Athenae, Economy, Immoral Values, Law/Justice

Hobby Lobby Can’t Control Its Employees’ Choices, So It Must Control Its Employees’ Choices!

No, really, that’s the argument:

Just one problem: Hobby Lobby’s owners have little control over where their employees’ money is invested. As Ryan Ellis of Americans for Tax Reform explains:

401(k) plans are directed and invested by employees, not by employers… They are the ones—not their bosses—who choose which mutual funds to invest in. This is true both of the employee’s elective deferral and the employer’s match. The menu of choices is primarily provided not by the Hobby Lobby employers, but by the 401(k) plan administrator, who helps select a wide menu of mutual fund (and, increasingly, exchange-traded fund) choices so that the fiduciary obligations of the plan are met.

Hobby Lobby’s 401(k) simply provides a structure for individuals to choose from mutual funds that best meet their needs and savings goals.

Ideally Hobby Lobby’s health care coverage would simply provide a structure for individuals to choose from treatments that best meet their needs and medical situations. Nobody’s coming around the floral design aisle forcing everybody to take the pill, for fuck’s sake. These are the champions of individual freedom? I’ve had more logical arguments with Claire.

Plus, is it me or was the above quoted portion written by someone who’s never made an objection to an investment? You absolutely CAN tell your investment advisor which mutual funds with which you will not associate due to the companies involved being scumbags, and you aboslutely can place restrictions on which types of funds you’ll offer as investment choices. In fact, there are funds explicitly designed for those with moral restrictions of one kind or another.They’re called MRIs.

Now, investing solely in those might limit the amount of cash you haul in from your investments, since the Ignorant Tight-Ass Fund doesn’t pay out dividends like it used to, but this is about Sincerely Held Religious Beliefs, after all. RIGHT?

Interestingly enough, Mother Jones doesn’t disclose the companies that its own employees invest in under the news site’s 401(k) plan.

BECAUSE MOTHER JONES ISN’T IN WASHINGTON YELLING AT JUSTICE ROBERTS. That’s not “interesting,” it’s irrelevant.

A.

2 thoughts on “Hobby Lobby Can’t Control Its Employees’ Choices, So It Must Control Its Employees’ Choices!”

  1. I’m sorry, but who chose the 401K administrator? I’ve never had a choice of which firm administers the 401K at any job: the employer always negotiated with the firm and then presented options to us. (Once, I had a choice of 2 firms.) I’ve never even heard of a completely open 401K selection.
    Is the author being disingenuous or is this another case of someone who has never lived in the real world telling the rest of us how it works?

  2. Dorothy, it’s the Heritage Foundation, so my money’s on “disingenuous.”
    A.

Comments are closed.