An amusing tweet from Jeff Foust, before what looks like an interesting panel discussion:
Overheard pre-event chatter: “Democrats don’t think capitalism works below the atmosphere and Republicans don’t think it works above it.”
Sad but true.
Category Archives: Economics
The Insurance Death Spiral
I’m pretty sure this was the plan all along:
So there are penalties for not purchasing insurance. But there’s no serious enforcement mechanism allowing the IRS to make sure those penalties get paid?
Given the importance of the mandate to the health reform project, this doesn’t make much sense. The law was designed to expand the number of individuals with health insurance. But without the ability to enforce the individual mandate, any expansion will likely be significantly smaller than projected.
But remember, if you like your plan, you can keep it! Untilless your insurance company goes out of business…
[Update a few minutes later]
You mean they don’t have to cover pre-existing conditions? More thoughts here and here.
Gee, do you mean that when a multi-kilopage bill is rushed though without anyone actually reading it, there could be screwups? Who would have guessed? Certainly not some of the morons in my comments section, who think that passing bills without reading them is just dandy.
Every day, November is a day closer.
[Update a couple minutes later]
And speaking of November approaching, this isn’t good new for the Dems, though it’s great news for the Republic:
Nearly two-thirds of Americans say the health care overhaul signed into law last week costs too much and expands the government’s role in health care too far, a USA TODAY/Gallup Poll finds, underscoring an uphill selling job ahead for President Obama and congressional Democrats.
…Supporters “are not only going to have to focus on implementing this kind of major reform,” says Robert Blendon, a professor of health policy and political analysis at Harvard. “They’re going to have to spend substantial time convincing people of the concrete benefits of this legislation.”
This is hilarious. The president and the Democrats have spent the last fourteen months telling us how wonderful this plan is, to no avail. Now that it’s going to start to actually bite, they think that they’re going to be able to explain it better, and be more convincing? Especially when they don’t know what’s in it any more than they did before it passed?
And note, this is a Gallup poll, which means it’s “adults.” I haven’t checked Rasmussen yet, but I’m sure that the news for them from “likely voters” is even more grim. For them, that is, not for us.
Only A Week And A Half Away
Henry Vanderbilt has released the latest (and probably ninety-percent certain) schedule for next week’s Space Access Conference in Phoenix (I wish he would have permalinks for these things…):
The Green Pharaoh
See, he was just trying to save the Nile delta. I’m even more amused at the leftist outrage in the comments. But then, leftists, and particularly watermelons, don’t have much of a sense of humor.
[Update a couple minutes later]
I love this comment from Bernstein:
Jon Stewart is funny because of the ways he bugs his eyes out, and otherwise makes funny faces. Can’t get that effect on a blog, I’m afraid.
It’s funny ‘cuz it’s true.
Premiums Will Go Up
…and you may not be able to keep your plan. But what would the head of Aetna know?
And I’m sure that this is completely unrelated:
Americans have a pragmatic sort of optimism in adversity, and after ObamaCare’s passage, I figured that would take the form of a “wait and see” attitude. Democrats made a lot of promises about this legislation, and there would be some impulse to wait to see how this bill fulfills or fails them.
Certainly, Democrats in office had hoped for that kind of response, but thus far, they’re not getting it. That may be due to some of the unpleasant details that the media have finally reported. Businesses are having to take big charges on lost tax credits, and promises over pre-existing condition treatment raised expectations to unrealistic heights. Instead of making lives easier, the bill has already made lives more complicated.
The real test will come in Rasmussen and other polling around September. If 54% of people still want it repealed — and that opposition has remained relatively unchanged for the last several months — then Democrats won’t have anywhere to hide.
Wind sowing now. Whirlwind reaping in November.
[Update a while later]
Congressional (dis)approval ratings have approached the levels last seen in late October, 1994. Remember what happened a few days later? And it’s only March…
Asilomar Two
Here’ is the first report I’ve seen on the conference this past week on geoengineering. I would have like to attend, but didn’t have either time or money right now. I was a little disturbed by what seemed to be an absence:
Participants…split into groups representing the two broad kinds of geoengineering: methods which block solar radiation from the sun, like spreading aerosols in the stratosphere, and techniques to remove carbon from the atmosphere, like growing algae blooms at sea.
…A vexing question for participants was the role of commercial companies in this controversial field. A breakout group devoted to the idea of blocking sunlight—by whitening clouds or the ocean surface, for example—couldn’t agree on whether it should propose barring for-profit companies from the enterprise.
Ignoring the issue of the role of private enterprise, what I’m reading seems very terracentric (which isn’t uncommon among the scientific community — I think it was one of the reasons that it there was so much skepticism about Alverez’ dinosaur-extinction theory). After all, if the goal is to block sunlight, the closer to the source you are, the easier the job might be. Maybe there were some space-based solutions discussed, but you can’t figure it out from this report. One of the reasons that I wanted to attend was to provide a perspective that might not otherwise be there, and it looks like my fears were born out.
I’d bet that if you proposed (say) Ehricke-type solettas, or sunshades, you’d be laughed out of the room, largely out of ignorance of space transportation economics. I would have provided a tutorial to explain why it’s foolish to extrapolate costs of current launch systems to future large-scale space access, because I’ll bet that’s exactly what most of them would do (because it’s what most people do now). I’ll look forward to a more detailed report on the conference, though, including a full list of presentations.
[Monday afternoon update]
It should be noted that I’m not advocating geoengineering. I’m just pointing out that for those who do, they shouldn’t exclude space-based solutions because of false preconceptions. It’s sort of like my attitude toward NASA. I wouldn’t weep much if the agency was defunded (other than the personal impacts on my friends who are employees and contractors). But seeing as how that’s unlikely to happen, I’ll continue to lobby to at least have the funds spent sensibly, in terms of actually advancing us in space.
You Don’t Say
Congress apparently didn’t bother to read the bill before voting on it and passing it. I guess it’s just too much trouble.
Do they have any concept of what incompetent boobs they appear to be to we normal people?
The Satellite Dish
And The Hits Just Keep Coming
Here’s the latest, from AT&T. Bet this will encourage them to hire a lot more people:
AT&T Inc. said it plans to take a non-cash charge of about $1 billion in the first quarter following the passage of the health-care reform bill earlier this week, according to a filing submitted by the company Friday. The telecommunication giant will also evaluate changes to its health care benefits for employees and retirees.
But don’t forget — if you like your plan, you can keep it! As long as the ObamaCare hasn’t wiped it out, of course…
And of course, we can at least count on new jobs for IRS agents.
If You Liked The “Stimulus…”
…you’ll love ObamaCare. Further thoughts here:
In both cases, despite broad public skepticism, the Democrats pushed forward on their bill while the White House intensified its messaging efforts, turning President Obama loose on crowd after friendly crowd in an effort to sell Middle America on a near-trillion-dollar fix whose murky specifics were in flux even as it approached a final vote. Sure enough, in both cases polling found support for the measure slowly creeping up as Congress passed the measure (with virtually no Republican support.) And in the days immediately after each became law, public support even reached scant majorities or pluralities in some places, with many saying that though the bill was imperfect, it sure beat doing nothing at all.
Liberals, covered in the stink of success, are now enjoying that bump. But, as I outline in the piece, if Obamacare’s post-passage public opinion trajectory is anything like that of the stimulus, they shouldn’t get too comfortable. A year out, the popularity of the stimulus falls somewhere between Tiger Woods and John Edwards. — and for similar reasons. The stimulus is widely-perceived to have been a failure because it didn’t keep its promise to stop and reverse job losses. Instead, 49 of 50 states have lost jobs since the stimulus passed.
We’re only a few days out from Obamacare’s passage and already reports are piling in from businesses bracing for tax increases and coverage changes. Wait until it’s been a year.
Maybe they should have read the bill…