Remember a few days ago I pointed out how Nancy Pelosi was out and about claiming that unemployment benefits was the greatest job creator in the world? Well guess where she probably got it from – Paul Krugman ? Wait: there’s more. One main reason there aren’t enough jobs right now is weak consumer demand. Helping the unemployed, by putting money in the pockets of people who badly need it, helps support consumer spending. That’s why the Congressional Budget Office rates aid to the unemployed as a highly cost-effective form of economic stimulus. And unlike, say, large infrastructure projects…
Remember a few days ago I pointed out how Nancy Pelosi was out and about claiming that unemployment benefits was the greatest job creator in the world? Well guess where she probably got it from – Paul Krugman ? Wait: there’s more. One main reason there aren’t enough jobs right now is weak consumer demand. Helping the unemployed, by putting money in the pockets of people who badly need it, helps support consumer spending. That’s why the Congressional Budget Office rates aid to the unemployed as a highly cost-effective form of economic stimulus. And unlike, say, large infrastructure projects, aid to the unemployed creates jobs …
In my last print piece, which our benevolent overlords have made available to the nonsubscribing public here , I try to count up the real national debt, i.e., all the money owed by the federal government, state and local governments, entitlement liabilities, government retiree pension obligations, etc. The number I came up with: about $130 trillion, which is to say, nine or ten times the “national debt” we usually talk about. (Over at the New York Post , Michael Tanner has similar questions on his mind.) One thing I didn’t …
New projections from the Congressional Budget Office estimate that four million middle-class Americans could be hit by an average of $1,000 in penalties for failure to get health insurance under Obamacare. Under the new law, the penalties will be phased in starting in 2014. By 2016, those who must get insurance but don’t will be fined $695 or 2.5 percent of their household income, whichever is greater. After 2016, the penalties will be increased by annual cost-of-living adjustments. People will not be required to get coverage if the cheapest plan available costs more than 8 percent of their income. [. . .] About 3 million of those required to pay fines in…
The March jobs report contained some of the good news that analysts have been waiting for. First, private hiring increased by 123,000 jobs, with every sector except financial and information adding jobs. Second, revisions to the employment reports of the previous months were revised upwards. Third, the unemployment rate remained flat at 9.7 percent, despite a tick up in the labor force. (Often, the unemployment rate increases as workers return to the labor force after the worst of a recession has passed. In this case, the labor force increased by 398,000, with most of the workers finding jobs, according to the household survey.) Fourth, both the household and establishment surveys are pointing in the same direction — showing job growth. Finally, hours worked continued its upward climb, matching this recovery’s January high. There is some volatility to these numbers, as teenagers accounted for almost a third of new entrants into the labor force. The teenage unemployment rate sharply increased to 26.1 percent as many of the teenagers were unable to find work. But 325,000 adult men also entered or reentered the labor force, and enough of them found jobs to keep their unemployment rate at 10.0 percent. Overall, the labor force participation has climbed for four straight months but is still well below the pre-recession level. So, the good news is that hiring has resumed and job growth should be consistent throughout the rest of the year. The bad news is that job growth is not yet robust enough to lower the unemployment rate. While hiring is likely to increase as the recovery strengthens, the labor-market recovery is going to be quite slow, especially as compared to some of the previous recessions. Part of the slack of the labor market is indicated by the fact that nominal earnings per hour actually fell in March. This slight dip is due in part to the new hires coming in at entry-level positions with commensurately lower pay. Long-term unemployment is going to remain a problem as the average duration of unemployment now exceeds 31 weeks, a new high. — Rea Hederman is assistant director of the Center for Data Analysis and senior policy analyst at the Heritage Foundation.
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One of the more controversial elements of ObamaCare is the mandate for most individuals to purchase insurance beginning in 2014. There is really no precedent for a federal mandate of this scale requiring individuals to purchase a product or service. So not surprisingly a number of state Attorney Generals have indicated they will be filing suit questioning the constitutionality of this provision. Of course the individual mandate is also very risky from a political standpoint, as the Democrats who orchestrated the passage of this bill are mandating not only that the young and healthy obtain insurance, but also that even their most fervent liberal constituents must purchase this coverage from the “evil”, private insurance industry. Republicans for their part have focused on the fact that this mandate will be enforced via threat of a financial penalty (or tax), with the added assumption that it is the dreaded IRS which will be enforcing this. And sure enough, it’s already been reported that the IRS anticipates hiring possibly in excess of 15,000 additional personnel to deal with the collection of the individual mandate, and other tax related provisions within the bill. However, it turns out that the Democrats who crafted this bill significantly – and I mean significantly – hamstrung the ability of the IRS or any other federal agency to enforce or collect on this mandate. Here is what the federal Joint Committee on Taxation had to say about this issue in a report released earlier this week: Individuals who fail to maintain minimum essential coverage in 2016 are subject to a penalty equal to the greater of: (1) 2.5 percent of household income in excess of the taxpayer’s household income for the taxable year over the threshold amount of income required for income tax return filing for that taxpayer under section 6012(a)(1);67 or (2) $695 per uninsured adult in the household. The fee for an uninsured individual under age 18 is one-half of the adult fee for an adult. The total household penalty may not exceed 300 percent of the per adult penalty ($2,085). The total annual household payment may not exceed the national average annual premium for bronze level health plan offered through the Exchange that year for the household size… The penalty applies to any period the individual does not maintain minimum essential coverage and is determined monthly. The penalty is assessed through the Code and accounted for as an additional amount of Federal tax owed. However, it is not subject to the enforcement provisions of subtitle F of the Code. The use of liens and seizures otherwise authorized for collection of taxes does not apply to the collection of this penalty. Non-compliance with the personal responsibility requirement to have health coverage is not subject to criminal or civil penalties under the Code and interest does not accrue for failure to pay such assessments in a timely manner. According to a footnote in the report, “subtitle F of the Code” is the portion of the tax code which grants the IRS the authority to assess and collect taxes. In other words, as the law is written the federal government has no legal authority to enforce this mandate, nor will it have any recourse to collect any penalties that go unpaid! This issue was actually the subject of a very amusing exchange between Rep. Anthony Wiener and Bill O’Reilly on Wednesday. While the facts seem to vindicate Rep. Wiener who argued repeatedly that the bill would not criminalize non-compliance with the individual mandate, this is actually the worst possible news for those who believe in the merits of the mandate and the bill in general. Because without an effective mechanism of enforcing the individual mandate, the entire system is likely to collapse. (The individual mandate is the “third leg of the stool” as many a liberal has been pointing out for months.) Given that the bill also bans insurance companies from denying coverage based on pre-existing conditions, WHY WOULD ANYONE OBTAIN INSURANCE COVERAGE PRIOR TO NEEDING IT? This was already going to be a problem with the relatively low cost of the penalty, but take away any meaningful enforcement of it and it is a complete and total joke. The net result will be an ever increasing shift of healthcare costs on to those who remain in the insurance system (or to tax payers), and possibly even the bankruptcy of the insurance industry. Given all the double-talk the past year over the public option, and the demonizing of private insurers, it is hard not to wonder whether this was by design. But let’s give our Democratic friends the benefit of the doubt, in which case this represents an inexcusable level of incompetence from the people we have just entrusted with overseeing one-sixth of the economy. Nice job guys.
The Census is coming out soon. We all should have gotten a letter telling us to expect the Census in a week (you don’t ever want to surprise someone with a Census letter!). As always, all the kooks are worried about the government collecting all this information as an invasion of privacy, but I’ve seen the questions on it, and it’s all pretty boilerplate. CENSUS QUESTIONS “How many people are in your household? (NOTE: For purposes of allotting federal funds, whites count as three-fifths of a person)” “Does any member of your household suffer from mental illness, had a recent psychological break, or listen to Glenn Beck?” “If the feds were to storm your home, from which entrance are you most vulnerable?” “Do you approve of President Obama? If not, how long have you been a member of the Klan?” “Do you find Obama to be presidential? What if he wore an important-looking hat?” “What’s your deepest, darkest fear?” “How many guns do you have, where do you keep them, and what times are you most likely to not be home?” “Are you a member of the Tea Party? Follow Up Question: Would you be less alarmed about being rounded up and sent to a camp if you were told the camp had canoeing and wallet-making?” “Are you for health care reform?
John : I haven’t gotten my letter from the Census Bureau yet asking me to make sure I fill out the questionnaire. But when I do fill it out, I’ll use it to send a message. Fully one-quarter of the space on this year’s form is taken up with questions of race and ethnicity, which are clearly illegitimate and none of the government’s business (despite the New York Times ‘ assurances to the contrary on today’s editorial page). So until we succeed in building the needed wall of separation between race and state, I have a proposal. Question 9 on the census form asks “What is Person 1’s race?” (and so on, for other members of the household). My initial impulse was simply to misidentify my race so as to throw a monkey wrench into the statistics; I had fun doing this on the personal-information form my college required every semester, where I was a Puerto Rican Muslim one semester, and a Samoan Buddhist the next.
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Valentine’s Day and President’s Day have always been in a quiet conspiracy against a full and just celebration of my birthday. But in case you’re wondering, today’s my birthday. And I’m 41
The most recent release of unemployment data has raised some questions, namely, how can we lose 20,000 jobs in the same month that the unemployment rate declined to 9.7%. The answer is simple: The unemployment rate is essentially a made-up figure. And I can give you a much more accurate way to measure the unemployment rate. First, let’s take a brief look at how the monthly Employment Situation figures are compiled by the Bureau of Labor Statistics
