Yes, I know. I’m shocked, too.
Category Archives: Economics
If You Like Your Plan
You can keep it. Unless we don’t like your plan:
Internal White House documents reveal that 51% of employers may have to relinquish their current health care coverage by 2013 due to ObamaCare. That numbers soars to 66% for small-business employers.
Were people really stupid enough to believe his lies during the campaign?
On the plus side, “repeal the bill” will have a lot more resonance this fall.
[Sunday morning update]
The good news just keeps on coming:
This year Ms. Watts estimates that changes made in response to the health law will add an extra 2 to 3 percent in cost increases, pressuring employers to engage in even more cost-sharing with employees — whether through higher premiums, co-payments or other out-of-pocket costs.
Mr. Weaver also reports increased interest by employers in high-deductible insurance plans. “They’ve been effective in managing costs,” he said.
You know, someone just a little smarter than Nancy Pelosi (i.e., almost everyone) would have been able to figure out what was in the bill without having to pass it.
What Is Old
…is new again. In doing some research, I was reading the old Agnew Space Task Group report, and I came across this paragraph:
The Space Task Group is convinced that a decision to phase out manned space flight operations, although painful, is the only way to achieve significant reductions in NASA budgets over the long term. At any level of mission activity, a continuing program of manned space flight, following use of launch vehicles and spacecraft purchased as part of Apollo, would require continued production of hardware, continued operation of extensive test, launch support and mission control facilities, and the maintenance of highly skilled teams of engineers, technicians, managers, and support personnel. Stretch-out of mission or production schedules, which can initially reduce total annual costs, would result in higher unit costs. More importantly, very low-level operations are highly wasteful of the skilled manpower required to carry out these operations and would risk deterioration of safety and reliability throughout the manned program. At some low level of activity, the viability at [sic] the program is in question. It is our belief that the interests of this Nation would not be served by a manned space flight program conducted at such levels.
Hello? Shuttle extenders?
They’re talking to you.
In Which A Congressman Is An Idiot
Yeah, I know, dog bites man, but I still enjoyed this exchange with Bernanke:
The entire premise of his question is absurd. The budget for FY2010 exceeds $3.8 trillion, which means that we don’t have to eliminate “half the ledger sheet” in order to close a $1.3 trillion deficit. We only need to eliminate a third of the ledger sheet. That $3.8 trillion, by the way, is $1.1 trillion more than the last budget from a Republican Congress, FY2007. If we returned to the FY2007 budget, we’d be almost all of the way there just by eliminating all of the spending increases inserted after Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid took charge of the budgeting process.
Oh, but that would be the end of the world as we know it.
My Sidebar For Popular Mechanics
…didn’t run, so I’ll run it here.
In Monday’s Wall Street Journal, Andy Pasztor
Mr. Musk notes in an email:
“I definitely didn’t tell Pasztor that our LES would cost $1B. He is off by a factor of ten! All I told him is that there is no way it would cost us more than $1B to demonstrate crew transport. That includes development, testing and certification to the most stringent NASA standards of everything needed for a seven-crew vehicle. I’ve also said that our price per person would be $20M, assuming the seven-person configuration and minimum of four flights per year. This compares to $30B for Ares I/Orion and a per person cost of ~$250M.”
In a follow up, he noted that the billion (if it goes that high) will include two abort flight tests (one on the pad, one high altitude) and a demonstration flight to and from ISS. Sounds like a bargain to me.
How To Kill A Recovery
It’s almost like they want to wreck the economy.
Hayek
…versus Hayek. I like them both, actually, but obviously for different reasons.
Commercial, One For One
Government, Oh For Two:
A half-Russian, half-Korean rocket likely exploded a few minutes after liftoff Thursday, dealing a second blow the South Korea’s $400 million program to develop its own satellite launcher.
They spent almost as much on this as SpaceX has in their entire company history, to develop two rockets and a capsule, not to mention manufacturing and test facilities, and launch infrastructure.
There’s an idiot commenter (well, there are a lot, actually) over at Space Politics who keeps repeating the mantra, “There is no cheap.” Well, maybe not, but there does seem to be inexpensive and affordable, as long as a government isn’t intimately involved.
Stop The Power Grab
…at the EPA. Especially if you live in Virginia.
[Update a few minutes later]
Yes, that’s exactly what it’s like:
Senator Boxer lost any credibility she might have had left when she said that the Murkowski Resolution would be like Congress “saying the Earth is flat.”
I’ve got two idiots for senators in California, but only one of them is blithering.
[mid-afternoon update]
The amendment failed:
I don’t want to hear a liberal bemoan executive supremacy ever again. This is Congress abdicating its own authority because the Democrats know they can’t get the votes to pass cap-and-trade.
Yup.
Eight Reasons
…that the college tuition bubble is about to burst.
No scam can survive indefinitely. Unless, of course, the government continues to support it, at our expense.