Tag Archives: Young People

News

New study: premiums for young people to rise in all 50 states under Obamacare

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The Washington Free Beacon reports on a new study.

Excerpt:

Health insurance premiums for young people will rise in all 50 states under Obamacare, with an average increase of 260 percent, according to a study released Thursday.

The young and healthy segment of the uninsured is considered crucial for the Affordable Care Act to succeed. Former President Bill Clinton suggested last week that Obamacare only works “if young people show up.”

However, an analysis of premiums both before and after the implementation of Obamacare shows that 18- to 35-year-olds are likely to opt out of high rates in the exchanges in favor of cheaper penalties for not having insurance.

According to a study released by the American Action Forum, post-Obamacare premiums will average $187.08 per month, up from $62 per month in 2013, a 202 percent increase.  Overall, states averaged an increase of 260 percent.

Forty-four out of 50 states saw a three-digit percent increase, and in Vermont the cheapest available premium for a 30 year-old male nonsmoker will increase by $332.69, or 600 percent.

[…]Massachusetts had the lowest increase at 9 percent, though the state is considered an “outlier” since it already had similar health care reforms put in place under former Republican Gov. Mitt Romney.

“[T]hat state’s insurance market has been subject to ACA-like reforms since 2006, bloating the premium for the lowest-cost pre-ACA policy to nearly $214, making it the highest of the 2013 premiums analyzed in this study,” the report said.

But what about the subsidies, won’t they help cover the cost of all the free condoms and birth control pills and abortion drugs?

No:

Given the high costs of the premiums, the study predicts that even with subsidies, most of the young uninsured will opt to pay the penalty rather than sign up for health care.

Individuals between 100 and 400 percent of the federal poverty line are eligible for subsidies under the law.

Only those who earn up to 133 percent of the poverty line will have a financial incentive to join the health exchange.  An individual with an income of $15,281.70 would receive a subsidy to cover 100 percent of their health care premiums.

Moving up the income bracket creates disincentives for the young to enroll.  Those making $20,107.50, or 175 percent of the poverty line, will still face a $449 premium, which is three times higher than the penalty they would incur in 2014 ($103.57) if they did not purchase insurance.

An individual earning $37,342.50 will receive no subsidy at all and will face a minimum premium of $2,839, as opposed to a $275.92 penalty in 2014.

I’m pretty sure that most people who get jobs out of college will make more than $37,342.50. Petroleum engineers start at around double that income.

So, I’m thinking that the young people – especially college-educated people with jobs – shouldn’t have voted for Obama. Do you think that their teachers and professors explained to them what would happen to them if they voted for Obama? I think not. I think that their teachers and professors wanted their little wide-eyed charges to vote for more funding of education, with no performance checking, so that they could be paid more money. And the children believed their teachers and voted accordingly. This is a particularly bad deal for bright young men – the kind you might expect to be interested in marriage. Now not only have they inherited massive amounts of debt and a crappy socialist economy with no jobs, but they are being forced to buy expensive health care coverage that they don’t need and won’t use. Why? To subsidize the health care claims made by women and the elderly, who use more health care products and services.

News

First black president: unemployment rate up for blacks and women since Obama’s election

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From CNS News.

Excerpt:

 Unemployment for both women and African-Americans is higher today than it was when President Barack Obama first took office in 2009, according to federal government data.

Despite an economy that has technically been in recovery since June of 2009, many economic indicators are the same or worse than when President Obama gave his first address to a Joint Session of Congress in February 2009.

“We will rebuild, we will recover, and the United States of America will emerge stronger than before,” Obama said in that speech.

However, employment for African-Americans and women has not recovered and, in fact, is worse today than it was when Obama said those words.

At the end of January 2009, 12.7 percent of African-Americans were unemployed. Four years later, January 2013, the situation was worse, with unemployment higher at 13.8 percent.

Further, an additional 1.2 million African-Americans had left the workforce entirely during the same time period, with the number of those reported as not in the workforce rising from 10.3 million in January 2009 to 11.5 million in January 2013.

People not in the labor force are those who are younger than the retirement age who are unemployed and no longer looking for work, indicating they have either given up looking for work or gone into early retirement.

For women, the story is not much better. In January 2009, 6.9 percent of women in America were unemployed. By January 2013, 7.8 percent of women were unemployed.

He’s had four years, and his new plan to raise the minimum wage is not going to help younger workers, unskilled workers or minority workers.

Polemics

Obama’s minimum wage hike will raise unemployment, especially for younger workers

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Obama is proposing a hike to the minimum wage rate, so that employers are forced to pay the youngest and/or least skilled workers more money than they are worth. Will this lower unemployment?

When considering what economic policies to adopt, it is not enough to do what feels good. Liberals and conservatives agree that it is good to help the poor. Liberals think that higher minimum wage rates help the poor, and conservatives think that lower minimum wage rates help the poor. This is not a topic that is up for debate, though, because economists across the left-right spectrum agree on this one.

Take a look at this post from Harvard University economist Greg Mankiw.

He writes:

My favorite textbook covers business cycle theory toward the end of the book (the last four chapters) precisely because that theory is controversial. I believe it is better to introduce students to economics with topics about which there is more of a professional consensus. In chapter two of the book, I include a table of propositions to which most economists subscribe, based on various polls of the profession. Here is the list, together with the percentage of economists who agree:

    1. A ceiling on rents reduces the quantity and quality of housing available. (93%)
    2. Tariffs and import quotas usually reduce general economic welfare. (93%)
    3. Flexible and floating exchange rates offer an effective international monetary arrangement. (90%)
    4. Fiscal policy (e.g., tax cut and/or government expenditure increase) has a significant stimulative impact on a less than fully employed economy. (90%)
    5. The United States should not restrict employers from outsourcing work to foreign countries. (90%)
    6. The United States should eliminate agricultural subsidies. (85%)
    7. Local and state governments should eliminate subsidies to professional sports franchises. (85%)
    8. If the federal budget is to be balanced, it should be done over the business cycle rather than yearly. (85%)
    9. The gap between Social Security funds and expenditures will become unsustainably large within the next fifty years if current policies remain unchanged. (85%)
    10. Cash payments increase the welfare of recipients to a greater degree than do transfers-in-kind of equal cash value. (84%)
    11. A large federal budget deficit has an adverse effect on the economy. (83%)
    12. A minimum wage increases unemployment among young and unskilled workers. (79%)
    13. The government should restructure the welfare system along the lines of a “negative income tax.” (79%)
    14. Effluent taxes and marketable pollution permits represent a better approach to pollution control than imposition of pollution ceilings. (78%)

And that’s not all. There have actually been studies done on this, and they echo the consensus.

Consider this 2009 article from the Wall Street Journal that discusses some of the studies.

Excerpt:

Earlier this year, economist David Neumark of the University of California, Irvine, wrote on these pages that the 70-cent-an-hour increase in the minimum wage would cost some 300,000 jobs. Sure enough, the mandated increase to $7.25 took effect in July, and right on cue the August and September jobless numbers confirm the rapid disappearance of jobs for teenagers.

he September teen unemployment rate hit 25.9%, the highest rate since World War II and up from 23.8% in July. Some 330,000 teen jobs have vanished in two months. Hardest hit of all: black male teens, whose unemployment rate shot up to a catastrophic 50.4%. It was merely a terrible 39.2% in July.

[…]Two years ago Mr. Neumark and William Wascher, a Federal Reserve economist, reviewed more than 100 academic studies on the impact of the minimum wage. They found “overwhelming” evidence that the least skilled and the young suffer a loss of employment when the minimum wage is increased.

[…]State lawmakers are also at fault. At least 10 states have raised their minimum wages above the federal level in the last decade, largely in response to union lobbying and in the name of helping the working poor. Four states with among the highest wage rates are California, Massachusetts, Michigan and New York. Studies have shown in each case that their wage policies killed jobs for teens. The Massachusetts teen employment rate sank by one-third when the minimum wage rose by 88% between 1995 and 2008.

According to new numbers from the Labor Department, in 2008 only 1.1% of Americans who work 40 hours a week or more even earned the minimum wage. In other words, 98.9% of 40-hour-a-week workers earn more than the minimum. The data also show that teenagers are five times more likely to earn the minimum wage than adults. Minimum wage jobs are nearly all first-time or part-time jobs, and an estimated two of every three minimum wage workers get a pay raise within a year on the job.

You can read more about minimim wage and unemployment from my second favorite economist Walter Williams, and from my first favorite economist Thomas Sowell. This is an issue that matters to them, because they are both black, and blacks are the hardest hit by these policies – even though most blacks support these policies by voting overwhelmingly for socialists.

This issue is simple and straightforward. To help the poorest and least experienced workers, we have to take away any regulations that separate them from their first employer. From there, they will gain the experience to move up. Nobody stays in a minimum wage job all their lives. They move up when they get experience and a resume. That’s why that first job is so crucial. We have to make it easier for employers to get employees started in their careers.