It wouldn’t be all that surprising if a small hike in the minimum wage had little effect on unemployment. But that doesn’t mean that you can extrapolate that result to very high minimums, like the Sea-Tac law, which hiked the local minimum wage by more than 50 percent from a level that was already well above the national average. To illustrate the problem, imagine raising the minimum wage by a penny. It’s extremely doubtful that anyone would fire workers in order to save 40 cents a week. But you’d be foolish to conclude that it would therefore be safe to raise the minimum wage to $100 an hour. The size of the increase matters.
But Barack Obama (and the Democrats in general) don’t like the idea of the U.S. “winning wars.” They just like to “end” them. Unless they’re wars on Fox News, or Republicans.
Gruber said that Obamacare had no cost controls in it and would not be affordable in an October 2009 policy brief, presented here exclusively by TheDC. At the time, Gruber had already personally counseled Obama in the Oval Office and served on Obama’s presidential transition team. Obama, meanwhile, told the American people that their premiums would go down dramatically.
“The problem is it starts to go hand in hand with the mandate; you can’t mandate insurance that’s not affordable. This is going to be a major issue,” Gruber admitted in an October 2, 2009 lecture, the transcript of which comprised the policy brief.
“So what’s different this time? Why are we closer than we’ve ever been before? Because there are no cost controls in these proposals. Because this bill’s about coverage. Which is good! Why should we hold 48 million uninsured people hostage to the fact that we don’t yet know how to control costs in a politically acceptable way? Let’s get the people covered and then let’s do cost control.”
The magazine, that is. I’m still reading it, but this reminded me of the book:
Astronauts never tire of watching the Earth spin below—one wrote of stopping at a window and being so captivated that he watched an entire orbit without even reaching for a camera. “I have been looking at the Earth, from the point of view of a visiting extraterrestrial,” wrote another. “Where would I put down, and how would I go about making contact? The least dangerous thing would be to board the International Space Station and talk to those people first.”
As I note in the book, the ISS would be “…the first line of defense, a picket, in a space-alien invasion.” And note, as always the fascination with watching the earth below, and marvel at the foolishness of people who think there would be no demand for public space travel.