs – Jared Bernstein and Paul Van de Water – POLITICO.com.

The authors above do acknowledge this:

True, some employers say they are cutting employees’ hours to avoid the requirement to provide health coverage to full-time workers, which the ACA defines as those working 30 hours or more a week. But they are the exception. A small survey by the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis finds that only 4 percent of companies had shifted to more part-time workers in response to health reform.

“Some employers say… to avoid…” It’s nice, so nice, to have a scapegoat. In my very, very humble opinion, if an employer is changing how they hire and how many hours they give their part-time workers to avoid the requirement to provide health coverage, and even to avoid the fine they might have to pay… well, maybe the employers aren’t managing their money as well as they could.

The municipal government in my small town? They emailed their staff a few months ago telling them that due to Obamacare, it would have to make some tough decisions about staffing.

They later cut the city’s fireworks display from 20 minutes down to 10. Budget was tight, you see. They recently announced that an annual weekend music festival wouldn’t be taking place due to scarce funds. Not sure that they blamed these things on Obamacare, but it’s not beyond consideration.

Perhaps though, the city hasn’t done as much as it could to improve its business growth, its tax base, its… revenue.

It’s all strangely coming to a head. I happen to live in an area viewed as a key battleground by those who seek to repeal Obamacare. We may see some protestors on our little Main Street. It’s adorable. It’s democracy.

And so good for business. Or not.