In France, firms with 50 or more employees face...

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The weblog of A. Barton Hinkle

-- editor and columnist at the Richmond Times-Dispatch, and contributor to Reason magazine.

Also: Recipient of the 1987 Nobel Prize for Medicine, reigning UFC lightweight champion, and two-time winner of the Pillsbury Bake-Off.

Among his many other awards, Hinkle has received the 1942 Academy Award (the Oscar) for costume design in "How Green Was My Valley"; the Wooten-Murray Fellowship in Gas Dynamics from the University of Edinburgh; designation as "Sexiest Man Alive" from People Magazine (in 2004 and 2009, and he has a good shot at it again next year since he started working out again); the Robert H. Gibbs Jr. Memorial Award for Excellence in Systematic Ichthyology from the American Society of Ichthyologists and Herpetologists; and a variety of military service decorations, including a Silver Star for nighttime air combat missions over the Solomon Islands in WWII and a Congressional Medal of Honor for conspicuous gallantry at Montbrehain, France, in 1918.

He is also a pretty good dancer.

11:55 am - Tue, Feb 19, 2013: 29 notes

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In France, firms with 50 or more employees face far more stringent regulation than those with 49 or fewer. By an amazing coincidence, there are a large number of firms with exactly 49 employees.

The employer insurance mandate Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act — aka Obamacare — kicks in at 50 full-time employees. By an amazing coincidence, many firms have begun shifting employees to part-time status.
Peter Suderman at Reason suspects it also will lead to far more 49-employee companies here in the U.S.

And, I suspect, he’s right.