Karen starts a business

At her blog, Some have hats, she explains it:

So by the end of the month, Chris and I will own a small (very small) business. A friend asked me if we'll be hiring and I laughed the Big Laugh. We will not be doing any firing either. We will be working. Those jobs that usually go to college kids? We'll be doing them. The jobs that go to people who have families to feed? We'll be doing them, too. Because we've got kids to feed and the business is only breaking even.

Now, we're going to work very hard to try to make the business profitable, but in the present economy ... with unemployment numbers continuing to rise ... it's going to be hard to find people with money to spend. So, no we will not be hiring.

You know why else? Because the Tyrant-in-Chief is going to sock us with a penalty if we don't provide health care for our employees. Here's some simple math: business is breaking even. We (a) provide health care for new employees or (b) get socked with a penalty ... then business is losing money. Soon, we'd have to fire the skeletal staff we have. Which means -- are you with me so far -- the unemployment figures go up even higher.

I have all sorts of ideas for how to expand the business, which would mean we could hire some of the many unemployed people, but if we expand enough to make a significant profit, we'll find ourself in the "spread the wealth" tax bracket, wherein we'd probably make about the same amount of money that we would if we did much less work. (Who is John Galt?) You can read the rest of the story at Some have hats.