Tag Archives: Debt

Washington Post columnist bashes Obamacare

The Washington Post is one of the most liberal newspapers, but not the worst. For example, further left there’s the New Republic and National Journal, which are basically Marxist. Well the article I’m looking at today was written by a columnist who has  worked for both National Journal and New Republic. He’s even work for Newsweek which is just Democrat propaganda. Surprisingly, his WaPo article is actually fairly accurate about the problems with Obamacare, although his opinions of what to do instead are still left-wing.

He lists 5 reasons why Obamacare is bad policy:

  1. It increases uncertainty and decreases confidence when recovery from the Great Recession requires more confidence and less uncertainty.
  2. The ACA discourages job creation by raising the price of hiring.
  3. Uncontrolled health spending is the U.S. system’s main problem — and the ACA makes it worse.
  4. Obama’s program also worsens the federal budget problem.
  5. The ACA discriminates against the young in favor of the old.

Here’s are the details on numbers 2,4 and 5:

(2) The ACA discourages job creation by raising the price of hiring. This is basic economics. If you increase the price of labor, companies will buy less of it. Requiring employers to buy health insurance for some workers makes them more expensive, at least in the short run. Particularly vulnerable are low-skilled workers, notes economist Diana Furchtgott-Roth of the Manhattan Institute. Because the employer mandate exempts firms with fewer than 50 workers, there’s a huge incentive for firms to stop at 49, she says.

(4) Obama’s program also worsens the federal budget problem. Driven by Medicare and Medicaid, health care already exceeds one-fourth of the budget and is headed toward a third. It’s the crux of the problem. So Obama creates another huge health program. The administration’s retort: the program lowers the budget deficit. This is rhetorical hocus-pocus. Here’s what happens. From 2012 to 2022, the ACA raises federal spending by $1.762 trillion, estimates the Congressional Budget Office. However, all of this and a bit more is offset by tax increases and assumed cuts in Medicare. But these tax increases and cuts could have been used to shrink the huge budget deficits that pre-existed Obamacare. Now they can’t; moreover, the Medicare cuts might be repealed or reduced.

(5) The ACA discriminates against the young in favor of the old. Government policy already does this through payroll taxes that have young workers subsidizing Social Security and Medicare benefits. The ACA compounds the effect by forcing some young Americans to buy insurance at artificially high premiums that would pay for the care of a sicker, older population.

Higher unemployment, more debt and passing the costs on to the younger generation who can’t even find jobs with their worthless degrees in political correctness.

I think there are a lot of leftist nuts who are getting increasingly disengaged with Obama’s plan to “help the poor”. It’s not working because Obama has no idea how to help the poor. The way to help the poor is to give them jobs, and the way to give them jobs is to give more incentives to the private sector job creators, and the way to give incentives to the private sector job creators is to lower their taxes and decrease their regulatory burden. That’s what would actually work. Obama did the opposite, and nowhere is this more visible than in his Obamacare boondoogle.

Europe is going socialist – what’s the worst that could happen?

European Debt to GDP and Credit Rating
European Debt to GDP and Credit Rating

From MSN Money.

Excerpt:

European finance officials have discussed as a worst-case scenario limiting the size of withdrawals from ATM machines, imposing border checks and introducing capital controls in at least Greece should Athens decide to leave the euro.

EU officials have told Reuters the ideas are part of a range of contingency plans. They emphasized that the discussions were merely about being prepared for any eventuality rather than planning for something they expect to happen – no one Reuters has spoken to expects Greece to leave the single currency area.

[…]The discussions have taken place in conference calls over the past six weeks, as concerns have grown that a radical-left coalition, SYRIZA, may win the second election, increasing the risk that Greece could renege on its EU/IMF bailout and therefore move closer to abandoning the currency.

No decisions have been taken on the calls, but members of the Eurogroup Working Group, which consists of euro zone deputy finance ministers and heads of treasury departments, have discussed the options in some detail, the sources said.

As well as limiting cash withdrawals and imposing capital controls, they have discussed the possibility of suspending the Schengen agreement, which allows for visa-free travel among 26 countries, including most of the European Union.

[…]Another source confirmed the discussions, including that the suspension of Schengen was among the options raised.

“These are not political discussions, these are discussions among finance experts who need to be prepared for any eventuality,” the second source said. “It is sensible planning, that is all, planning for the worst-case scenario.”

I noticed an article that came out in CNN Money that explained how American households had lost almost 40% of their net worth since 2007 – the exact year that Nancy Pelosi took control of the House and Harry Reid took control of the Senate. The Democrats have been running the European playbook since they took over in 2007. We are just a few steps behind the Europeans thanks to the borrow and spend policies of the Democrats.

Obamanomics: a closer look at the economic achievements of Barack Obama

From Investors Business Daily.

Full text:

May’s weak jobs report further confirms the president’s policies are failing to help the economy. This is, indeed, the worst recovery since the Depression.

Negative superlatives associated with this presidency keep piling up. The toll so far:

  • The share of Americans who’ve been out of work a long time — now at 42% of the unemployed — is the highest since the Great Depression (source: Labor Department).
  • The proportion of the civilian working-age population actually working, at 58%, is the smallest since the Carter era (Labor Department).
  • Growth in nonfarm payroll jobs since the recovery began in June 2009 is the slowest of any comparable recovery since World War II (Hoover Institution).
  • The rate of new business startups — the engine of job growth — has plunged to an all-time low of 7.87% of all businesses (Census Bureau).
  • 3 in 10 young adults can’t find jobs and live with their parents, highest since the 1950s (Pew Research).
  • 54% of bachelor’s degree-holders under the age of 25 are jobless or underemployed, the highest share in decades (Northeastern University).
  • Black teen unemployment, now at 37%, is near Depression-era highs (Labor Department).
  • Almost 1 in 6 Americans are now poor — the highest ratio in 30 years — and the total number of poor, at 49.1 million, is the largest on record (Census).
  • The share of Hispanics in poverty has topped that of blacks for the first time, 28.2% to 25.4% (Census).
  • The number of Americans on food stamps — 45 million recipients, or 1 in 7 residents — also is the highest on record (Congressional Budget Office).
  • Total government dependency — defined as the share of Americans receiving one or more federal benefit payments — is now at 47%, highest ever (Hoover).
  • The share of Americans paying no income tax, at 49.5%, is the highest ever (Heritage Foundation, IRS).
  • The national homeownership rate, now at 65.4%, is the lowest in 15 years (Census).
  • The 30-point gap between black and white Americans who own their own homes is the widest in two decades and one of the widest on record (Census).
  • Federal spending, now at 23.4% of GDP, is the highest since WWII (CBO).
  • Excluding defense and interest payments, spending is the highest in American history, at 17.6% of the economy (First Trust Economics).
  • The federal debt, at 69% of GDP, is the highest since just after WWII (CBO).
  • The U.S. budget deficit, now at 9.5% of the economy, is the highest since WWII (CBO).
  • U.S. Treasury debt has been downgraded for the first time in history, meaning the U.S. government no longer ranks among risk-free borrowers (S&P).

This is what Obamanomics has wrought. Fiscal promiscuity. Trickle-up poverty. Shared misery.

Here’s the Obama legacy in two charts:

US Labor Force Participation down 4.9 million people
US Labor Force Participation down 4.9 million people

The updated labor force participation is actually lower now than in January.

And:

Barack Obama: Budget Deficits
Barack Obama: Budget Deficits

What I find alarming is that Obama is still polling competitively with his Republican rival.