Category Archives: Business

Business, Economics, Health, Media Criticism, Political Commentary

The Conservative Critique Of ObamaCare

46 Comments

…was basically correct:

[“Liberal”] Kapur’s argument amounts to the following: Democrats passed a law that had and still has insufficient public support (points 1 and 4), that cannot achieve its goals without unconstitutional means (point 2), that did not allocate the necessary resources to accomplish its objectives (point 3), and that lacks and still lacks even minimal support across the political aisle (all four points).

That sounds very much like the conservative critique of ObamaCare. At this point it’s fair to say that ObamaCare opponents have won the argument. Of course, since supporters won the political battle three years ago (and Obama won re-election), this monstrosity is now the law of the land, ensuring that both sides’ victories will have been Pyrrhic.

And then there’s this:

It has become very clear to everyone involved who is analytical and not ideological that the rational strategy, for both large and small firms, is to cease providing health care insurance to employees.

No company wants to admit that they are considering eliminating health insurance as an option, or be the first one to drop their health insurance plan, but once a competitor does so, the preference cascade will begin. The clear sentiment is “We will not be the first one to drop our health insurance plan, but we would be a close second.”

The coming preference cascade for employer group health plans is what the Democrats fear the most, because Obamacare was sold to the masses as “if you like your health insurance plan, you can keep it.”

Which was always a lie, of course.

I think the Democrats will be reaping a whirlwind in the next two election cycles.

Business, Economics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary

ObamaCare

43 Comments

Democrats are turning on it:

The about-face of these Democrats is a phenomenon worth pausing over. Many formerly supportive constituencies have grown wary of Obamacare in recent weeks as we’ve learned more about the effects it will have on the health care system. But these Senators’ 180-degree turns are something more severe.

The fate of the Democratic party in America over the next decade is tied to Obama’s healthcare reform. If it is seen to be a success, America could trend Democratic for the foreseeable future. If it fails, liberalism as we’ve known it will take a massive hit. But, so far, support for Obamacare has been waning instead of waxing. Even a recent piece by Talking Points Memo that placed the blame for Obamacare’s potential failure on Republicans noted that the law’s unpopularity with the public at large was the number one threat to its success. Democrats are getting nervous and consequently are trying to put some distance between themselves and the ACA.

Well, Queen Nancy told us we had to pass the bill to find out what was in it.

Business, Social Commentary, Technology and Society, Weird

Strange Spam Du Jour

2 Comments

I just go this from the UK, subject, “Contract Dispute”:

Attention:

We seek an attorney who handles breach of contract matters.Let us know if
your firm takes such cases.

Thank you
Edward Scholes.

No attachment, no web site to click through, nothing, but it has a return address and a reply-to of someone with that name. What is the purpose of this?

I guess one (bizarre) possibility is that it’s exactly what it would appear to be — someone looking for an attorney, and spamming the Internet to find one. It’s not like it costs anything. But you might get a lot more responses, many of them scams themselves, than you know what to do with.

Business, Economics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary

EU GDP

13 Comments

Takes a nosedive:

There is no magic bullet that can magically transform the EU economy. The French made a mistake electing a socialist in France that decided to expand government programs and increase taxes. But no one ever confused the French for being capitalists. The multiplier effect of government spending is 0. You cannot tax and spend your way to economic prosperity.

No one tell the Democrats. Of course, it doesn’t matter. They won’t listen. It’s not in their political interest to do so (or at least that’s what they think).

[Update a while later]

Rescuing the euro is like saving the tumor, not the patient.

Business, Economics, Media Criticism, Philosophy, Political Commentary, Social Commentary

Obama Infantilizes Voters

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Rubio sees their strengths:

Their convictions are sincere, the product of each man’s upbringing and early life experience. Mr. Obama’s formative years spent as a community organizer inspired him to consider the poor or unemployed as abused by businesses that shuttered plants or raised rents – victims of an indifferent society. His decision to “organize black folks” as he explains in “Dreams from My Father,” was fed by a need to find his place in the civil rights movement, to prove himself “not alone in my particular struggles.”

Those struggles include uneasiness with being black. When in Kenya, he finally experiences the “freedom that comes from not feeling watched…here the world was black, and so you…could discover all those things that were unique to your life without living a lie or committing betrayal.” His views of the United States and of Europe are tinged by antipathy to white colonialism. During his visit to Kenya he decides the white tourists are “an encroachment”; he resents that they exhibit “a confidence reserved for those born into imperial cultures.” Obama carries baggage.

Rubio grew up listening to his polio-stricken grandfather extol the virtues and values of the United States. Rubio recalls that like so many proud immigrants, the old man impressed upon his grandson that “there was no limit to how far I could go, because I was an American.” While Obama’s upbringing causes him to focus on America’s “darker periods,” Rubio’s relationship with his native land is celebratory. Early in his presidency, Mr. Obama declines to proclaim America’s exceptionalism while Rubio shouts it from the rooftops.

Not to mention Obama being raised by communists.

Business, Economics, Education, Political Commentary

The Democrats’ Political Problem

5 Comments

SOTU reflections from Yuval Levin:

Simply put, the foremost problem to which the country now wants a solution from Washington is the problem of slow economic growth, and the Democrats are in a very bad position to advance solutions to that problem.

As the president suggested, and Rubio said outright, slow growth is the key barrier to upward mobility and a key source of pressure on middle-class families, and only robust growth offers a plausible way out of our economic and fiscal problems. The core of Rubio’s speech was basically an outline of how he thinks growth could be achieved now. It suggested an implicit assumption that the reason the economy is not growing is the inefficiency or unproductivity of our economy today—and especially of the public sector and those portions of the public sector most dominated by the government—and it proposed entitlement reform (to induce greater efficiency in health care and to reduce federal spending), education reform (to improve the quality of our labor force and provide greater opportunities for mobility), tax reform (to reduce needless drag on the economy by raising revenue more efficiently), immigration reform (to improve the quality of our labor force), and energy exploration (to make the fossil fuels that power today’s economy much cheaper). I think that’s a pretty plausible list (though I would add real health-care reform beyond the entitlements to vastly improve productivity and reduce costs, and regulatory reform to ensure open competition rather than further advantage large established players throughout the economy). And when you look over that list, you realize the Democrats’ dilemma. They are prevented by the politics of their electoral coalition from seriously advancing most of these ideas.

Yes. they can’t do what’s right, because all of the rent seekers in their base won’t allow it.

[Update a few minutes later]

Some useful advice for the president, that he will never take:

In a reductionist sense, if the president would just take his first draft of these speeches, and then pencil in the opposite of each talking point, the economy might take off.

There’s no “might” about it.

Business, Economics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary

Drinking Their Own Ink

11 Comments

Thoughts on the economic unreality of the political class:

There is for instance the wonderful idea that we can’t get out of this hole by cutting expenditures. REALLY? REALLY? So, let me see, if my family is spending 2000 a month, while making 1500, cutting expenditures is not the way to go. We shouldn’t examine our food budget, cut back on entertainment or perhaps move to a smaller place. No way no how, because cutting is not how you get out of a financial hole. No, golly-me. We’re supposed to get a student loan and take a course in something the government assures us will pay off. AND we’re supposed to go out to eat more. And move to a bigger place. And buy a newer car. And then we’ll be…

What? I don’t know. And neither do these people, because they’ve never balanced a checkbook.

The Aristos don’t have to balance anything. There’s always someone willing to finance them while using them as stalking horses. After all they talk so purty, and they say all the right things – the things that will allow those using them to get a greater grasp on power over the lives of everyone else.

Or take the minimum wage nonsense. What kind of insane idiot, with the crisis of unemployment we have would want to RAISE minimum wage? I mean, both the man reading these words off the teleprompter and the idiots who wrote them for him to read have presumably enough intelligence to stand upright and speak at the same time. So it shouldn’t be possible for them to NOT understand that a wage is something paid in exchange for a service. It is therefore tied to the value of that service. The idea of legislating it at ALL is insane, and leads to people who can’t afford to pay it hiring illegals or simply not growing their business past the one man stage – because, children, economics is a science. You can’t simply legislate wages, any more than you can legislate rain. BUT on top of that the idea of in a recession wanting to tie the minimum wage to the cost of living is so astonishingly stupid that– That I run out of words.

Fortunately, it’s just a figure of speech. She has a lot more words.