Employers are ideal targets for such mandates, since there are always more employees than employers, and that is what counts on election day. Whether it is health insurance, time off with pay or whatever, these mandates on employers can be washed down with a little rhetoric about business' "social responsibilities."

Where those "social responsibilities" come from is not a problem. It sounds good, and that is good enough for politics.

Some people may go away mad if they are ignored. Costs are not like that. You can ignore them all you want and they still won't go away.

While you are enjoying all the goodies that politicians are sending your way, you may notice that your taxes are going up or that the money you earn or the money you have saved won't buy as much as it used to.

Costs that are passed on to businesses can get passed on again to their customers in higher prices. Money that the government prints to spend itself reduces the value of the money in your wallet or in your bank account.

If you are someone looking for a job-- maybe a young person entering the labor force or a woman coming back into the labor force after spending a few years taking care of a small child--- you may find that there aren't as many jobs available as there used to be before employers had to pay for "social responsibilities," in addition to paying for the value of an employee's work.

Desperate times can call for desperate measures, so maybe you will try to find out from some economist what is going on. You may not get any much better explanation than "There is no free lunch"-- which is one of many reasons why economists are not popular.

But there really is no free lunch, except in the world of political rhetoric, a world that so many want to be in, where they can play Santa Claus without even the cost of buying a costume.