Free Market Family Values
7/2/14 12:52![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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talkpoliticsStuart 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.
*
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.
*
(no subject)
Date: 14/2/14 16:34 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 14/2/14 23:46 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 15/2/14 02:27 (UTC)But considering what the situation was before, which was worse than right now, what is your alternative? Would you start cutting people off sooner? Later?
Honestly? I hate this system. Because it's still co-dependency on the insurance industry. All they're doing is basically giving us vouchers for private insurance, when all I want is nationalized insurance.
(no subject)
Date: 16/2/14 22:38 (UTC)Those "crappy low paying jobs" are often all that's available to some people. Are you saying that someone working full time in, say, manual labor or retail, does not deserve a wage that allows them to pay for the basics and save a little on the side?
It's not all high school kids saving up for a car who are flipping burgers at McDonald's.
What "institutionalizes poverty" is a system where the poor are essentially forced to run as fast as they can in place just to survive, and are paid so little it's impossible for them put any money aside in savings.