White House: Obamacare Incentivizes Entrepreneurship By Allowing Ppl To Work Less, Get Subsidies

RealClearPolitics ^ | February 4, 2014 | RealClearPolitics

[i88schwartz]

ED HENRY, FOX NEWS: Jason, on your example, and you’re talking about somebody making -- working 60 or 65 hours a week and they might now be able to work. I can’t remember if you used 30 or 35 hours a week. And they'd have health insurance, just an example.

So it's a good thing that they now have health care; maybe they didn’t before. But isn’t that man or woman going from 60 or 65 hours to 30 hours --

JASON FURMAN, WHITE HOUSE ECONOMIC ADVISER: No, no.

HENRY: They're making less money, right?

FURMAN: I'm saying if they -- yeah, if the main thing going on here was a change in labor demand. And labor demand, just to be clear, that is the decision that employers are making. So employers are cutting jobs because of the Affordable Care Act, that would be a bad thing because that means somebody who really wanted a job wouldn't be able to get one. You might see the unemployment rate go up as a result of that, for example.

CBO explicitly says that you're not going to see an increase in the unemployment rate, that when you see changes it’ll be that person who maybe didn’t want to work those hours, they still have the option to. They still can, but in that case maybe they'll decide they don’t need to anymore, and that, in their case, might be a better choice and a better option than what they had before.

HENRY: If they make that choice and they go from 60 to 30, 35 hours, presumably that family is going to have a lot less take-home pay and they're going to have less money to put back into the economy.

CONTINUE READING...

[TurboZamboni]

I’ve always wanted to pursue my career as a shiftless vagrant.

thanks Obamacare!

[cripplecreek]

I’m not a day laborer, I’m a free agent.

[ClearCase_guy]

It’s not quite Arbeit Macht Frei, but I think we’re getting closer,

[GeronL]

work less, get subsdies

and they think this is a good idea??

[fhayek]

I swear to Holy Moses, I think that we are being run by chimpanzees. (and no, I am not being raciss).

[Maceman]

The White House response to this is what my father-in-law used to call “taking a bow at your own funeral.”

Years ago Rush had a Paul Shanklin parody in which Obama give a speech about how the recession was really good for people because it gave them time to smell the roses and spend more time with their families.

I hope that Rush remembers that parody and plays it over and over, even allowing it to go on Youtube. This is really a case of life imitates art.

[cripplecreek]

We’re dealing with marxists, of course they think its a good idea.

Kind of like their idea that we should subsidize a higher minimum wage like it magically stops price increases that naturally result from a higher minimum wage.

[Red_Devil 232]

That would be Recess.

[griswold3]

http://whywork.org/

Nancy’s peps...CLAWS
Creative Livable Alternatives to Wage Slavery

“Think of an economy where people could be an artist or a photographer or a writer without worrying about keeping their day job in order to have health insurance.”
Nancy Pelosi

[Lorianne]

CBO’s estimate that the ACA will reduce employment reflects some of the inherent trade-offs involved in designing such legislation. Subsidies that help lowerincome people purchase an expensive product like health insurance must be relatively large to encourage a significant proportion of eligible people to enroll. If those subsidies are phased out with rising income in order to limit their total costs, the phaseout effectively raises people’s marginal tax rates (the tax rates applying to their last dollar of income), thus discouraging work. In addition, if the subsidies are financed at least in part by higher taxes, those taxes will further discourage work or create other economic distortions, depending on how the taxes are designed. Alternatively, if subsidies are not phased out or eliminated with rising income, then the increase in taxes required to finance the subsidies would be much larger."

(page 118)

http://www.cbo.gov/sites/default/files/cbofiles/attachments/45010-Outlook2014.pdf

[Free America52]

That is just troubling in so many different ways.

[NormsRevenge]

Just saw that dope, Furman on Greta.

what a loser.. where do they find these doofs?

[Ray76]

They’re not that bright.

[Lorianne]

"CBO’s updated estimate of the decrease in hours worked translates to a reduction in full-time-equivalent employment of about 2.0 million in 2017, rising to about 2.5 million in 2024, compared with what would have occurred in the absence of the ACA. Previously, the agency estimated that if the ACA did not affect the average number of hours worked per employed person, it would reduce household employment in 2021 by about 800,000. By way of comparison, CBO’s current estimate for 2021 is a reduction in full-time-equivalent employment of about 2.3 million."

[upchuck]

The last paragraph of this article offers conclusive, incontrovertible proof that liberalism is, in fact, a mental disease. Settled science as far as I'm concerned:

FURMAN: First of all, for many people, that’s potentially an incentive to do more. There’s an incentive for more entrepreneurship, because they’re not locked into a job, there’s an incentive for hire -- for employers to be able to hire more people, because the cost of health care is lower. There's an incentive to hire workers who are going to be absentees less. So I think there is a whole bunch of puts and takes here that we need to take into account.

What?

[abclily]

Soooooooo, it’s puts and takes now???? Which is positive and which is negative? Are they both positive? Fewer hours with less pay...is that a put or a take?

HAS THE ENTIRE GOVERNMENT GONE STARK, RAVING MAD?

[RhoTheta]

FURMAN: First of all, for many people, that’s potentially an incentive to do more. There’s an incentive for more entrepreneurship, because they’re not locked into a job, there’s an incentive for hire -- for employers to be able to hire more people, because the cost of health care is lower. There's an incentive to hire workers who are going to be absentees less. So I think there is a whole bunch of puts and takes here that we need to take into account.

Why is it that Furman's statement gives me a visual of a bunch of people standing around the corner of the Home Depot parking lot waiting for someone to come and pick them up for day labor. What kind of entrepreneurship is he talking about? Your name on the door of a beat-up, stake-bed, one-ton truck full of migrant workers going to clean up a construction site? Pardon me, but Grapes of Wrath didn't portray utopia.

[Lorianne]

Page 128: "In CBO’s judgment, the costs of the (employer mandate) penalty eventually will be borne primarily by workers in the form of reductions in wages or other compensation—just as the costs of a payroll tax levied on employers will generally be passed along to employees. Because the supply of labor is responsive to changes in compensation, the employer penalty will ultimately induce some workers to supply less labor."

[TigersEye]

Ya know, pal, I find it highly insulting that you think
we couldn't do better than this.