Free Market Family Values

[paft.livejournal.com]

Stuart Varney: Why don’t you just spend more time with the family, let somebody else work, you go on Obamacare… Stay home, spend more time with the family, let somebody else pay for your healthcare…


It began as the usual Obamacare Horror Story “Bombshell” going pfffffft. We’ve seen it happen, over and over again. A supposedly dire effect of the Affordable Care Act gets cited, which, on examination, turns out to involve someone who could easily afford it paying a higher premium or (in the case of “Bette,” cited during a Republican response to the SOTU) someone who’s been “victimized” by her own refusal to use the options offered by the ACA.

The latest involves the release of the Congressional Budget Office’s report on the impact of the ACA. “Law will reduce fulltime employment by about 2 million,” it was announced. “Healthcare Law will reduce hours worked by about 1.5% to 2% from 2017-2024”

“You wonder how they explain it,” exclaimed a Fox Anchor.

Wouldn’t you know it, CBO director Doug Elmendorf went and spoiled everything by explaining it. See, it’s not so much a matter of jobs being eliminated. It’s a matter of many workers now having the option of reducing their hours or, if they have enough savings, retiring completely from the workforce. As the report says (emphasis added),

The estimated reduction stems almost entirely from a net decline in the amount of labor that workers choose to supply, rather than from a net drop in businesses' demand for labor…


So what’s the next step on the right? Act outraged that many workers will actually be in a position to, not just leave jobs they dislike for jobs they prefer, but also cut back on their work hours so they can spend more time with their (get this) families.



Or worse yet, if they’ve got enough in savings, retire!

Jon Stewart puts it beautifully in his reaction in Varney’s comments, “What the Hell? You’re conservatives. I thought you guys loved the family.”…’The family must be protected from asteroids, nuclear weapons, dudes in love, they have to be protected!’”

Some of you may remember last autumn a thread on retail workers being made to work on Thanksgiving (or, as one sniveling coward of a retailer put it in its ads, “Thursday.”) Stewart remembers the issue too.

“Now that I think about it,” he observes, “When family clashes with capitalism around the holidays, conservatives throw family overboard.”

Yes, yes, I remember the arguments I encountered here. Giving an employee paid time off on that day is a dire restriction of their freedom. Demanding they come in to work on a major holiday isn’t going to seriously crimp any plans. Nobody books air tickets months in advance and endures long security lines and packed planes for the sake of traveling to see the folks on that day. And requiring someone to man the toy department on Thanksgiving Day is just the same as asking emergency and health workers, airline and telecom employees and other vital transportation and communication personnel to work on that day.

Which left me with the spooky sense the Internet is not just a revolutionary means of communication that spans the globe. It may very well enable us to interact with the inhabitants of some parallel universe where airports are all but empty in late November through December and retail workers are clamoring for the chance to work on what, (in this universe,) is a wildly popular, family oriented holiday.

I kid, of course. The people making these bizarre arguments are, in fact, inhabitants of our world, who, for the sake of defending the indefensible, are willing to feign a complete disconnection from reality. But the more I listen to free market conservatives, the more it sounds as though they believe only upper management should reproduce. In the minds of these folks, people making below a certain amount have no business bearing children or keeping in touch with aging relatives or siblings.

Apparently, a JOB is not a way for people to support themselves and their dependents while contributing to either the private or public sector. If it pays so little and takes up so much time that there is nothing left for friends and family, workers shouldn’t complain. They should just be glad they have a JOB.

A JOB after all, is a quasi-religious requirement, which establishes a firm caste system (see the arguments about whether someone who digs ditches 40 hours a week “deserves” a living wage) and trumps any other personal tie or obligation.

*

Comments

[fizzyland.livejournal.com]

If ObamaCare was really a job killer, Republicans would have been all over it.

[telemann.livejournal.com]

Washington Post Fact checker: "No, CBO did not say Obamacare will kill 2 million jobs" (http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/fact-checker/wp/2014/02/04/no-cbo-did-not-say-obamacare-will-kill-2-million-jobs/)

[badlydrawnjeff.livejournal.com]

The issue is not the why, but that people consider this a benefit. The why largely doesn't matter - the claim that the ACA is going to cost jobs remains true - it's the adverse result it creates.

[soliloquy76.livejournal.com]

Are you saying that as labor supply diminishes, so will demand? Because that's the only way it "costs jobs." If the demand remains stable, those extra hours will be filled by someone else. Also, why is the result considered adverse when it gives people more options? If someone is putting off retirement or raising their kids because they need their employer's health care package, then their hours are being artificially propped up by their employer-sponsored health care. So the decoupling of health care from employment would have the same result. This portability feature is always present in any GOP-sponsored health care alternative.

[hardblue.livejournal.com]

Since we're both fans of Krugman.

~ ~ ~

On Wednesday, Douglas Elmendorf, the director of the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, said the obvious: losing your job and choosing to work less aren’t the same thing. If you lose your job, you suffer immense personal and financial hardship. If, on the other hand, you choose to work less and spend more time with your family, “we don’t sympathize. We say congratulations.”

[...]

It has always been clear that health reform will induce some Americans to work less. Some people will, for example, retire earlier because they no longer need to keep working to keep their health insurance. Others will reduce their hours to spend more time with their children because insurance is no longer contingent on holding a full-time job.

-- NYT (http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/07/opinion/krugman-health-work-lies.html?hp&rref=opinion)

The horrors!

[paft.livejournal.com]

How is it "adverse" when it offers more people enough wriggle room to work fewer hours if they want to?

[the-rukh.livejournal.com]

The why may not matter to you, but for people who are making the decision, which you are claiming is a big number, I think, that's a pretty big why.

[the-rukh.livejournal.com]

Conversely: ITT Jeff claiming that millions of workers don't matter.

[fizzyland.livejournal.com]

it's the adverse result it creates

Evidence for this or we just supposed to take this claim on faith?

[kylinrouge.livejournal.com]

Spending more time with the family - an adverse result.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

These are people who piously bash gays and hard drugs in speeches before they go get on blow and do their gay lovers while insulting their own immediate kin if that kin still keeps in contact with them. Expecting Republicans in Congress to embody family values is like expecting PETA to run a steakhouse. Expecting them to actually implement policies that support those values is like expecting PETA shelters not to kill all the animals that go into them because they were 'ruined' by contact with the beast Man.

[anfalicious.livejournal.com]

PETA* Steak Sauce (http://www.hotsauceworld.com/hsw3551.html)


*People for the Eating of Tasty Animals.


EDIT: So I looked up the whole PETA Euthanising animals things, and firstly, it all sounds like an excuse cos looking after animals is *hard*, and secondly HOLY SHIT BURGERS WHATS WITH ALL THE ANIMAL TORTURE PORN ON THE PETA WEBSITE??!?!?! Those people are fucking sick.

[cheezyfish.livejournal.com]

The problem with this report has nothing to do with the ACA costing jobs. It has to do with providing government subsidies so people no longer have to work full time. This is the government paying people not to work. It isn't a good thing.

[fizzyland.livejournal.com]

This is the government paying people not to work.

You didn't read the report or even a vaguely intelligent summary, did you?

[yes-justice.livejournal.com]

It has to do with providing government subsidies so people no longer have to work full time.

Because having healthcare tied to your full time employment is somehow a good thing!

Half of foreclosures are due to health care costs. (http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1416947)

"In contrast, we find that half of all foreclosures have medical causes, and we estimate that medical crises put 1.5 million Americans in jeopardy of losing their homes last year.

Half of all respondents (49%) indicated that their foreclosure was caused in part by a medical problem, including illness or injuries (32%), unmanageable medical bills (23%), lost work due to a medical problem (27%), or caring for sick family members (14%). We also examined objective indicia of medical disruptions in the previous two years, including those respondents paying more than $2,000 of medical bills out of pocket (37%), those losing two or more weeks of work because of injury or illness (30%), those currently disabled and unable to work (8%), and those who used their home equity to pay medical bills (13%). Altogether, seven in ten respondents (69%) reported at least one of these factors."

Some indys just want to vote in the other sides open primaries, eh?

[fizzyland.livejournal.com]

This Chart Is for Everyone Who Says Obamacare Is Creating a Nation of Part-Time Workers (http://www.slate.com/blogs/business_insider/2014/02/08/chart_full_time_vs_part_time_workers_after_obamacare.html)

[kylinrouge.livejournal.com]

But what if I want to work a part-time job with no benefits? My freedoms...

[brother-dour.livejournal.com]

You can't let the working class have any free time! They might think they're people.

[sandwichwarrior.livejournal.com]

The estimated reduction stems almost entirely from a net decline in the amount of labor that workers choose to supply, rather than from a net drop in businesses' demand for labor…

So what’s the next step on the right? Act outraged that many workers will actually be in a position to, not just leave jobs they dislike for jobs they prefer, but also cut back on their work hours so they can spend more time with their (get this) families.

By that logic an unemployment rate of 50 or even 100 percent is nothing to worry about, even laudable, provided the unemployed were "choosing" not to work rather than being unable to find work.

This is supremely childish thinking.

If the working population of a country doesn't produce or earn enough to feed both themselves and the non-working population people starve. More people leaving the workforce means that working population must work that much harder to maintain their current standard of living. Likewise, because work is the principal means upward mobility in our society, more unemployment means more people stuck at the bottom.

The people making these bizarre arguments are, in fact, inhabitants of our world, who, for the sake of defending the indefensible, are willing to feign a complete disconnection from reality.

It takes one to know one, it just goes to show where your supposedly progressive views on "income inequality", "class mobility", and "exploitation" truly lie.

[kylinrouge.livejournal.com]

Yes, I'm sure paft was making the argument of 'more unemployment is good'.

Keep drinking that haterade.

[kylinrouge.livejournal.com]

The GOP are experts are looking at a set of data in a vacuum and making sweeping conclusions about it.

Fear is all they have left. "Look at these numbers and despair!" ObamaCare is making people's lives better, and that will hurt their narcissistic grip on this country.

[paft.livejournal.com]

Fear and unreason.

Reading right wing arguments these days you get the sense they aren't even trying to makes sense any more.

[malasadas.livejournal.com]

If there was data showing lower middle income earners were taking money they saved on exchange purchased plans and then used it to open up retirement savings accounts, conservatives would accuse the ACA of undermining people's confidence in Social Security.

[telemann.livejournal.com]

Russ Douthat has a great op-ed in the New York Times "Leaving work behind." (http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/09/opinion/sunday/douthat-leaving-work-behind.html?hp&rref=opinion&_r=0) And in it, he cites an essay by Keynes “Economic Possibilities for Our Grandchildren,” (http://www.econ.yale.edu/smith/econ116a/keynes1.pdf) and Keynes believed we would have a 15 hour work week. It's a great read, and so is the op-ed, and it touches on a lot of the topics you've seen written here (particularly the "incentive from Obamacare NOT to work."

Many thanks to hardblue who posted the link in another forum.

[allhatnocattle.livejournal.com]

[kylinrouge.livejournal.com]

[paft.livejournal.com]

HOkay, I think it's pretty obvious at this point, given some of the most recent comments, that those people trying to use the CBO report as a club against the ACA are deliberately and utterly disconnected from reality.

At least, the reality in this universe, in which western industrialized countries have had subsidized healthcare for years without their citizenry shying away from offered jobs to the point where production suffers and vital goods are going scarce.

Like I said, it's possible we're getting missives from some parallell world in which the only way to prevent the human population from slumping into a mass of dimwitted Eloi is by consigning the majority to lives of hungry desperation. In those worlds, the best many can hope for is a constitution strong enough to withstand years of long, stressful work and enough luck to avoid the single accident or illness that will plunge them into bankruptcy, homelessness, etc.

I only hope one of these posters don't figure out a way to physically manifest him/herself into our own world. I'd hate to have to spend eternity in limbo battling libertarian social-Darwinist Paft to prevent a complete implosion of the space/time continuum.

[kylinrouge.livejournal.com]

ObamaCare is obviously going to keep people poor because they have no reason to make more money now.