Posted by Tina
The President stood before the American people on more than one occasion and claimed the Affordable Care Act, Obamacare, would “bend the cost curve down.” He claimed families would save $2500.00 on their health insurance costs. He bragged hte demcrat plan up to gain support from the public to get it passed. We’re finding out now that costs are not bending down and the truth is coming home to roost right on our doorsteps:
Health care costs are about to explode — again — and just in time for the 2014 midterm elections.
When the supermajority of Democrats in the Senate passed the ironically named Affordable Care Act in 2009, one of the chief requirements of the bill was to force health insurers, pharmaceutical companies, hospitals and health care centers to share in the staggering $2 trillion cost over the next decade. But once made law, President Obama pushed off the cost until well, just later — certainly not before the 2012 election.
That later is now, or Sept. 30, to be precise. Remember when the president said the 10-year cost for his health care reform would be $850 billion and that no one would pay an additional penny in taxes? Ha. Insurers will have to pony up some $8 billion on the last day of September, and guess where they’re going to get the cash? Straight from your wallet, your purse.
So costs will go up again for those previously given a waiver but also because the cost curve is rising. And that’s not all.
Did you hear about the doctor who took his kid to emergency when a bruise on his head from a fall began to swell…and the bill came to $20,000.00 for a three hour stay in which they found ABSOLUTELY NOTHING WRONG…and the hospital went ahead and tried to charge him $10,000.00 in that bill for a trauma unit even though they did NOTHING to treat the boy during his brief stay?
Expect a lot more of this kind of “care” at the hospital near you…unless you’re one of those heavily subsidized winners in the Obamacare lottery. Also be prepared to challenge the charges as this doctor, who happens to also be a lawyer, did. I don’t put all of the blame on the hospital; they have to try to cover rising costs that rise in part because we are not paying directly and forcing providers to creatively cut their costs. I do blame interference by our government. They have their high priced noses in every aspect of healthcare now, including this monstrous, inequitable, unfair, unworkable law!
The doctor and his story was featured on Stewart Varney’s morning business show on Fox Business.
Avik Roy writing in National Review explains how that $2500.00 figure that Obama quoted was arrived at and what a farce it is :
Back in 2008, three eminent Harvard economists who were advising the Obama campaign—David Cutler, David Blumenthal, and Jeffrey Liebman—wrote a memo claiming that Senator Obama’s health-care plan could reduce national health spending by $200 billion a year. As Kevin Sack recounted in the New York Times, the authors of that memo then took that figure, “divided [it] by the country’s population, multiplied for a family of four, and rounded down slightly to a number that was easy to grasp: $2,500.” …
..Last week, the Obama administration’s Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services issued a rather different prediction: that “the [Affordable Care Act] is projected to . . . increase cumulative spending by roughly $621 billion” from 2014 to 2022. To be clear, that’s spending on top of the normal health-care inflation that would have happened if Obamacare had not been passed. So much for “bending down the cost curve,” as the president often liked to say his law would do.
Applying the same logic and math used by the Harvard economists,Chris Conover of Forbes reveals that “between 2014 and 2022, the increase in national health spending (which the Medicare actuaries specifically attribute to the law) amounts to $7,450 per family of 4.”
An interactive guide at the Forbes link titled “What Will Obamacare Cost You” might be useful for some of our readers.
Related article of interest for those desperate for repeal and replace here.
If you care about quality healthcare, if you care about insurance options that match your personal and family needs, if you care about portability and being able to choose your doctor and hospital, if you care about having enough qualified doctors, if you care about empowering yourself and all Americans to help bring prices down, if you care that innovation and research for new and better cures and treatments continues, if you care about covering those with pre-existing conditions, if you care about medicaid recipients having options and choices, if you care about actually bending the cost curve down then we all need leadership in Washington that understands the problems and that will deliver workable solutions.
Sorry off topic but just saw this.
Benghazi special on Fox Friday at 7pm.
Bombshell Claim: Security Operators on the Ground in Benghazi Say They Were Told to ‘Stand Down’ — and That’s Not All:
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2014/09/04/bombshell-claim-security-operators-on-the-ground-in-benghazi-say-they-were-told-to-stand-down-and-thats-not-all/
Question: How is this different from all the other times over the past few years that conservatives predicted healthcare costs were “about to explode?”
It’s beginning to remind me of doomsday cults–“No, sorry, we were wrong–the Earth will be devoured by the tentacles of Xenorp next year! 😉
The fact is that healthcare costs have actually been rising at the slowest rate ever recorded since the ACA was enacted:
http://kff.org/health-costs/issue-brief/assessing-the-effects-of-the-economy-on-the-recent-slowdown-in-health-spending-2/
Whether that’s because of the ACA is up for debate, but it seems certain that the ACA has not caused any rapid increase in spending.
Chris, healthcare cost are indeed risking at the slowest rate since the ACA was enacted. So what? Who is losing in this reporting game to make the numbers palatable? Have you ever consider who is coming up short, huh?
Think about it, when the trajectory is unchanged, but the bottom line numbers are appearing to improve could there still be something wrong with the paradigm? That’s all I’m saying. Pry open the lid and look inside healthcare, who lost since the ACA was enacted? Are they the little people who are shoring up the healthcare spending? Hmmm? And by little people I mean patient deductibles, insurance reimbursement to health professionals, etc?
Chris for a person who has to defended a six year disaster all I can say is at least you are consistent. Your message is simple, “Move along, nothing to report, everything is fine, trust me, Democrats are serving the nation well”
The truth is that you guys stink on just about every front and its become a complete joke that so many of you continue to pretend your fabulous and everything is tracking just fine.
The link you provided uses a particular phrase, “to the extent.”:
“To the extent” can mean anything. These are the words people use when they know things look bad and they are trying to plug up the holes. Kaiser worked with the administration to pass this piece of garbage…what else are they now going to say?
QE is responsible for the artificially induced low interest rates that create the illusion of “low inflation. Prices for consumer goods are up…and incomes are substantially down. There are huge fears that those interest rates will explode when QE finally comes to a halt. Prices will also explode with the rise in rates.
Consumer spending on healthcare is artificially down. We are severely underemployed with continuing high unemployment. People avoid going to the doctor because they have no money for the high co-pays. When inflation sets in they will have even less.
More bad news. Investors reports on word from the nation #3 insurer:
People are signing up but not paying the premium. This will cause the cost of insurance to move higher. It also means the promise to get the uninsured insured is broken under this law.
The spin from the left is that premium costs will rise “moderately.” (But someone is picking up the tab. Either the insurance companies or the taxpayer will pay.)
This line is about as believable as the constant drum beat that our economy is moving in the right direction or the lousy jobs numbers are improving because they are “moving in the right direction.”
Some areas of the country have seen costs go down. But the big question remains…what will happen when the nations businesses that were given a waiver have to decide whether to drop their coverage?
The administration sold this turkey on two pillars. One was that healthcare costs would come down. Nothing in the bill brings costs down. It makes costs go up more than they would have for those who actually pay! Significantly more for some people.
The second pillar was that it would cover the uninsured…turns out that didn’t happen either. In fact the insurance “choices” are so distasteful and costly for many people that they are opting out of insurance.
Supporting opinion from National Center for Policy Analysis confirms reports from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services:
Obamacare is a piece of trash that has been disruptive and expensive for most Americans. It is another wealth transfer program.
America needs relief from the idiocy of leftists who think they can fix social problems from the hallowed halls of DC…and because they think they are smarter than they actually are…a dangerous combination.
The “subsidies” for the ACA premiums will result in higher taxes for the customer as that subsidy is counted as income.
I liked your phrase”Coming home to roost” clever.
Peggy, according to the New York Times piece cited by the Blaze, “The commandos’ account — which fits with the publicly known facts and chronology — suggests that the base chief issued the “stand down” orders on his own authority. He hoped to enlist local Libyan militiamen, and the commandos speculate that he hoped the Libyans could carry out the rescue alone to avoid exposing the C.I.A. base.”
This differs wildly from the oft-repeated, debunked claim by conservatives that no help was sent, and that troops attempting to assist the compound were told not to engage.
These “security operators” don’t seem to understand what “stand down” means:
Lt. Col. S.E. Gibson: “Madam Chairman, I was not ordered to stand down. I was ordered to remain in place. “Stand down” implies that we cease all operations, cease all activities. We continued to support the team that was in Tripoli.”
Nice try, though. Keep fear alive!
Just found out Democrats have a plan to help fix some of this mess…borrowed from a Republican idea of course:
Seattle Times:
They will need congressional approval to get it done.
Read the Republican proposal they borrowed from here.
Chris, did you watch the three men last night on the Benghazi special? I did and I challenge anyone to discredit what these men said based on what they say happened.
The end result is the same if they were told to “stand down” or “wait” by their commander/s. They said they were ready to go within five minutes of receiving the call for help. They defied orders and after waiting 30 minutes left the Annex to go help those at the complex. Everyone of them believed if they had gone at the very beginning of the attack when the calls for help were received Ambassador Stevens and Sean Smith would be alive today.
Knowing a little about how the military works I can tell you “Bob,” the on ground ranking Annex commander, was receiving instruction on the phone from someone higher up the chain of command for him to tell his men at the Annex to “wait/stand down.”
I’m not trying to prove anything Chris other than to find out what really happened that caused the death of those for men. I believe their parents have the right to know and I believe we all do too. We have the right to know if our men and women sent to other countries can count on their country to protect them before and during their tour. Mistakes were made in Benghazi Chris, don’t you think those responsible should be held accountable? If this happened in your town, wouldn’t there be a whole team of law enforcers, grand jury, attorneys, a judge and jury all trying to find out the truth? Why are you not interested in finding out the truth? Is it because it happened under this administration or in another country?
Fox will repeat the special, “13 Hours at Benghazi” today at 2pm, 6pm, 9pm, and Sun. 5pm, 8pm. Watch it and we’ll have another discussion.
Harriet: “The “subsidies” for the ACA premiums will result in higher taxes for the customer as that subsidy is counted as income.”
No, the subsidies are not counted as income. Where did you get this idea?
Tina: “incomes are substantially down.”
Once again, until you actually start supporting policies that would raise income, your feigned concern over this problem is unconvincing.
“People are signing up but not paying the premium.”
The vast majority who signed up under the ACA did pay their initial premiums.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/07/us/politics/insurers-say-most-who-signed-up-under-health-law-have-paid-up.html?_r=0
“The administration sold this turkey on two pillars. One was that healthcare costs would come down. Nothing in the bill brings costs down. It makes costs go up more than they would have for those who actually pay! Significantly more for some people.”
You couldn’t be more wrong if you tried. The cuts to Medicare included in the ACA have already brought costs down, according to Goldman Sachs analysts.
http://qz.com/183812/yes-obamacare-is-driving-us-health-care-costs-lower/
Note that you opposed these cuts when they were proposed by Obama, even though they did not impact seniors’ coverage while at the same time you supported an equal amount of cuts in the Ryan plan, even though those cuts actually DID impact seniors’ coverage. In other words, you’re a partisan hypocrite who makes your decisions not based on any kind of logic or what’s best for Americans, but based on whether the person responsible has an R or a D next to their name.
“The second pillar was that it would cover the uninsured…turns out that didn’t happen either.”
This is a COMPLETE LIE. The uninsured rate is now the lowest ever recorded!
http://www.businessinsider.com/uninsured-rate-plunges-obamacare-2014-7
How can you claim to care about this issue when you reveal yourself to be either tragically uninformed, or totally dishonest?
Assuming you are simply ignorant rather than malicious, your ignorance is a result of your poor research. You avoid all positive news about the law because you don’t want to hear it, so you rely on discredited, dishonest sources for information because they tell you what you want.
You WANT premiums to go up and people to go without insurance, just so you can be right and Obama can be wrong! Part of the misinformation campaign against the law was designed to convince eligible people not to sign up for insurance. Republicans wanted this to fail, and they’ve been sabotaging it since the beginning. And now you can’t admit that your efforts haven’t really worked.
You are devastated that more Americans have gotten healthcare and that Obama’s plan has, at least in part, worked. So you hide from that fact as it is is the plague.
It’s disgusting and un-American.
Peggy, I did not watch it, but the claims regaled in your Blaze article are old news. These security officers testified a long time ago that they disagreed with their commanders’ decision to wait for assistance from Libyan allies. Who is to say who was right? Had they gone in there at the beginning without assistance they might all be dead. None of this points to conspiracy or scandal, only high-pressure decision making. We know the president was in the Oval Office that night, and we know from testimony from military personnel that he was engaged, but we don’t know if he was responsible for the decision to wait for assistance before this team moved in; it just as likely came from the CIA, who didn’t want their compound exposed as a CIA station.
With all the false claims peddled by FOX News, the Blaze, the right-wing media in general, and yourself, I don’t buy that this is a genuine fact-finding endeavor. We’ve had almost a dozen investigations and conservatives are still on pins and needles to have more. Both the House and Senate have cleared the White House of all wrongdoing. And still you can see the commenters on the Blaze claiming that the President “lied” about the video, that he “left those men to die,” and all sorts of ridiculous things that were proven false long ago. You all ruined Susan Rice even though she did nothing wrong but relay the most up-to-date information the intelligence community had at the time. The only reason to keep bringing up Benghazi at this point is to continue smearing Obama and Hilary.
Chris: “Nice try, though. Keep fear alive!”
You are a joke. This is the best defense you can make for a completely bungled operation?
No workable plan was in place to have these people there; no workable plan existed to secure them once placed; no workable plan was in place to rescue/remove them; Once an attack came the response was not just inadequate but horribly bad…a total failure for leadership (Obama/Hillary/CIA) and an embarrassment for our nation and our nations military. Our military is up for the task but their leaders are not.
The only excuse for your continued support is youth and lack of experience…not much.
Tina the Democrats are far from perfect but do at least serve better than the Republicans. It as though GW Bush admin never happened to you.
Sorry but Healthcare costs go up every year but will go up slower.
Next where is all the job loss? Post after Post here touting the Koch brothers propaganda said the job loss will be the worst part of the ACA!
Well 1 million jobs created and hey go to the classifieds…healthcare jobs all over the place!
Again Those collecting social security and medicare vote to abolish it then complain about any attempt to reform healthcare. That is against the Koch doctrine! Even david Koch has it printed in his 1980 VP Platform
The people who see higher costs are those living in Tea Party States that deserve what they reap if they voted Tea Party. The rest of the citizens are hurting because of the selfishness of the corporate agenda of the Tea Party.
The rising costs of healthcare date back to the Reagan admin privatization of healthcare. Funny how you guys never account for the wall street profit being demanded to increase by law just complain about their profits.
How many drugs are not sold because they are not profitable? How many profitable bad drugs are advertised on TV when they can only be prescribed by a Dr and at the end is a list of what can go wrong…
then the phone number 1-8– bad Drug is the citizens recourse? Oh yea that good cause the lawsuit cost is already factored into the bad drugs and now lawyers profit?
Hypocrisy at best
If You vote for privatization and fascism then do not complain about the fact costs go up because everything is based on there has to be an increase in profit each quarter. never ending profits can never happen without raising the costs. Everything else has been cut unless we can get wages to the $3hr republicans want.
So who here is actually paying for their healthcare like most of us.
Who here is collecting actual socialized healthcare from medicare and Vets benefits? The rest of us pay for corporate healthcare and want to strengthen the law and fix anything that needs to be fixed. Maybe that conservation belongs to those of us who actually pay
Where is the discussion on Bob McDonnell or Mitch McConnell or Chris Christie the saints for 2016?
Or even Eric cantor tea Party Young Gun who sold his access to Congress for a job?
http://www.foxbusiness.com/markets/2014/08/25/millions-helped-by-obama-health-law-may-get-hit-with-reduced-tax-refunds-unless/
receiving less or no refund is a tax increase.
Chris: “…until you actually start supporting policies that would raise income”
I do. I just don’t support policies that artificially raise income, like raising the minimum wage. All that does is give the illusion that incomes are raised. Raise the min wage and all incomes above it also will rise artificially. Production will not increase. Profit will not increase. The higher cost to employers (Not just the wage but the taxes and insurances) would translate to higher prices for consumers and/or lost jobs. The rise in min wage would force wages above the min wage higher compounding the problem. As the market adjusts buying power will not increase but remain about the same…nothing of VALUE is gained.You don;t understand this because you don’t understand how wealth is created. You still think its a zero sum game, business owners are keeping “too much,” and workers are being cheated out of their “share.”
“The vast majority who signed up under the ACA did pay their initial premiums.”
The vast majority isn’t enough! In the first place the vast majority that signed up are the really sick who are subsidized! Also as the year has gone on people are dropping coverage:
Reason cites the Investors article and then elaborates:
“The cuts to Medicare included in the ACA have already brought costs down”
From the cited report: “They note that the decrease in January health care prices is related to cuts to Medicare, the US program of health care for the elderly, which were made in the Affordable Care Act in order to pay for coverage of the uninsured
They shifted money from one pocket to another and called it savings! Its an accounting gimmick…and so typical of the deceptive left.
To the degree that care costs (not insurance) have come down the lousy economic recovery figures in greatly.
Rick Ungar refers to this as a slowdown in the growth of healthcare costs…still rising but not as fast and reiterates:
The Obama administration id now famous for taking a statistic and featuring it as proof that their policies are working. It is deception of the highest order, born of narcissism, and floated without the slightest regard for the affect that it has on the everyday experience of the American people.
This is an administration that is incapable of correction because it does not admit to error or accept responsibility for failures.
” The uninsured rate is now the lowest ever recorded!”
TownHall:
See also here for a projection by CBO.
“How can you claim to care about this issue when you reveal yourself to be either tragically uninformed, or totally dishonest?”
How can you continue to ask this stupid question when I have shown you the evidence and explained that it is IMPOSSIBLE to create a huge new bureaucracy and cover millions more people, many of them ill, AND expect the cost will be LESS. it takes monumental idiocy to buy the Democrats BS but somehow you manage BECAUSE you do not understand how things work (And don’t work)…neither does the President. NONE of the people that pushed this law have ever run a business…many of them have made their living on taxpayers…they don’t know what the he77 they are doing!
“You WANT premiums to go up and people to go without insurance, just so you can be right and Obama can be wrong!…blah blah blah”
YOU are truly pathetic!
Harriet at #14: That article does not say that the subsidies are counted as income, or that people will have to pay higher taxes for receiving a subsidy. It says that if you got a tax credit under the ACA and your income this year was higher than you estimated when you applied for the tax credit, you may have to pay some of it back. Those are two very different things. Please read more carefully.
Tina: “I do.”
Oh, right. You believe that repealing the minimum wage would lead to higher incomes…somehow.
“You still think its a zero sum game”
False. When the lower and middle classes make more money, they spend more; that spending, not the spending of the rich, is the basis of our entire economy. More money spent in the economy = more money for corporations. It’s a win-win. The economic pie gets bigger.
The zero-sum-game assumption is actually held by conservatives who believe that corporations just can’t afford to pay their employees a living wage.
Your claims about the negative side effects of raising the min. wage sound plausible in theory, but they are simply not borne out by the evidence. Many cities in America have seen job creation after raising their wages. Australia has the highest min. wage in the world, and hasn’t had a recession in 20 years.
One review of 64 studies found no discernable effect on employment from a small increase in the min. wage:
http://seattletimes.com/html/localnews/2023116005_wageimpactsxml.html
Labor is less than a quarter of the cost of what you pay at McDonalds. Raising the min. wage would not cause massive price increases.
http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2014/06/08/what-will-a-higher-minimum-wage-cost-you-at-mcdona.aspx
“The vast majority isn’t enough!”
Tina, your goalposts called, they’d like you to stop moving them.
“They shifted money from one pocket to another and called it savings! Its an accounting gimmick…and so typical of the deceptive left.”
The so-called “acounting gimmick” WORKED. Costs are down because of this shift.
From your Townhall link:
“an estimated 3 million Americans will find themselves in precisely that position this year – paying a fine because insurance is too expensive – due to the President’s health care reform law -”
What a dishonest framing. Anyone making less than 400% of the poverty line can get a subsidy. Most people have found that their premiums are lower under the ACA. The idea that the ACA has made insurance “unaffordable” is ridiculous. The people citing that as their reason have likely been misinformed about their options, just as Judy Boonstra was. Use the subsidy calculator here:
http://kff.org/interactive/subsidy-calculator
Republicans have not been able to produce a single person who has had to pay more under the ACA than they were before. Every single fake “victim” you have put forth has actually turned out to benefit from the law’s passage!
You did not even address the fact that the uninsured rate is now lower now than ever recorded. You claimed that the law has not “covered the uninsured.” That was a lie, Tina. I was willing to chalk it up to mere ignorance, but now that you have refused to acknowledge that what you said was not true, I have no choice but to conclude that you are simply a liar, and a bad liar at that.
Dewey: “Democrats are far from perfect but do at least serve better than the Republicans. It as though GW Bush admin never happened to you.”
Thanks for your opinion. Please note it is not FACT.
I would take eight years of George Bush over any number of years under the complete failures Obama, Reid, Pelosi, Hillary!
Democrats do not better serve the people. Democrats pray at the alter of big government and will do anything to make it bigger and give them more power.
“Sorry but Healthcare costs go up every year but will go up slower.”
Bologna! Accounting gimmicks will not pay for increased overhead and still deliver quality healthcare. Whatever savings we realize will be a result of technological breakthroughs that allow for less overhead.
“Post after Post here touting the Koch brothers propaganda said the job loss will be the worst part of the ACA!”
Dewey you are delusional or playing on too many blogs. I don’t recall “post after post” with that as the theme and I don’t recall making that exact assertion ever.
“1 million jobs created and hey go to the classifieds…healthcare jobs all over the place!”
Create a bureaucracy and you create more jobs. Overall we have lost jobs so what is the real gain other than to those who will take those healthcare positions?
The jobs picture this summer has been dismal:
When people aren’t working they can’t buy insurance or see a doctor! (They can and do apply for government assistance which then drives the cost of insurance UP)
“The rising costs of healthcare date back to the Reagan admin privatization of healthcare.”
No! Government involvement tracks with the rising cost of healthcare going back to 1965 and the creation of Medicare.
The following excerpt is from a WSJ article written in 2009 but it will serve my purpose of informing the people just fine:
As for privatizing…free market principles DO lower costs! From the same WSJ article:
The power of the individual when he has choices…business has to be efficient to compete…deliver the best product at the best price!
When government programs pay and everyone has the same plan (one choice) there isn’t anyone acting as a check on pricing…waste….fraud and abuse!
“If You vote for privatization and fascism”
This is just too ignorant for comment…as is the rest of your comment.
Our readers who are young might require a definition:
Fascism: a governmental system led by a dictator having complete power, forcibly suppressing opposition and criticism, regimenting all industry, commerce, etc., and emphasizing an aggressive nationalism and often racism.
Obamacare is a plan of regimentation in the healthcare industry. The law was passed behind closed doors without republican input resulting in its being a single party creation.
Most proposals made by Democrats call for greater government involvement and regulation and less freedom and competition in the private sector.
And the Democrats are funded by billionaire George Soros, a man who has funded political 501c4’s for decades without being targeted by the IRS!
Perhaps it is Dewey who is fascist.
Jack: “Have you ever consider who is coming up short, huh?”
As soon as you can produce someone who has, I’ll consider them. So far every Obamacare “victim” who has claimed to have to pay more under the law has actually turned out to be able to pay less. Funny how conservatives don’t talk much about Julie Boonstra anymore, huh?
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/fact-checker/wp/2014/03/11/update-julia-boonstras-claim-her-obamacare-plan-is-unaffordable-gets-downgraded-to-three-pinocchios/
Obamacare is working:
“A new report from the Kaiser Family Foundation finds that in seven major cities that have released data on 2015 premiums, the price of the benchmark Obamacare plan — the second-cheapest silver plan, which the federal government uses to calculate subsidies — is falling.
Yes, falling.
“Falling” is not a word that people associate with health-insurance premiums. They tend to rise as regularly as the morning sun. And, to be fair, the Kaiser Family Foundation is only looking at 16 cities in 15 states and the District of Columbia, and the drop they record is, on average, a modest 0.8 percent (though this is the same methodology they used in 2014, and to good results). But this data, though preliminary, is the best data we have — and it shows that Obamacare is doing a better job holding down costs than anyone seriously predicted, including Kaiser’s researchers.
“I expected premium growth to be modest in most of the country,” Larry Levitt, a co-author of the report, told Vox’s Sarah Kliff. “But what we saw were some decreases instead.”
Obamacare is doing better at a lot of things than anyone seriously expected. The law’s initial premiums came in cheaper than the Congressional Budget Office projected when the law first passed. In April 2014, the Congressional Budget Office said the unexpectedly low premiums meant Obamacare would cost $104 billion less than they previously thought. If Kaiser’s estimates hold nationally, Obamacare’s cost will have to be revised downward yet again.
The fear about government programs in general, and government health-insurance programs in particular, is that they are overly generous because they spend other people’s money. But Obamacare’s competitive insurance marketplaces are actually doing what they promised to do: forcing insurers to compete for customers by cutting costs. The Congressional Budget Office explains that Obamacare’s premiums are cheaper-than-expected because its insurance features “lower payment rates for providers, narrower networks of providers, and tighter management of their subscribers’ use of health care than employment-based plans do.”
OBAMACARE IS FORCING INSURERS TO RUN LEANER THAN EMPLOYERS ARE
That is something of an extraordinary statement: Obamacare is forcing insurers to run leaner than employers are. The CBO is so surprised by this that it basically refuses to believe it will last. They expect that Obamacare “will not be able to sustain provider payment rates that are as low or networks that are as narrow as they appear to be in 2014,” though they think it will continue to run leaner than employer-based insurance. And perhaps that’s right. But CBO has underestimated the law before, and the addition of more insurers into the marketplace, and more customers into the marketplace, should mean even more pressure for lower prices.
Obamacare’s premiums aren’t its only victory. The law, despite its famously disastrous launch, beat expectations and enrolled 8 million people in its insurance exchanges. In part for that reason, more insurers are joining Obamacare’s exchanges, which will increase competition and put even more downward pressure on prices. All that speaks to the subsidized private insurance Obamacare offers through its exchanges, but Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion is, well, expanding too; Pennsylvania’s Republican governor signed his state up just this week.
All this is happening amidst some genuinely remarkable news for spending in government health-insurance programs generally. Medicare’s per-enrollee spending is actually going down — a string of words I never thought I’d write in that particular order.
This is, as Vice President Joe Biden might say, a big fucking deal. As Margot Sanger-Katz and Kevin Quealy write at the Upshot, the reductions in projected Medicare spending for 2019 are, at this point, “greater than [what] the government is expected to spend that year on unemployment insurance, welfare and Amtrak — combined.” It’s not clear to what degree Obamacare’s manifold efforts to save money in Medicare are contributing to those falling costs, as the trend predates the law. But many health economists do think Obamacare is contributing on the margin, and either way, it’s more evidence that the federal government is figuring out how to run a tighter health-care ship.”
http://www.vox.com/2014/9/5/6108493/obamacare-premiums-lower-2015
Chris why do you think healthcare is on a different plane of reality than any other business? The simple form is about cost v payment. If you are seeing insurance premium cost reductions in Obamacare there many reasons why, from being low reimbursement, higher deduction up to an including healthcare workers being paid less money. I’m not going to do your homework, if you think cost reduction is due to Obama introducing a better system you go right on thinking that. Reality will catch up to you sooner or later.
Chris: “Oh, right. You believe that repealing the minimum wage would lead to higher incomes…somehow.”
You just can’t get your head around the fact that actual gains require REAL skills! You have no way of assessing the fact that the value of the work is important in the equation…for some strange reason you find that an arbitrary consideration! $15.00 an hour for an order taker job in a fast food joint that has introduced $1.00 burgers to try to increase sales in a bad economy doesn’t compute for you.
You can’t get your head around the idea that more jobs, even at a lower rate, would result in young people developing a good work ethic and aspiring to improve themselves in order to make more money. You can’t see elimination of the minimum wage as a way to increase participation and like all good liberals you think the only hope anyone ever has is government assistance…dependency and forced wages no matter how artificial and no matter how it raises the cost of living for everyone (STUPID)…it hurts the poor the most…as do the lost jobs!
“The economic pie gets bigger.”
So you have an inkling that it isn’t a zero sum game. You still cannot tell me how the middle class will have extra money to spend in a system of forced increases in expenses for business. You trust politicians instead of the people who actually pay the wages, meet a bottom line month by month, know their costs and tell you that raising the min wage will result in lost jobs, lost hours, and/or higher prices/less quality at the counter.
“… is actually held by conservatives who believe that corporations just can’t afford to pay their employees a living wage.”
Chris this argument is stupid for two reasons. 1. The corporations you are thinking of use the minimum wage as a starting salary only when someone has no experience. The fast food and small restaurant franchises that pay entry level minimum wage do not have wide profit margins. They also have very high turn-over and are constantly training unskilled people because people move on to higher paying jobs!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Pew reported in 2013:
less than 3% of the workforce works at minimum wage and MOST move on to higher paid jobs within a year. this is a stupid, artificial manipulation…but it works on ignorant people like you cause it plays right in to that class warfare resentment and covetousness.
“Your claims about the negative side effects of raising the min. wage sound plausible in theory, but they are simply not borne out by the evidence>
And you would know this because of your vast experience? Please!
” Many cities in America have seen job creation after raising their wages. Australia has the highest min. wage in the world, and hasn’t had a recession in 20 years.”
And you attribute this anecdotal information to a high min wage? Come on Chris…you know better.
“Labor is less than a quarter of the cost of what you pay at McDonalds. Raising the min. wage would not cause massive price increases.”
No one is suggesting a “massive” increases. Labor is about a third of the cost of doing business. Other costs leave the profit for this work intensive occupation for the owner at about 2%. (manufacturing sits closer to 30% for comparison. Fast food franchises are doing the impossible.
And leave it to Democrats to choose this time, a time when energy and food prices have been higher and people have less money to spend, to demand higher wages for unskilled workers.
You people are both insensitive and insane!
” Anyone making less than 400% of the poverty line can get a subsidy. Most people have found that their premiums are lower under the ACA”
They aren’t lower you moron…somebody else is making up the difference…it is an illusion!
many struggle to pay health premiums under Obamacare
Obamacare will raise premiums for 65% of small firms
No, It’s Not ‘Complicated’; Obamacare Increases Premiums for Most People describes how liberals try to deceive people. It then offers an interactive map and concludes:
” I was willing to chalk it up to mere ignorance, but now that you have refused to acknowledge that what you said was not true, I have no choice but to conclude that you are simply a liar, and a bad liar at that.”
More accusations without actual basis in fact. You really are pathetic!
Lottsa luck finding a doctor who will take Medi-Cal or your beloved Obammiecare, Chris.
http://chicotaxpayers.com/2014/09/04/lets-just-admit-it-obamacarecovered-california-is-a-complete-failure-and-needs-to-be-dumped-asap/
Jack: ” Reality will catch up to you sooner or later.”
You know Jack this should indeed happen. I’m not sure it ever will if his district continues a group plan.
Those of us who do pay the premiums are a bit concerned given articles like this that predict rate shock in California…and given what we know about rising costs under all of this regulation.
I feel like Archie and Edith went to Chico
And that is code speak for what?
#11 Chris, It’s a waste of my time to argue with someone who refuses to watch and listen to eyewitnesses and instead believes his right because he doesn’t approve of the media source that presented the information.
You just keep your head in your progressive dark place and parrot what is said by those who weren’t even there. I’m sure you’ll be rewarded with the brownie points you’re trying to earn by supporting what this administration does.
While it bothers me to know you’re teaching the next generation I’m thankful you didn’t decide to become a lawyer and eventually a judge who would pass judgment on cases before all of the information was presented and would only allow evidence admitted supporting your preconceived verdict.
Tina: “You just can’t get your head around the fact that actual gains require REAL skills!”
Minimum wage earners today ARE more highly skilled than they were in your generation. They are older and more educated, and productivity is higher. And they are getting paid a wage that is effectively less than your generation’s min. wage workers made. What about this equation can you not your head around? What about this seems OK to you?
“You have no way of assessing the fact that the value of the work is important in the equation…”
Of course the value of work is important. If I believed workers were actually getting paid a wage commensurate with the value of their work, we wouldn’t be having this conversation. In a job market where employers have ALL the power, and workers are easily replaceable, than employers have a natural incentive to pay below the real value of an employees’ work. (The idea that real value is simply what the employer is willing to pay and what the employee is willing to take is simply naive; the employee in a recession doesn’t have nearly as much of a choice of what they are “willing” to take.)
I do not believe min. wage employees are getting paid the real value of their work. Their work is severely undervalued and underappreciated in our society. Productivity has increased, and workers haven’t gotten shit for that. Without these workers, the corporations they work for would have nothing.
I support increasing the min. wage because I support paying employees the real value of their work.
“$15.00 an hour for an order taker job in a fast food joint that has introduced $1.00 burgers to try to increase sales in a bad economy doesn’t compute for you.”
I’ve said many times that a quick jump to $15 an hour is a bad idea. We need smaller increases over time to avoid skyrocketing prices/unemployment.
“You can’t get your head around the idea that more jobs, even at a lower rate, would result in young people developing a good work ethic and aspiring to improve themselves in order to make more money.”
Getting people to “aspire” to things they likely already aspire to is not good enough. Once again you are implying that the problem is that people just don’t want to work enough. Plenty of people have aspirations, but can’t do anything about them.
The idea that creating a lot of low-paying jobs is good for the economy doesn’t stand up to scrutiny. Much has been made of the “Texas Miracle” of creating minimum wage jobs, but the poverty rate remains one of the highest in the nation.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_by_poverty_rate
“you think the only hope anyone ever has is government assistance…”
Please try and avoid strawman arguments.
“So you have an inkling that it isn’t a zero sum game. You still cannot tell me how the middle class will have extra money to spend in a system of forced increases in expenses for business.”
Huh? I just explained that.
“You trust politicians instead of the people who actually pay the wages,”
No, I trust proven facts and well-done studies.
“and tell you that raising the min wage will result in lost jobs, lost hours, and/or higher prices/less quality at the counter.”
In other words, “Who you gonna believe, your lyin’ eyes, or a business owner who has no incentive to spin the costs of raising wages?”
“Chris this argument is stupid for two reasons. 1. The corporations you are thinking of use the minimum wage as a starting salary only when someone has no experience.”
Not true. Many experienced retail workers still start at the minimum wage when they get a new job. Sometimes this happens even if they have worked for the same store in the past. My girlfriend just went back to JC Penny after two years. When she left, she was a manager, and now she is back at the minimum wage.
“The fast food and small restaurant franchises that pay entry level minimum wage do not have wide profit margins. They also have very high turn-over and are constantly training unskilled people because people move on to higher paying jobs!!!!!!!!!!!!!”
I already addressed fast food. Labor only makes up a quarter of their costs. A small increase would not have a large effect on business costs.
“less than 3% of the workforce works at minimum wage and MOST move on to higher paid jobs within a year. this is a stupid, artificial manipulation…”
By this same logic, raising the minimum wage shouldn’t be a big deal, since it only affects 3% of the workforce.
But you don’t actually believe the argument you just made, because earlier you acknowledged that wages for higher paid workers would go up as well. So please don’t pull this BS with me; I can tell when two of your arguments contradict each other, even if you can’t.
“And you would know this because of your vast experience?”
No, I know this because I am able to read and evaluate evidence rationally, and you aren’t.
“And you attribute this anecdotal information to a high min wage? Come on Chris…you know better.”
No, I am not saying Australia’s high minimum wage is responsible for their strong economy. I am saying it is possible to have both a high minimum wage and a strong economy. I don’t need to prove that raising the minimum wage helps the economy. All I need to do to disprove your argument is to point out that raising the minimum wage does not cause the negative economic impacts you have described.
“And leave it to Democrats to choose this time, a time when energy and food prices have been higher and people have less money to spend, to demand higher wages for unskilled workers.”
Well, damn, you’ve got me there. Why on earth would Democrats choose a time when people have less money to spend to suggest that people should have more money to spend? It’s a real puzzler!
You do say some really stupid things sometimes.
“They aren’t lower you moron…somebody else is making up the difference…it is an illusion!”
Oh brother. The difference comes out of general taxpayer funds. That’s not an “illusion,” that’s how all subsidies work. I don’t see you complaining about this when it’s oil companies or Wal-Mart getting the subsidies, because in those situations, you think the benefits outweigh the costs. Obviously, I think the benefits outweigh the costs when it comes to Obamacare. But you are utterly incapable of performing a rational cost-benefit analysis when it comes to this issue, and so many others. Whenever you talk about one of your bugaboos, you can ONLY see costs and are blind to the benefits.
“More accusations without actual basis in fact. You really are pathetic!”
What are you talking about? It is a fact that the uninsured rate is lower than ever recorded. It is a fact that you falsely claimed the law has been a failure at helping the uninsured. And it is a fact that you refused to acknowledge that this claim was false. That makes you a liar by definition.
Chris: “Minimum wage earners today ARE more highly skilled than they were in your generation.”
And the only reason they are working that minimum wage job is because they can’t find a JOB in their field! What a stupid argument!
” If I believed workers were actually getting paid a wage commensurate with the value of their work, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.”
So much for what you believe!
“Without these workers, the corporations they work for would have nothing.”
The picture you paint is so 1930’s. Most minimum wage jobs are entry level and most people who take them move on to higher wages or a better job within a year. I have no desire to continue this conversation further.
“By this same logic, raising the minimum wage shouldn’t be a big deal, since it only affects 3% of the workforce.”
It isn’t logic Chris it’s just the truth…and it isn’t a big deal. It is one of the tools lefty politicians use to stir the rank and file.
Blah blah blahh…boring!
“Well, damn, you’ve got me there. Why on earth would Democrats choose a time when people have less money to spend to suggest that people should have more money to spend? ”
Well shucks dude, doncha know…its ’cause they’re too stupid to realize that saying a thing and doing it are two different things.
Democrats believe that saying people should have more money to spend is all it takes. More money is a magic thing that makes the economy run like a top…just ask them…they keep printing MORE…and so far the economy is running like a top…right? You Democrats just said the magic words and poof…good jobs are everywhere.
Problem. Six years later and the jobs situation still stinks! All that magic talk didn’t work. all that funny money didn’t work.
Since the recession ended in June of 2009 the economy has been sluggish and job growth stale. That is why people don’t have money.
Your party has floated this ignorant idea to distract you from the ugly truth about their egregious failure.
Blah blah boring blah….
I’m not blind to the few who will benefit from Obamcare, Chris. I just think it is stupid to create a bigger problem for the many just to help the few when there is a much better way to help them and make it better for everyone else.
I think it is you who is refusing to see that the light at the end of the tunnel is actually a high speed train coming right at you, the poor, the rest of us and the industry. is it really worth it to do so much damage unnecessarily…just to be right?
I’m tired and bored. I’m outta here.
Chris: “Oh brother. The difference comes out of general taxpayer funds. That’s not an “illusion,” that’s how all subsidies work.”
The illusion is that the cost curve is bent down…somebody IS paying and paying a lot more! Not only do we get to pay more for our own insurance we get to pick up the tab for those new subsidies…and we will pay over time a whole lot for all of that overhead, the bureaucracy needed to manage this piece of crap legislation!
The real joke is the so-called affordable insurance plans still have killer deductibles and co-pays…out of pocket the low income subsidized can’t afford.
Crook and Liars called it a caste system…perfect description! Then like an idiot that just doesn’t get it, asks for “single payer”…as if that would improve things!
This hasn’t really helped anyone. Your power hungry party has just wrecked the already broken by government system.
There isn’t a single coherent argument in the above comment. Maybe when you’re not so tired and bored, you can admit you were wrong when you said Obamacare hasn’t helped the uninsured.
Lowest. Uninsured. Rate. Ever.
You must be so upset.
Peggy: “Chris, It’s a waste of my time to argue with someone who refuses to watch and listen to eyewitnesses and instead believes his right because he doesn’t approve of the media source that presented the information.”
Peggy, as I said before, I read their testimony the first time they made it. Again, the claims you reported here are old news. What did they say on the Fox News special that I have not already addressed? I’ve engaged with their points as you have presented them here; if you feel like you are wasting your time, then that is on you for refusing to engage with the counter-arguments.
The Truth About Minimum Wage:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=siW0YAAfX6I
Reason interview with Jason Riley, author of “Please Stop Helping Us,” is worth watching. the transcript was done in haste so its been advised that we check against the video. Our purposes are served by the transcript:
I see a much stronger black community on the rise with strong family and religious values at the core and a definite, “no thank you” to government programs! Hallelujah!
Now if we can just inspire this freedom centered idea among the rest of our young brainwashed youth…hint hint!
Peggy at #32: That was dumb.
Absolutely no one is arguing for a $100/hr minimum wage.
Also, this:
“When employment costs increase, entrepreneurs have two choices: they can reduce the amount of people they employ, or they can raise the price of goods they produce.”
Is so illiterate that it barely merits a response. There are, of course, other options: the employer (or “entrepreneur,” to use the video’s rosy parlance) can attempt to cut costs elsewhere.
The video gives zero evidence to support it’s theory that the minimum wage causes unemployment. The weight of the evidence has found no link between modest increases in the minimum wage and unemployment.
http://www.cepr.net/documents/publications/min-wage-2013-02.pdf
The latest CBO analysis predicted that raising the min. wage to $10.10 would reduce employment by 500,000. But it also predicted that it would lift 900,000 people out of poverty.
900,000 > 500,000
This seems like a fair trade.
Josh Barro elaborates:
The White House insists the CBO number is wrong. In a conference call this afternoon, Council of Economic Advisers members Jason Furman and Betsey Stevenson argued that up-to-date economic research points to near zero employment effect from a minimum wage hike to $10.10.
Economists are divided on the question, but fortunately it doesn’t matter very much. As economist Richard Thaler puts it, “All methods of helping the poor cause distortions”; a minimum wage increase can cause a modest rise in unemployment and still be a good policy idea, so long as it has more than offsetting positive effects.
And the minimum wage trade-off presented by CBO looks awfully favorable. For every person put out of work by the minimum wage increase, more than 30 will see rises in income, often on the order of several dollars an hour. Low- and moderate-income families will get an extra $17 billion a year in income, even after accounting for people who get put out of work; for reference, that’s roughly equivalent to a 25% increase in the Earned Income Tax Credit.
The higher you set the minimum wage, the greater its positive effects on family income (for the bottom half of the income distribution) and poverty. In fact, the effects snowball; a $2 increase in the minimum wage does more than twice as much to augment incomes as a $1 increase does, because it affects more workers.
On the other hand, higher and higher minimum wages also have snowballing negative effects on employment. At modest levels, economists are increasingly convinced these effects are very small or zero; the added cost of employment gets offset by things like higher consumption and higher productivity. But that doesn’t go on forever; a minimum wage of, say, $100 per hour would obviously reduce employment.
The policy challenge is to raise the minimum wage to the point where once cent more would produce more important negative effects on employment than positive effects on poverty and family income, and then stop. I don’t know what that point is, but I do know that if the minimum wage isn’t putting any downward pressure at all on employment, we haven’t reached it yet.
So if the White House really believes a minimum wage of $10.10 would have no negative effects on employment, they are leaving an opportunity for poverty alleviation on the table, and should be pushing for a higher minimum wage than $10.10.
http://www.businessinsider.com/if-your-minimum-wage-increase-doesnt-raise-unemployment-you-didnt-raise-the-minimum-wage-enough-2014-2#ixzz3CfyixhrZ
Nearly all policies require trade-offs. Rational policy discussions acknowledge those trade-offs and include cost-benefit analyses. Today’s Republican party seems uniquely uninterested/unwilling to make these cost-benefit analyses. This is the case with voter ID laws, drug testing welfare recipients, and of course, the minimum wage. Rational policy discussions can’t happen in this environment.
Lol, Chris has taken all of us to task, I no longer feel bad,
Tina at #29, the high deductibles are NOT a result of the ACA.
The evidence for rising deductibles as a pre-existing condition of American healthcare is incontrovertible. As the Kaiser Family Foundation reported in 2012, the percentage of workers in employer plans with a single deductible of $1,000 or higher had risen to 34% from 10% since 2006; in the same period the percentage with deductibles of $2,000 of higher had risen to 14% from 3%. The average deductibles for all employees had nearly doubled to $1,097 from $584.
The underlying idea, of course, is to shift healthcare expenses from the employers to the employees, while discouraging usage by the latter. There’s another driver: the high-deductible trend, as we reported back in 2008, owes much to a libertarian insurance entrepreneur named J. Patrick Rooney, who saw business opportunity in the sale of tax-advantaged health savings accounts. A Republican Congress obligingly passed a law providing a tax advantage to HSAs — if they were paired with qualified high-deducible health plans (also sold by Rooney).
The point is that calling high-deductible plans as outgrowths of the ACA is just dead wrong. If anything, the trend to higher deductibles has moderated somewhat since 2010, when the act was passed.
Moreover, the latest enrollment figures on Obamacare suggest that there may be some consumer resistance to high deductibles under the new law. Some 80% of all those who have enrolled in plans nationwide, according to federal statistics released today, have chosen a silver plan, meaning deductibles of $2,000 for singles and $4,000 for families, or gold or platinum plans, which have no deductibles. Only 18% have opted for bronze plans, which offer lower premiums, balanced by deductibles of $4,500/$9,000.
So there’s nothing in Obamacare itself that encourages the spread of high deductibles; the law actually gives many Americans more options to avoid them, and a fair percentage are taking those options. The spread of high deductibles has been encouraged by the insurance industry. Blaming Obamacare is just scapegoating.
http://www.latimes.com/business/hiltzik/la-fi-mh-obamacare-derangement-20140311-story.html
Also, still waiting on you to admit you were wrong when you said that the ACA has not helped the uninsured.
Harriet there was never any reason for you to feel bad. You are a free person living in a free nation with every right to an opinion. Chris aligns with those who believe in stifling speech to win the argument and bullying people to prevent them from participating.
Speak up any time; we at PS stand solidly behind you!
Think of it….all those people with a couple of bucks more and maybe an extra dollar takes them just over the official poverty line. Hurray! Democrats cheer and celebrate this as a major victory!
Hate to say it but this is the small thinking, the crumbs-from-the-table thinking that keeps poor people stuck in dependency.
If those people really want to be lifted from the chains of poverty they are still going to have to learn a trade, get some training, attend school.
How nice. Like I’ve said before, thinking or saying a thing and actually doing that thing are two separate things. The economist doesn’t have to actually meet payroll, pay the bills, and keep the lights on.
Ask the franchisee:
Franchise.org:
Ask a restaurant association:
Ask people who make it their business to know business and budgets! The sovereign Investor explains how forced wage hikes will help fuel higher prices:
It’s political Chris. You are being played like a violin.
Tina: “Think of it….all those people with a couple of bucks more and maybe an extra dollar takes them just over the official poverty line. Hurray! Democrats cheer and celebrate this as a major victory!
Hate to say it but this is the small thinking, the crumbs-from-the-table thinking that keeps poor people stuck in dependency.”
Ridiculous. If anything exemplifies “crumbs from the table thinking,” it’s trickle-down, which asserts that if we just coddle the powerful a bit more, we can get their leftovers.
“If those people really want to be lifted from the chains of poverty they are still going to have to learn a trade, get some training, attend school.”
And how exactly are they supposed to do that working 40+ hours a week for crap wages? Some people do this, but it is not affordable or practical for most.
“Ask the franchisee…Ask a restaurant association”
Right, because none of them have any biases or motivation to spin this in their favor.
Tina, your arguments are so 19th Century. Every worker protection ever introduced was met with hostility from people like you who claimed that it would reduce employment, force prices skyrocketing, and drive people out of business. They said this about child labor laws, they said it about overtime, they said it about the introduction of the minimum wage itself! They were wrong then, just as you are wrong now. Any argument based on praising the capitalist class while disparaging the value of the worker class will always be wrong, not just morally, but economically, because it fundamentally misunderstands the role of workers in the economy. They are our lifeblood. If you insist on treating them as terribly as they’ve been treated over the past four decades, our economy will continue to suffer.
Chris: “If anything exemplifies “crumbs from the table thinking,” it’s trickle-down, which asserts that if we just coddle the powerful a bit more, we can get their leftovers.”
Let me get this straight. You believe that people who have put their own money at risk to build a company and in the process also hire people are just handing out leftovers?
What a lousy way to think about people who work for a living! What a slap in the face to people that have gained skills so they can EARN a certain salary from those businesses! To you they don’t actually deserve the money they make…they are simply serfs hoping for crumbs from the masters table. What an ass!
You don’t understand “trickle down” at all which is why you have such contempt for both the working man and the wealth building community that makes having a job possible! You don’t understand how that opportunity makes it possible for the average person to save and invest to build a better life. You don’t get that owning a business is part of the American dream just as owning a home is. Next in your commie thinking is the notion that my owning a home is unfair and I should share it with another family or two. Boy we’d all be safely ensconced in that utopian dream then!
Where does it stop, Chris?
You also do not get that the government gets EVERYTHING from the money that trickles out of that wealth building community!
And you don’t get that socialism and redistribution are dishonest manipulations that keep people stuck in poverty just to keep those politicians in power. they don;t really care about individuals in the poor communities. if they cared they would do what works instead of what’s easy…confiscating more from those who have for redistribution! Shame on you!
Okay, Mr. smart guy, Mr. teacher. Educate us! Explain to your class where money comes from to pay the salaries of workers…to fund the taxes we all pay. If not trickle down…if not the capitalist system, then what?
Does it appear out of thin air?
Is there a super secret money tree that only the evil employer knows exists?
Are business owners just lucky…born with magic money wands and the secrets to money spells?
Go ahead…tell us how wealth (for anyone) is created.
“And how exactly are they supposed to do that working 40+ hours a week for crap wages?”
The same way Americans have done it for generations! They work, they study, they save, they do nothing else. They eat beans and rice and shop at thrift stores for clothes and other needed items. they don;t eat for a day or two! they do whatever they have to do. If one person can do it (millions already have) anyone can do it!
People in America have NOT been “treated badly” over the last four decades. We live in America wise a$$…if a person hasn’t made it here they haven’t really tried! With all of the programs, grants, and help available, including a free high school education there is no excuse for a life of persistent poverty. NONE!!!
To hear you talk nobody in America who now has money was ever poor…that is a lie. Most of the people who now have money were not born rich. They worked their way to a better life. Most people who start at “crap wages” move up within a year…minimum wage is a starting wage! Plenty of people have come here with nothing and worked their way into the middle class or higher!
The idea that anyone should expect to feed a family on entry level wages is pure political tripe!
Businesses already working on thin margins should not be burdened because a few of our citizens have refused to work hard in school and made very bad decisions later in their lives.
Perhaps if we would quit saving them from the consequences of their mistakes they would make fewer of them!
Perhaps if we quit coddling them they would wake up and begin working for their own future welfare.
” because none of them have any biases or motivation to spin this in their favor”
Of course they have a bias but this isn’t the lottery. The business faces an added expense. Some might be able to afford it but what gives anyone the right to extort extra money from them? Why should legislators decide what a company can afford to pay its workers? They are not involved in bill the paying! Why should a worker decide what his potential boss can afford to pay him? They don’t show up to make donations when its time to pay the bills! Neither has any idea what is actually possible given the expenses, location and sales of an individual store. Your thinking is upside down and backwards.
“your arguments are so 19th Century.”
Good try pipsqueak. My arguments are universal and work across time and space. You cannot squeeze blood from a turnip in any century…and some jobs are just not worth $15.00 an hour. Not if you expect the employer to stay in business and provide the same quality of product!
the min wage argument is not about “protection” of the worker. Your suggestion that it is is grossly dishonest! There is something slimy about it too…something that suggests efforts outside of the law. Mob boss thinking and mob intimidation tactics. That isn’t how people who live in a free country and who value property rights thinks. Yours is stinkin’ commie thinkin’, sir! You are a disgrace to our nation.
We are talking about an agreement between a worker and an employer. The worker is not forced to accept the terms laid out by the employer and he is free to seek employment elsewhere. He is free to seek another kind of work….and sadly he can choose not to work at all…there’s the real tragedy and the real problem!
“Any argument based on praising the capitalist class while disparaging the value of the worker class”
Capitalist class and worker class? WOW, comrade, you’ve really gone all in now. Workers of the world unite. That elitist franchisee who works 16 hour days to build his business, who sweats fluctuations in food and energy prices and some weeks goes without pay so he can buy supplies, who puts up with employees that don’t show up for work and mouth off at customers…that guy is not a fellow American doing what he has to do to get ahead. No, in Chris’s class based society he is rich and therefore an easy mark in the redistribution game.
You make me sick!
“…it fundamentally misunderstands the role of workers in the economy. They are our lifeblood. If you insist on treating them as terribly as they’ve been treated over the past four decades…”
NOT ONCE HAVE I SAID PEOPLE SHOULD NOT BE PAID WHAT THEY ARE WORTH FOR THE JOB THEY DO! Not once have I suggested that employees are not a valuable asset to any company. Not once have I suggested that any worker should be confined and restricted to a class of people to be kept down.
You and your class-based thinking assign people to a life of dependency needing government enforcers to get ahead.
If you insist on electing redistribution socialists like the ones now running our nation you will see even more people fall into poverty. After six years I would think you’d begin to be mildly curious about how a vibrant economy is created…but no…you cling to the failed socialist model like an alcoholic addict sucking on his bottle.
OPEN YOUR DAM* EYES CHRIS…you are living the consequences of socialist, redistribution, mob intimidation policy. As our government gets bigger and bigger there is less in the private sector for wealth investment and employees suffer first. Employee opportunity is diminished first! Small businesses sputter and die a slow agonizing death.
America did not become the most prosperous nation on earth through the power of a socialist government and it never will be prosperous again as long as people continue to put their faith in government instead of themselves!
Tina: “Let me get this straight. You believe that people who have put their own money at risk to build a company and in the process also hire people are just handing out leftovers?”
No.
I believe that “trickle-down” theory actually relies on this premise. It asserts that business owners and the wealthy are our nation’s wealth producers, and that we should make our laws as favorable to these people as possible, even if doing so makes circumstances less favorable to workers. The assumption is that by doing so, this will indirectly benefit workers at some indefinite point in the future, because business owners and the wealthy will have more money to invest and pay their workers with.
The “leftovers” analogy fits this theory, because it puts business owners and the wealthy at the center of economics, and everyone else is simply an indirect beneficiary of their largesse.
I do not agree with this theory.
“To you they don’t actually deserve the money they make…they are simply serfs hoping for crumbs from the masters table. What an ass!”
I have never said anything like this. Obviously, I believe that minimum wage workers deserve not only the money they make, but that they also deserve more.
Again, the “crumbs from the master’s table” analogy fits trickle-down, not middle-out economics, which is what I subscribe to.
“Okay, Mr. smart guy, Mr. teacher. Educate us! Explain to your class where money comes from to pay the salaries of workers…to fund the taxes we all pay. If not trickle down…if not the capitalist system, then what?
Does it appear out of thin air?
Is there a super secret money tree that only the evil employer knows exists?
Are business owners just lucky…born with magic money wands and the secrets to money spells?
Go ahead…tell us how wealth (for anyone) is created.”
I have explained this more times than I can count, and yet still you act as if I have never articulated my theory. This is rude.
Wealth is not created by business owners or wealthy investors. Wealth is created by middle class consumers. When workers are well paid, demand goes up and so does consumer spending. We saw this in the 50s and 60s when the power of unions were at its peak, when the wealthy paid very high taxes, and when many corporations had adopted the philosophy that their workers should be able to afford their products. In return workers had a sense of company loyalty and jobs were more secure, with much less turnover. During this time the American manufacturing industry was also at its peak, disproving the idea that strong unionization is the cause for outsourcing and the decline of the manufacturing industry.
Under these circumstances we developed the strongest middle class in the world. It was only after unions started losing power, thus causing wages to fall, that this trend was reversed. Today we have record corporate profits, but no one is investing or creating jobs because demand is so low. Business owners aren’t going to create jobs just because they have extra cash because their taxes have been lowered, or because some regulations have been lifted. Business owners only create jobs when they need a service to be performed. Less demand means less need for jobs.
John Harvey at Forbes explains better than I can:
“…if you don’t have more customers, you won’t hire more workers. If the demand for goods and services stays where it is today and we only cut industry taxes and regulations, there is absolutely no reason to think that firms would expand employment. Rather, they would continue to produce at the same level and simply earn higher profits. On the other hand, if we leave taxes and regulations untouched but increase demand, entrepreneurs will happily add workers. And that is the root of the problem today. The bottom line, lost on Mr. Romney and many others, is that the real job creators are consumers. The direct route to reducing unemployment is boosting demand, not reducing costs.”
http://www.forbes.com/sites/johntharvey/2012/06/17/job-creators/
Entrepreneurs can assist in boosting demand by raising wages, and supporting pro-worker policies. But they cannot create demand. Fighting the minimum wage may seem like an effective policy to save money in the short term, but in the long term this actually hurts profits because there is less demand.
Again, I have explained this numerous times. You may disagree with my theory, but please do not pretend that I have not articulated it. That is intellectually dishonest.
“The same way Americans have done it for generations!”
Except that Americans haven’t done it for generations. Again, your generation had an effectively higher minimum wage than we had today, even though productivity is higher. College was also a lot less expensive, while at the same time being more valuable. Companies and employees were both more loyal to one another. And even assuming a worker does go to college to improve themselves, that’s not a ticket out of the min. wage lifestyle; min. wage workers are already more educated today.
You ignore all of these demonstrable facts and instead hide behind platitudes; this makes your argument seem very weak.
You want to believe that we still live in a society where hard work always pays off, but that’s just not the case anymore. Things are not like they were in your day.
“They work, they study, they save,”
Saving money is often impossible on minimum wage. When I worked at Wal-Mart I paid ridiculously cheap rent, bought almost no luxury items, did not have cable, gave up texting, did not eat out a lot, and you know how much I had left at the end of each paycheck? Enough to keep a bit in checking, but not enough to add anything that would matter to savings. If it weren’t for FAFSA and food stamps, I would have had to get another job while going to school, and my grades would have suffered. I could have taken a reduced class load, meaning that I’d have to wait even longer to start my career and move out on my own. (As it is, the former took 6 and a half years, and the latter won’t happen until I get my first paycheck from the school I just started working at for my first permanent teaching position. Come on, September 30!)
“they don;t eat for a day or two!”
Do you really believe that in a first world country–the richest country in the world, no less–hourly workers’ lives should be this hard? I find that almost cruel.
How can you get angry when people accuse conservatives of being callous toward the poor, when you are literally suggesting going a couple days without eating as a reasonable alternative to the minimum wage?
“If one person can do it (millions already have) anyone can do it!”
Is it possible that you could actually believe the above sentence? I find that bizarre.
“if a person hasn’t made it here they haven’t really tried!”
This is unspeakably naive. And, again, extremely callous and hostile toward the poor.
Can’t you just admit that you have very little respect for the poor? You openly admit that you believe that if they haven’t made it, it must be because they haven’t tried; and yet you think that it is the left who demeans people in poverty, and the right which treats them with respect? Again, bizarre.
“To hear you talk nobody in America who now has money was ever poor…that is a lie.”
Yes, it’s a lie. It’s also something I never said or even implied, so I don’t see your point.
“because a few of our citizens have refused to work hard in school and made very bad decisions later in their lives.”
Again, this is naked hostility toward the poor. I wish you’d admit it.
“Perhaps if we would quit saving them from the consequences of their mistakes they would make fewer of them!”
Extremely naive.
“Perhaps if we quit coddling them they would wake up and begin working for their own future welfare.”
Most of them already are working for their futures. This is just insulting.
“The business faces an added expense.”
Yes, a SMALL added expense (labor costs make up 1/4 of all costs) which pays off hugely in increased productivity, less turnover, and higher demand.
“Some might be able to afford it but what gives anyone the right to extort extra money from them? Why should legislators decide what a company can afford to pay its workers? They are not involved in bill the paying!”
By this logic, the government should not be able to regulate anything–why should legislators be able to decide what age an employee can be? Why should they decide that a business can’t refuse to hire blacks? Why should they decide how much mine dust workers are legally allowed to breathe in?
We’ve had this debate, Tina. We as a society established that the government can put reasonable limits on business activity to protect the rights and needs of workers. This happened over a century ago. But today’s Republicans don’t just want to argue over whether certain limits are reasonable or not, you want to drag us back into the argument over whether the government can do this at all. I don’t think the majority of Americans want to have those arguments again.
“…and some jobs are just not worth $15.00 an hour.”
I have already said in this conversation and many others than a leap to $15 is too high. Please don’t ignore my points like this; it’s rude.
“Yours is stinkin’ commie thinkin’, sir! You are a disgrace to our nation.”
This is pure self-parody.
“The worker is not forced to accept the terms laid out by the employer and he is free to seek employment elsewhere.”
The worker is often forced to take a job based on circumstance. In an economy with higher consumer demand, worker demand would also be higher, and employees would have more choice of where to work. Employers would offer competitive wages, even for low-end jobs. Wouldn’t you want to live in an economy like this? You won’t get it if your solutions are just more tax cuts and lifted regulations; employers would have no incentive to hire more workers or offer higher wages under such a situation. Increasing demand through interventions targeted directly at workers is the only way to do this.
“Capitalist class and worker class? WOW, comrade, you’ve really gone all in now.”
Acknowledging that class is a powerful force in our society makes many Americans uncomfortable. That doesn’t make it any less true. Economic mobility is now lower in America than in most other Western democracies; in other words, if you are born poor in America, you are more likely to live in poverty than if you are born poor in Sweden, France, Italy, Australia, etc.
You argue that this is because America has become too “socialist,” or that the cause is our welfare programs, but this argument is obviously self-defeating, as you know perfectly well that those other countries are much more socialist and offer more generous welfare programs than we do.
Acknowledging the fact that social classes exist in America, and that they are powerful determinants of future success, does not make me the bad guy. The notion that it does is very similar to another favorite notion of conservatives: that people who acknowledge racism and attempt to solve it are the worst perpetrators of racism. It’s the “he who smelt it, dealt it” fallacy.
“Workers of the world unite.”
And what, pray tell, is wrong with that?
“That elitist franchisee who works 16 hour days to build his business, who sweats fluctuations in food and energy prices and some weeks goes without pay so he can buy supplies, who puts up with employees that don’t show up for work and mouth off at customers…that guy is not a fellow American doing what he has to do to get ahead.”
Of course he is. Nobody ever said he wasn’t.
“No, in Chris’s class based society”
I didn’t make the class based society. It exists, whether you wish to acknowledge it or not. I would like to change that.
“he is rich and therefore an easy mark in the redistribution game.”
He may be rich, he may not be. That’s irrelevant to the conversation. Wages come out of the business’ expenses, not the owner’s personal pocket. I would be willing to carve out exceptions in the minimum wage for certain businesses below a certain profit margin. But there is no reason that huge corporations such as Wal-Mart should not pay their workers enough to get them off of welfare.
“You make me sick!”
Please do not hold me responsible for your irrational level of anger.
“NOT ONCE HAVE I SAID PEOPLE SHOULD NOT BE PAID WHAT THEY ARE WORTH FOR THE JOB THEY DO!”
Not in those words, but we fundamentally disagree over what a low-end job is worth.
“Not once have I suggested that employees are not a valuable asset to any company.”
You suggest that their skills are not worth a wage that would help them survive without going on welfare or getting another job…that implies a lack of value.
“Not once have I suggested that any worker should be confined and restricted to a class of people to be kept down.”
I know you don’t see it that way, but that is the effect of the policies you support.
“You and your class-based thinking assign people to a life of dependency needing government enforcers to get ahead.”
No. Dependency is driven by low wages. Raise wages, and less people will qualify for welfare.
Opposing both a minimum wage increase AND welfare is not just irrational, it is nearly monstrous.
“If you insist on electing redistribution socialists like the ones now running our nation you will see even more people fall into poverty.”
…Except for the fact that Western democracies with actual redistribution socialists generally have lower poverty rates, this is a great argument!
“America did not become the most prosperous nation on earth through the power of a socialist government”
No, it became the most prosperous nation on earth through the power of a mixed government with both capitalist and socialist properties. It became the most prosperous nation on earth at a time with high top tax rates, strong unions, and fair wages. And we can do it again.
“and it never will be prosperous again as long as people continue to put their faith in government instead of themselves!”
See, I don’t see it as an “instead.” I find the fact that you do strange considering you came of age at a time when people had stronger faith in both themselves and government. When we start seeing ourselves as equal participants in our government, than we will have more faith in both.
#34 Chris: “There are, of course, other options: the employer (or “entrepreneur,” to use the video’s rosy parlance) can attempt to cut costs elsewhere.”
You just showed how “dumb” you are when it comes to owning and operating a business. There are fixed cost like rent, loan payments, etc. Then there are operating cost like PGE, insurance, payroll, cost of goods, taxes, etc.
So, guess where the cuts will come from? It can’t be the rent, loan, PGE. It has to be employees hours or elimination. It has to be payroll!!! Why can’t you get that through your thick head?
And franchise owners do not have the option of moving to cut down on rent.
So tell us where would the teacher, with all of your book smarts, NO business experience and who has never owned and operated a business before, where you would cut to come up with the needed cash to pay for the pay raises.
Oh and you can’t raise your prices more than 15% because the market won’t support a higher increase.
Tell us all smarty-pants how you’re going to keep the doors open and still take home enough to support your family too.
Chris: ” It asserts that business owners and the wealthy are our nation’s wealth producers, and that we should make our laws as favorable to these people as possible, even if doing so makes circumstances less favorable to workers.”
Please explain what you mean when you say “we should make our laws as favorable to “these people” as possible?
Business owners ask for reasonable taxes that are competitive in the market. They ask for regulations that make sense and are easy to understand an implement. They would prefer simplicity because it costs them less in time and money to comply. other than that they just want to do what they went into business to do, whether it is making food or altering clothing, or cleaning houses, or whatever.
Business owners and the wealthy/investors ARE our nations wealth builders. Please explain where wealth comes from if not from them? Please also note that some of the are people with retirement plans investing for profits for their retirement. As a teacher in California you will probably be among those and it is one of the nations largest investors!
Tina: “Business owners and the wealthy/investors ARE our nations wealth builders. Please explain where wealth comes from if not from them?”
Man, you just cannot read. I said before that I am sick of you asking me to explain something I have already explained, over and over again.
For the billionth time: Business owners and wealthy investors are NOT the wealth builders. The middle class is.
https://www.google.com/search?q=middle+class+job+creators&rlz=1C1TSNP_enUS487US487&oq=middle+class+job+creators&aqs=chrome.0.69i59j0.4847j0j7&sourceid=chrome&es_sm=93&ie=UTF-8
Chris: “For the billionth time: Business owners and wealthy investors are NOT the wealth builders. The middle class is. ”
I did not ask who it comes from! I asked HOW wealth is created.
And don’t fool yourself into thinking that the middle class can just show up in the street and poof, a pile of gold will show up.
Until you understand HOW wealth is created you won’t understand anything about the economy or the debilitating affect that taxation has, and will have, on your future prospects.
Tina: “I did not ask who it comes from! I asked HOW wealth is created.”
I’m not sure I get the distinction you’re drawing. Wealth is created by meeting demand. When demand for a product is high, the owners/inventors/sellers of that product do well, and wealth is produced. But aside from necessities, most products only have high demand in a healthy economy, where consumers can afford to buy those products.
Consumers always create demand. Innovators may create new products and participate in the creation of demand for those products, but without a solid and ready customer base, there won’t be demand for that product.
“And don’t fool yourself into thinking that the middle class can just show up in the street and poof, a pile of gold will show up.”
I can’t think of any polite way to say this, but: who exactly do you think you’re arguing with right now? I’ve never said or implied anything this silly. I’ve made it very clear that I believe if we raise wages and support unions better, we will have a more vibrant middle class, and hence a vibrant economy. There’s, like, actual evidence for this happening, called the 1940s and 50s.
And meanwhile, back in the real world, the 13 states which raised their minimum wage saw stronger job growth than the 37 states that did not.
http://www.cnbc.com/id/101818472#.
Back in Chris’s “real world” they are grasping at straws!
Right there in the CNBC report we find:
The FOX News report adds this:
Also in states run by republican governors where lower tax rates and business friendly regulation have been implemented unemployment is lower and their economies better:
Neel Kashkari would like to do for California what Republican governors have done for other states. We are near or at the bottom in education and unemployment…and water is much more important than that silly train.