Tag Archives: Progressive

Podcasts

Why Obama’s public option health care plan is a bad deal for young adults

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This podcast explains how Obama’s health care reform bill would require young people to buy insurance, while simultaneously preventing medical insurers from reducing their premium amounts in accordance with the lower health risks of young people.

The MP3 file is here.

The guest being interviewed is Aaron Yelowitz.

Bio excerpt:

  • Ph.D., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Economics, 1994.
  • B.A., High Honors, University of California, Santa Barbara, Business Economics, 1990.
  • Department of Economics, University of Kentucky, Associate Professor, July 1, 2001-present.
  • Associate Editor, Journal of Public Economics, January 2004-present.

And you can read the paper that is being discussed in the podcast.

Excerpt from the abstract:

One of the most interesting questions about the health care overhaul now moving through Congress is how it would affect young adults. That legislation would force most or all Americans to purchase health insurance (an “individual mandate”) and would impose price controls on health insurance (“community rating”) that would limit insurers’ ability to offer lower premiums to low-risk enrollees.

Those provisions would drive premiums down for 55-year-olds but would drive them up for 25-year-olds—who are then implicitly subsidizing older adults. According to the Urban Institute, many young people could see their premiums double, whereas premiums for older adults could be cut in half.

[…]The irony is that Barack Obama won the presidency with 66 percent of the vote among adults aged 18 to 29. That’s a larger share than any presidential candidate has won in decades. Yet his health care overhaul could impose its greatest burdens on young adults.

This reminds me of young unmarried women voting overwhelmingly against marriage and family by electing big government socialists like Obama. This is not to even mention the 10.2% unemployment rate, which is worse for younger workers, as well as the massive national debt that will have to be paid for by young people. Why is that young people are so ignorant of economics that they vote against their own best interests?

Note: The Obama health care plan is also a bad deal for elderly patients on Medicare, since he is cutting 500 billion dollars from Medicare.

News

Climate-profiteer Al Gore could become the world’s first carbon billionaire

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Story from the UK Telegraph.

Excerpt:

Last year Mr Gore’s venture capital firm loaned a small California firm $75m to develop energy-saving technology.

The company, Silver Spring Networks, produces hardware and software to make the electricity grid more efficient.

The deal appeared to pay off in a big way last week, when the Energy Department announced $3.4 billion in smart grid grants, the New York Times reports. Of the total, more than $560 million went to utilities with which Silver Spring has contracts.

The move means that venture capital company Kleiner Perkins and its partners, including Mr Gore, could recoup their investment many times over in coming years.

Few people have been as vocal about the urgency of global warming and the need to reinvent the way the world produces and consumes energy as Mr Gore. And few have put as much money behind their advocacy and are as well positioned to profit from this green transformation, if and when it comes.

This is taxpayer money, folks. Your money and my money.

I note that Watts Up With That links to a UK Telegraph story up on how climate change beliefs are now given the same status and protections as religious beliefs. Well, that’s what global warming is, only it’s less supported by science than some religions I know.

Al Gore knows less about science than my keyboard

Here’s a Washington Times article about Al Gore’s academic performance.

Excerpt:

Despite Mr. Gore’s image as star pupil, the kid most likely to be the first to raise his hand in class, it seems that Mr. Gore barely applied himself during his years as an undergraduate and graduate student. Indeed, his sophomore year at Harvard, The Post notes, was “the year Gore’s classmates remember him spending a notable amount of time in the Dunster House basement lounge shooting pool, watching television, eating hamburgers and occasionally smoking marijuana.” Please, take a moment to appreciate the scene painted in that one sentence.

In introductory economics, the only economics course Mr. Gore ever took, he received a C-, which goes a long way toward explaining his December remark that he would consider raising taxes should the economy fall into recession.

If the rudiments of fiscal policy proved to be too taxing for young Al, it should hardly be surprising that the self-appointed protector of the world’s ecosystems had almost as much trouble understanding the basic concept of biology. After all, Mr. Gore’s high school performance on the college board achievement tests in physics (488 out of 800 “terrible,” St. Albans retired teacher and assistant headmaster John Davis told The Post) and chemistry (519 out of 800 “He didn’t do too well in chemistry,” Mr. Davis observed) suggests that Mr. Gore would have trouble with science for the rest of his life. At Harvard and Vanderbilt, Mr. Gore continued bumbling along.

As a Harvard sophomore, scholar Al “earned” a D in Natural Sciences 6 in a course presciently named “Man’s Place in Nature.” That was the year he evidently spent more time smoking cannabis than studying its place among other plants within the ecosystem. His senior year, Mr. Gore received a C+ in Natural Sciences 118.

At Vanderbilt divinity school, Mr. Gore took a course in theology and natural science. The assigned readings included the apocalyptic, and widely discredited “Limits to Growth,” which formed much of the foundation for “Earth in the Balance.” It is said that Mr. Gore failed to hand in his book report on time. Thus, his incomplete grade turned into an F, one of five Fs Mr. Gore received at divinity school, which may well be a worldwide record.

He also dropped out of law school at Vanderbilt, not just divinity school. But his father was a liberal U.S. Senator, so things worked out OK for the pot-smoking silver-spoon leftist. As long as he avoids debates on global warming with actual scientists, he can keep laughing all the way to the bank. Recall the recent post about the Finnish car company backed by Al Gore getting a 529M US government loan. He needs your money to pay for the massive electricity bills he runs up while living in his huge mansion.

Global warming alarmism has nothing to do with science

Global warming is a myth sold to us by greedy, power-hungry socialists like Al Gore.

Global warming is about enriching leftist elites while controlling the lives of productive private citizens.

News

Understanding the real effects of the Democrat health care reform bill

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Story from the Wall Street Journal. (H/T ECM)

Excerpt:

The Congressional Budget Office figures the House program will cost $1.055 trillion over a decade, which while far above the $829 billion net cost that

[…]All this is particularly reckless given the unfunded liabilities of Medicare—now north of $37 trillion over 75 years.

[…]As for Medicaid, the House will expand eligibility to everyone below 150% of the poverty level, meaning that some 15 million new people will be added to the rolls as private insurance gets crowded out at a cost of $425 billion. A decade from now more than a quarter of the population will be on a program originally intended for poor women, children and the disabled.

[…]All told, the House favors $572 billion in new taxes, mostly by imposing a 5.4-percentage-point “surcharge” on joint filers earning over $1 million, $500,000 for singles. This tax will raise the top marginal rate to 45% in 2011 from 39.6% when the Bush tax cuts expire—not counting state income taxes and the phase-out of certain deductions and exemptions. The burden will mostly fall on the small businesses that have organized as Subchapter S or limited liability corporations, since the truly wealthy won’t have any difficulty sheltering their incomes.

This surtax could hit ever more earners because, like the alternative minimum tax, it isn’t indexed for inflation. Yet it still won’t be nearly enough. Even if Congress had confiscated 100% of the taxable income of people earning over $500,000 in the boom year of 2006, it would have only raised $1.3 trillion. When Democrats end up soaking the middle class, perhaps via the European-style value-added tax that Mrs. Pelosi has endorsed, they’ll claim the deficits that they created made them do it.

Under another new tax, businesses would have to surrender 8% of their payroll to government if they don’t offer insurance or pay at least 72.5% of their workers’ premiums, which eat into wages. Such “play or pay” taxes always become “pay or pay” and will rise over time, with severe consequences for hiring, job creation and ultimately growth. While the U.S. already has one of the highest corporate income tax rates in the world, Democrats are on the way to creating a high structural unemployment rate, much as Europe has done by expanding its welfare states.

Meanwhile, a tax equal to 2.5% of adjusted gross income will also be imposed on some 18 million people who CBO expects still won’t buy insurance in 2019. Democrats could make this penalty even higher, but that is politically unacceptable, or they could make the subsidies even higher, but that would expose the (already ludicrous) illusion that ObamaCare will reduce the deficit.

Click here to read the rest of the article. It’s quite comprehensive and yet concise.