[Update a few minutes later]
This sentence encapsulates why this president is such a disaster economically: “The President thinks he can redistribute income without stifling economic growth.”
Category Archives: Business
A Degree In Fine Arts
Pro tip: Don’t borrow money to get one:
Among the 4,000 colleges and universities in the federal database, the Creative Center in Omaha, Neb., a for-profit school that offers a three-year bachelor’s in fine arts, had the highest average debt load, at $52,035. Median pay for graduates of the school with five or fewer years’ experience is $31,400, according to PayScale.com.
“Salaries can be pretty darn high or pretty low” for the school’s graduates, who typically get jobs in graphic arts or advertising, said Creative Center President Ray Dotzler.
You don’t say. Of course, if they could figure that out, they’d have probably majored in economics or business. Interestingly, the majors with the best prospects for paying off debt seem to borrow the least, and vice versa.
The Conservative Critique Of ObamaCare
…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.
ObamaCare
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.
Strange Spam Du Jour
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.
Farewell To The New Republic
[Update a few minutes later]
The magazine has become a Stormfront for “liberals.”
Yes, there are racist aspects to it, with Tannenbaum’s piece.
EU GDP
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.
Obama Infantilizes Voters
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.
The Minimum Wage
Yes, leftists, it really does reduce employment, among people who need the jobs the most and particularly for black youths. The notion that there should be a federal minimum wage at all, one-size-fits all, in a nation with dramatically different levels of cost of living, is economically insane.
President Obama’s War On Science
[Update a few minutes later]
Also, his war on math. No, his policies don’t raise the deficit by a single dime. They raise it by fifty-eight trillion of them.
My question for the president. Are they thin dimes?