D-Industries Cuts Hours Ahead Of Obamacare Implementation

[_Droopy]

To see just how far to the nice-young-men-in-their-clean-white-jackets Left Graham actually is, one only has to see that even other regions of the hard Left are seeing the writing on the wall at this point:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/0 ... 10321.html

But there are many far more intellectually substantive sources of such News than the Huffington Puffington Post.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/sallypipes/ ... obamacare/

Now they’re engaging in some financial jiu-jitsu. Many firms — including small ones — are looking to “self-insure” so that they can avoid the sky-high insurance premiums that Obamacare augurs on the open market and through the exchanges.

If small businesses opt out of the exchanges Obamacare expressly designed for them, those marketplaces could fall apart before they even launch. Small businesses are particularly ill-equipped to deal with the labyrinth of rules, regulation, and mandates that Obamacare will install next year — even if they don’t have to comply with the employer mandate.

A survey by the American Action Forum found that major insurers in five big cities expect some small-business premiums to more than double. A Massachusetts insurance broker is warning small businesses there to expect rate hikes of 30 percent or more next year.

In Maryland, CareFirst Blue Cross Blue Shield, the state’s largest insurer, is seeking approval for a 15-percent hike on small-business plans in 2014. Rhode Island insurers are pushing for equally steep increases — and pointing to Obamacare as the cause.

You'll have to be capable of at least some rudimentary degree of critical thinking and have a smattering of econ 101 to process this, but if you do, the writing on the wall has a discernible neon glow.

Here's another clear example:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/rickungar/2 ... nsibility/

Other shrinking of compensation, beyond wages, is also in the offing as Obamacare approches:

http://news.investors.com/050113-654209 ... htm?p=full

Oh, and this statement here should provide reason for serious pause if you were foolish enough to have voted for this man and if you were thirsty enough to have drunk the Obamacare Kool-Aid at the outset:

Employer spending on benefits rose at the slowest pace on record in the first quarter, as companies began bracing for higher health costs with next year's launch of ObamaCare.

One also notices something that's been in the air this last year, as the truth began to seep into public consciousness:

Total employee benefits provided outside of government jobs declined outright.

There does seem, however, to be some whiff of some degree of sweet revenge in the air, in all of this:

http://www.aei-ideas.org/2013/01/confus ... penalties/

Barack Obama is a former adjunct professor of constitutional law, and no group has been more solidly supportive of his liberal agenda than the professorial class. So it is a sweet irony that the latest group getting hammered by the mandates of Obamacare are … wait for it … adjunct professors.

The Wall Street Journal reports:

The federal health-care overhaul is prompting some colleges and universities to cut the hours of adjunct professors. [...] The Affordable Care Act requires large employers to offer a minimum level of health insurance to employees who work 30 hours a week or more starting in 2014, or face a penalty. The mandate is a particular challenge for colleges and universities, which increasingly rely on adjuncts to help keep costs down as states have scaled back funding for higher education.

A handful of schools, including Community College of Allegheny County in Pennsylvania and Youngstown State University in Ohio, have curbed the number of classes that adjuncts can teach in the current spring semester to limit the schools’ exposure to the health-insurance requirement.

The professors are understandably confused. Robert Balla, an adjunct professor of English at Stark State College, in North Canton, Ohio received a letter in which he was told that “in order to avoid penalties under the Affordable Care Act…employees with part-time or adjunct status will not be assigned more than an average of 29 hours per week.” He told the Journal that the move cut his $40,000 salary by about $2,000 and that he cannot afford health insurance.

“I think it goes against the spirit of the [health-care] law,” Mr. Balla said. “In education, we’re working for the public good, we are public employees at a public institution; we should be the first ones to uphold the law, to set the example.”

A spokeswoman for Stark State explained the realities of the market. The new rules were necessary “to maintain the fiscal stability of the college. There are a lot of penalties involved if adjuncts go over their 29 hours-per-week average. The college can be fined and the fines are substantial.”

Really? Substantial penalties? You don’t say.

You can just imagine the outraged conversations in the faculty lounge now: “We’re professors. I thought stuff like this only happened to manual laborers at Wendy’s and Taco Bell!”

Looks like the academy is finally getting a lesson in the costs of big government liberalism.

http://www.aei-ideas.org/2013/05/was-th ... bs-report/

http://www.marketwatch.com/Story/story/ ... 2128040CF6

Socialism does not and cannot work. The nation is now and has long been, broke. There is no money to fund Obamacare, nor much else this administration is doing. As the plethora of new taxes created in a futile effort to effectively fund Obamacare soar, employment and economic activity will shrink, as they must. The over $6 trillion in federal debt (http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-250_162-575 ... ok-office/) Obama has created to fund kick-backs to his cronies and hangers-on, payback political debt, and fund his stimulus and quantitative easing schemes as well as bail out foreign banks and financial institutions, is pure inflation. It represents resources that do not exist and commodities that were never created.

[_Droopy]

Yes, it is all about maximizing profit and nothing to do with helping people or anything else Christlike. The whole Mormon church is likewise merely proceeding in such a way as to maximize profit. It is a business with as much heart and soul as an ATM machine. Money changers.

Take both your economic illiteracy, your soaring left-wing pseudo-moral pomposity, and your insufferable hypocrisy, and shove them where bodily processes best left unmentioned take place.

[Guest]

Making insurance premiums tax-deductible is a subsidization of insurance premiums. As we know from your body of posts, having the government subsidize health insurance premiums consists of a government takeover of the healthcare industry.

What you've just claimed is that a personal tax deduction using one's one money for the purpose of purchasing health insurance is equivalent to the subsidization of health insurance companies.

Extended to its logical conclusion, any cut in tax rates whatsoever (income, payroll, dividend, capital gains, death, etc.) is tantamount to the subsidization of all things in the private sector economy money retained in individual private hands would go to purchasing that were not purchased or subsidized had the state retained the funds.

Translation: all money income belongs, by definition, to the state. Any personal income left within any specific private hands by the state below a previously established level is done so by the good graces of government, and becomes, at that lower level of taxable income, a gift of government of the government's property. It does not, in a moral or conceptual sense, even if never actually collected, become the taxpayers own private funds, but retains its connection to the state as a transfer of the taxpayer's own wealth back to him from the state. Anything he then buys with that portion of his own money is then a subsidy to those from whom he purchases, being, in effect, government money in private hands.

When I get a tax deduction for an insurance premium, and then use it at ACME Health Insurance, those funds, even though they were never actually taxed, remain as if they had been - conceptually, government funds.

See how easy this is? If the government uses tax money to purchase or underwrite health insurance, that's a government subsidy. According to Analytics, if I use my own private funds that would have been taxed but were not, due to the claiming of a health insurance tax deduction, those funds that would have been taxed away but weren't are still considered, effectively, government funds, and anything I purchase with them is a de facto subsidy to ACME Health Insurance, and, in Analytic's mind, does not represent a private economic transaction in the private sector.

This is how sick, perverted, and fundamentally immoral the entire socialist mentality really is, and what it portends for the future if it is allowed to continue its creeping metastatization through the American body politic.

[_Analytics]

Obamacare actually does this by forcing everyone to buy.

Obamacare "forces" people to buy health insurance in the same way that the home mortgage deduction forces people to take out a mortgage. If you take out a mortgage or buy health insurance, you get a moderate tax break. If you don't take out a mortgage or buy health insurance, you don't get the tax break. That's it.

[_Analytics]

Making insurance premiums tax-deductible is a subsidization of insurance premiums. As we know from your body of posts, having the government subsidize health insurance premiums consists of a government takeover of the healthcare industry.

What you've just claimed is that a personal tax deduction using one's one money for the purpose of purchasing health insurance is equivalent to the subsidization of health insurance companies.

Extended to its logical conclusion...

Here is the real logic.

System 1: I make a cool $100,000 a year, and the tax system is your wet dream: everybody pays a flat 10% of their income. So, I pay $10,000 in taxes. Health insurance premiums happen to be $10,000. I then get a letter from the government that says if I purchase health insurance, they will directly pay half of insurance bill. The government directly paying for 50% of my health insurance is a subsidy, is it not?

System 1's net result:
If I don’t buy health insurance
I get $90,000 of my $100,000 gross income
The government gets $10,000

If I do buy health insurance
I get $85,000 of my $100,000 income
The government gets $5,000 (the $10,000 in taxes less the $5,000 to insurer)
The health insurance company gets $10,000

System 2: I make a cool $100,000 a year, and again, the tax system is based on a 10% scale. However, the government tells me that if and only if I purchase health insurance, they will lower my tax bill to $5,000. According to you, this isn’t a subsidy, because it is simply me getting to keep more of my own money, right? But let’s look at the net result:

System 2's net result:
If I don’t buy health insurance
I get $90,000 of my $100,000 gross income
The government gets $10,000

If I do buy health insurance
I get $85,000 of my $100,000 income
The government gets $5,000
The health insurance company gets $10,000

People who understand logic and economics understand that if System 1 constitutes the government giving a subsidy, then System 2 must also be a subsidy, because both system offer exactly the same distribution of wealth and incentives.

...This is how sick, perverted, and fundamentally immoral the entire socialist mentality really is...

Clear thinking is neither sick, perverted, nor fundamentally immoral.

[_Kevin Graham]

But there is a terrible flaw in your post, Analytics.

The fact that you're trying to reason with someone beyond reasoning. He gets particularly upset and confused whenever numbers are mentioned. His attempt to explain how Obama added 6 trillion to our debt was a classic example of this.

Droopy's mind is terribly small, but at least its made up.

[_Analytics]

But there is a terrible flaw in your post, Analytics.

The fact that you're trying to reason with someone beyond reasoning. He gets particularly upset and confused whenever numbers are mentioned. His attempt to explain how Obama added 6 trillion to our debt was a classic example of this.

Droopy's mind is terribly small, but at least its made up.

If he can’t find holes in my reasoning by himself, he can always seek assistance from Thomas Sowell. As a matter of fact, I encourage him to do so and post Sowell's response.

[_Droopy]

System 1: I make a cool $100,000 a year, and the tax system is your wet dream: everybody pays a flat 10% of their income. So, I pay $10,000 in taxes. Health insurance premiums happen to be $10,000. I then get a letter from the government that says if I purchase health insurance, they will directly pay half of insurance bill. The government directly paying for 50% of my health insurance is a subsidy, is it not?

Yup.

System 1's net result:
If I don’t buy health insurance
I get $90,000 of my $100,000 gross income
The government gets $10,000

If I do buy health insurance
I get $85,000 of my $100,000 income
The government gets $5,000 (the $10,000 in taxes less the $5,000 to insurer)
The health insurance company gets $10,000

System 2: I make a cool $100,000 a year, and again, the tax system is based on a 10% scale. However, the government tells me that if and only if I purchase health insurance, they will lower my tax bill to $5,000. According to you, this isn’t a subsidy, because it is simply me getting to keep more of my own money, right? But let’s look at the net result:

System 2's net result:
If I don’t buy health insurance
I get $90,000 of my $100,000 gross income
The government gets $10,000

If I do buy health insurance
I get $85,000 of my $100,000 income
The government gets $5,000
The health insurance company gets $10,000

People who understand logic and economics understand that if System 1 constitutes the government giving a subsidy, then System 2 must also be a subsidy, because both system offer exactly the same distribution of wealth and incentives.

The problem still remains. When the state reaches into the federal piggy bank, takes out $5,000, and "redistributes" it to someone else, that's clearly a government subsidy; a transfer of wealth from the state to someone in the private sector.

When the state cuts your taxes by $5,000, allowing you to keep the $5,000 for the purpose of buying health insurance, and you take your $10,000 ($5,000 of your net income plus the $5,000 you would have sent to the state in taxes but which was retained as a tax deduction to be used for health insurance) and give it to ACME Health Insurance in exchange for coverage, please explain for us where a redistribution of wealth or a government wealth transfer has taken place? The only transfer in evidence here is between the private individual and his own funds and a private insurer.

The fallacy within your argument is here:

People who understand logic and economics understand that if System 1 constitutes the government giving a subsidy, then System 2 must also be a subsidy, because both systems offer exactly the same distribution of wealth and incentives.

1. In which case, the concept of "subsidy" is being used in its broadest, most expansive possible sense to mean simply "a grant or gift on money" and not in its more common, limited, and specific sense as "a grant by a government to a private person or company to assist an enterprise deemed advantageous to the public." In the first case, this is clearly inapplicable, as giving money to ACME Insurance Company in exchange for an insurance premium is neither a grant nor a gift, but a market exchange in which a certain amount of property (money) which the holder deems of less value is exchanged for something (an insurance premium) which he holds to be of greater value than the money he gives in exchange.

In the first place, this is not a gift or grant, as something of greater value is exchanged, or given in return for the property held to be of lesser value expended. Without such an exchange, no transaction would take place.

Secondly, when the state dips into its big pile of money and transfers some of it to Frank to buy health insurance, vs. cutting Frank's taxes if he will buy it, a substantial portion of that $5,000 Frank receives as a government check earmarked for ACME Health Insurance has already been dissipated in government overhead (the administrative costs of managing the bureaucracy and its workforce that processes, writes, and distributes such checks) It costs much more to send Frank a check from the Federal Treasury than it does to just not collect the $5,000 at all.

Thirdly, the incentives are not the same, nor are its psychological and moral effects. Subsidization encourages buying that otherwise wouldn't take place and encourages reckless, economic risk-taking that would be discouraged when one uses only his own funds and lives within his/her means. It also encourages rampant price inflation in the industries (such as health insurance and college/university tuition) that know they can squeeze the consumer for all he's worth because the consumer is not ultimately paying, or only partially paying, the full bill, the rest being shifted onto third parties. Without either the subsidy or the tax deduction, Frank, depending upon his age, health, and personal preferences, might by something well under $10,000 and avoid "cadillac" plans he doesn't feel he needs at the moment. Government subsidy inserts the idea that something is "free" or of less cost than it actually is into the mind of the consumer, and separates him from an understanding of the actual costs of the things he desires, and that introduces distortions of market processes and dynamics that can be quite severe.

So there are several interrelated problems here. The first is the use of the term "subsidy" which is being used indiscriminately to describe government transfers of wealth from the federal treasure equally with buying a hamburger at Wendy's with my own money. As I said, this effectively implies that all personal wealth falls within the category of "government funds" because it makes the term "subsidy" stand in for all private economic transactions as much as for government grants or gifts from the public to the private sector.

Secondly, as government interference within the medical industry and delivery system itself is the prime cause of the runaway price inflation in that sector of the economy since the mid-sixties, the answer is not either a tax deduction or a subsidy, but the return of the American health care system to a dynamic, competitive free-market for services in which the state has no role in mandating any purchase, at any level of coverage, and allows individuals do decide for themselves what they will purchase, within what price range, and for what reasons.

[_Analytics]

System 1: I make a cool $100,000 a year, and the tax system is your wet dream: everybody pays a flat 10% of their income. So, I pay $10,000 in taxes. Health insurance premiums happen to be $10,000. I then get a letter from the government that says if I purchase health insurance, they will directly pay half of insurance bill. The government directly paying for 50% of my health insurance is a subsidy, is it not?

Yup….

The problem still remains. When the state reaches into the federal piggy bank, takes out $5,000, and "redistributes" it to someone else, that's clearly a government subsidy; a transfer of wealth from the state to someone in the private sector.

When the state cuts your taxes by $5,000, allowing you to keep the $5,000 for the purpose of buying health insurance, and you take your $10,000 ($5,000 of your net income plus the $5,000 you would have sent to the state in taxes but which was retained as a tax deduction to be used for health insurance) and give it to ACME Health Insurance in exchange for coverage, please explain for us where a redistribution of wealth or a government wealth transfer has taken place? The only transfer in evidence here is between the private individual and his own funds and a private insurer.

Do you really not see the fallacy in your logic? I’m sure you must, but I’ll play along, just for fun. Your fallacy is this: your argument is based on the idea that the government reducing your tax liability by $5,000 is inherently different than the government sending you a $5,000 check. Sure, one is a “transfer” of cash, but that transfer of cash is worth no more nor less than the reduction in the tax liability. If a $5,000 reduction in a liability is worth the same as a $5,000 check (and believe me, it is), then whether it is a “transfer” or a reduction in a liability is irrelevant.

The fallacy within your argument is here:

People who understand logic and economics understand that if System 1 constitutes the government giving a subsidy, then System 2 must also be a subsidy, because both systems offer exactly the same distribution of wealth and incentives.

1. In which case, the concept of "subsidy" is being used in its broadest, most expansive possible sense to mean simply "a grant or gift on money" and not in its more common, limited, and specific sense as "a grant by a government to a private person or company to assist an enterprise deemed advantageous to the public."

There is no real difference between a $5,000 reduction in a liability and a $5,000 payment in cash—none whatsoever. You are using the word “subsidy” in an artificially restricted sense. But this implies that there is something inherently different between two things that are worth exactly the same.

The Concise Encyclopedia of the Meridian Webster Dictionary describes a subsidy as this:

Financial assistance, either through direct payments or through indirect means such as price cuts and favourable contracts, to a person or group in order to promote a public objective.

Free-market economics is based on the concept that people are rational. Rational agents know that there is no difference between a $5,000 reduction in a liability and a $5,000 cash transfer.

It costs much more to send Frank a check from the Federal Treasury than it does to just not collect the $5,000 at all.

Whether it does or not is irrelevant to the argument. But you are wrong anyway, and I’m quite surprised that you are taking this position. “Simply not collecting the $5,000 at all” is what causes our tax code to be so complex, which results in citizens paying $140 billion dollars and spending 7.6 billion hours to file their taxes. A flat tax and direct government subsidies would be far, far, more efficient.

Thirdly, the incentives are not the same, nor are its psychological and moral effects….

Free market economics is based on the premise that people are rational. If they are, then the incentives are identical. It sounds like you are coming around to the position that they aren’t rational. Touché.

Subsidization encourages buying that otherwise wouldn't take place and encourages reckless, economic risk-taking that would be discouraged when one uses only his own funds and lives within his/her means. It also encourages rampant price inflation in the industries (such as health insurance and college/university tuition) that know they can squeeze the consumer for all he's worth because the consumer is not ultimately paying, or only partially paying, the full bill, the rest being shifted onto third parties. Without either the subsidy or the tax deduction….

[emphasis added]

Dude! Did you forget which position you are arguing? You are supposed to say that direct subsidies have these negative effects, but tax deductions don’t!

So there are several interrelated problems here. The first is the use of the term "subsidy" which is being used indiscriminately to describe government transfers of wealth from the federal treasure equally with buying a hamburger at Wendy's with my own money.

No, I’m using the term “subsidy” in exactly the same way that, say, Myron Scholes et. al. use it in the text book Taxes and Business Strategy: A Planning Approach. And I’m not being indiscriminate at all—I’m merely recognizing that a $5,000 reduction in a liability is worth exactly as much as a $5,000 cash payment.

As I said, this effectively implies that all personal wealth falls within the category of "government funds"…

Yes, you’ve said that. But it is a total, unequivocal non sequitur.

Secondly, as government interference within the medical industry and delivery system itself is the prime cause of the runaway price inflation in that sector of the economy since the mid-sixties, the answer is not either a tax deduction or a subsidy…

We aren’t talking about the causes of inflation in medical costs. We are talking about the fact that tax deductions are in fact subsidies.

[_bcspace]

Obamacare actually does this by forcing everyone to buy.

Obamacare "forces" people to buy health insurance in the same way that the home mortgage deduction forces people to take out a mortgage. If you take out a mortgage or buy health insurance, you get a moderate tax break. If you don't take out a mortgage or buy health insurance, you don't get the tax break. That's it.

Apples on oranges by your own words. One doesn't have a choice to buy health insurance anymore.