Friday, February 7, 2014
Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them
Naturally, and without surprise, the GOP noise machine took a CBO report on the A.C.A. and deliberately misrepresented what it said, claiming two million jobs would be lost because of the health care law.
Nobel Prize winning economist, Paul Krugman, sets the record straight:
"Not a word of this claim was true.
The budget office report didn’t say that people will lose their jobs. It declared explicitly that the predicted fall in hours worked will come “almost entirely because workers will choose to supply less labor” (emphasis added). And as we’ve already seen, Mr. Elmendorf did his best the next day to explain that voluntary reductions in work hours are nothing like involuntary job loss.
Oh, and because labor supply will be reduced, wages will go up, not down. We should add that the budget office believes that health reform will actually reduce unemployment over the next few years.
[...] Remember, the campaign against health reform has, at every stage, grabbed hold of any and every argument it could find against insuring the uninsured, with truth and logic never entering into the matter.
Think about it.
We had the nonexistent death panels.
We had false claims that the Affordable Care Act will cause the deficit to balloon.
We had supposed horror stories about ordinary Americans facing huge rate increases, stories that collapsed under scrutiny.
And now we have a fairly innocuous technical estimate misrepresented as a tale of massive economic damage.
Meanwhile, the reality is that American health reform — flawed and incomplete though it is — is making steady progress.
No, millions of Americans won’t lose their jobs, but tens of millions will gain the security of knowing that they can get and afford the health care they need."
Aaron Carroll at CNN:
"I understand why opponents of the ACA have long tried to twist these facts to support a position that declares the ACA is hurting the economy and increasing unemployment. But I'm baffled as to why the media failed to see that the key piece of evidence, the CBO report, didn't uphold their claims.
There's a big difference between a reduction in the supply of labor and a reduction in the demand for labor. It's time we all learned the difference."
h/t Daily Kos
CBO Report: Obamacare Will Make Us More Free
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
29 comments:
In fact, if some people choose to work less, that will actually work to the advantage of those of us who are looking for full-time jobs, since there's less competition. Everybody wins.
Republicans' track record is getting to the point that if a Republican tells you a certain car is blue, you'd be best advised to assume it must be some other color, until you've seen it for yourself.
Nevertheless, the administration needs to make sure the reality of this point is clarified for the public. Lies can still cost elections if enough people believe them.
It is a great thing because people can spend more time with their family and don't have to stay at a job they don't like.
We forgot to celebrate Ronald Reagan's birthday yesterday. Just think infidel if he were still around you would have full time job. The current administration is doing a great job elimination.
I am sure you heard the unemployment rate increased again. What do you expect, he has only had five years.
Damn, now the fringe right is hatin' on freedom.
Whodathunkit?
skud: "I am sure you heard the unemployment rate increased again. What do you expect, he has only had five years."
Job Growth Less Than Expected, But Unemployment Hits 5-Year Low
The unemployment rate is at its lowest level in five years
Unemployment rate hits 5-year low
Yes, Ducky, it has come to this. If Mr. Obama's policy promotes individual freedom, then the Gee-Oh-Pee-ers HAVE to be against it.
Their pundit, bloggers, and pols are such silly people.
What was I thinking. After only five years this administration has been able to lower the unemployment rate to 6.6% from 6.7%.
According to the huffpost 75% of jobs "created" are part time. Just think, once people realize they can increase their government assistance by going from full time to part time the unemployment rate will drastically fall. The community organizer may be able to get the job participation rate above 63%, what a leader.
BTW I guess being on welfare is exercising your individual freedom.
Green Eagle has a really good comment on this in his latest post:
...once people aren't desperate to hang on to their jobs to keep their health care coverage, they will (the CBO projects) choose to work less. And in the U.S. - the industrialized country with by far the longest work week, shortest paid vacation, and the worst sick leave policy, that is not a bad thing. A few decades ago, one full time worker working 40 hours a week could support a family in this country. Now, we have been so squeezed that it takes two workers to insure any kind of security. And then, the very people who enabled this vicious squeeze on working people, scream about there not being enough jobs to go around. Well, maybe ending the need to keep a full time job to have health care will start to change this brutal situation, and it can't happen too soon. In my opinion, if all Obamacare accomplished was dealing a blow to the employers' stranglehold on workers, it would be enough.
In other words, workers are finally getting some of the flexibility that workers in other advanced countries have had for decades.
There have been times in my life when I would have preferred to work part time, but couldn't because I'd have lost health insurance. If only the ACA had existed then!
News events this week (as seen through the eyes of your stalwart cephalopod):
1 - The debate between Bill Nye, the science guy, and Ken Ham of Rannygazoo fame;
2 – The CBO Report forecasting the impact of ObamaCare on ‘voluntary’ employment.
Of the first, I can build an entire ontological argument around nonsense words. Think of the Rannygazoo, a mythological being, greater than great, of which nothing greater can be conceived. Since it is ‘greater’ to exist in reality than in the mind alone, I can prove the existence of the great and powerful Rannygazoo, who rules the Universe (and whose “name shall not be taken in vain,” as commanded by the great and powerful Rannygazoo Himself) on the basis of words alone. The same logic applies to the great and almighty Taradiddle, who presides over all things Fiddlefaddle.
About the CBO Report, ObamaCare will set you free, but not according to the true believers of Rannygazoo. Since ObamaCare will make people less dependent on employers for health insurance, they can retire early, start a business, pursue a degree, or spend more time with their families without fear of losing their health care coverage. OMG, “ObamaCare will kill the incentive to work,” claims the worshippers of Rannygazoo and Taradiddle.
“In the beginning was the nonsense word, and the word was with Rannygazoo.” Whether magical thinking drives ontology, or the reverse, there will always be people who think words have the power to alter reality, change the laws of physics, dismiss geological history, ignore fossil evidence, and misattribute the words of others. Here is root of all ignorance in the world.
Ronald Reagan is why we are in the mess we find ourselves in today. The debate for so long has concerned the bush tax cuts, but we need to roll back the Reagan tax cuts!
As for the "what a leader" crack, John Boehner recently said "...you know, leaders need followers. ... It's hard to keep 218 frogs in a wheelbarrow long enough to get a bill passed"... but Obama has it worse, in that not only do the Republican refuse to allow Obama to lead; they've actually conspired against him.
Republicans are terrible followers and terrible representatives (of the people who elected Obama because they chose his agenda over that of Mittens'). They are also *some other insult that is as AWFUL as being called a community organizer*.
"After only five years this administration has been able to lower the unemployment rate to 6.6% from 6.7%."
SKUD, the unrelenting DUD:
Here is a chart showing National Unemployment Rates from January 2008 through January 2014 inclusive. Please note: The National Unemployment Rate reached a high of 10.2% in October 2009, remained above the 10% level for the next two months, and remained above the 9% level for the next two years (2010 through 2011).
Maybe you need to write these numbers on the blackboard 500 times! FYI: The Great Recession started in 2007 during the Bush Administration, or do I need to rub your nose in this dog shit too.
Do you pull stunts like this to deliberately antagonize us, or do enjoy playing the fool, the village idiot, and the incest-addled Southern boy with six fingers who can’t tie his own shoelaces!
A true Rannygazoo acolyte!
octo
I am sure you said something profound but it totally escaped reality.
If you will recall Reagan took over from the disaster known as Jimmy and had the economy running at a high level in a short period of time and that was with a democratic congress.
Blame bush all you want but it was the brilliant dodd, waters and frank who can take credit for the sub prime disaster.
I don't even blame the community organizer for the mess he has created because he knew nothing about it and the reason he fails is because of bush, racism and the republicans.
THINGS PEOPLE FORGET ABOUT REAGAN
Steve Kornacki, Salon - By the summer of 1992, just 24 percent of Americans said their country was better off because of the Reagan years, while 40 percent said it was worse off -- and that more Americans (48 percent) viewed Reagan unfavorable than favorably (46 percent). .
The Reagan admininstration was one of the most corrupt in American history, including by one estimate 31 Reagan era convictions, including 14 because of Iran-Contra and 16 in the Department of Housing & Urban Development scandal.
Using a looser standard that included resignations, David R. Simon and D. Stanley Eitzen in Elite Deviance, say that 138 appointees of the Reagan administration either resigned under an ethical cloud or were criminally indicted. Curiously Haynes Johnson uses the same figure but with a different standard in "Sleep-Walking Through History: America in the Reagan Years: "By the end of his term, 138 administration officials had been convicted, had been indicted, or had been the subject of official investigations for official misconduct and/or criminal violations."
Four members of the Reagan cabinet came under criminal investiation, as compared with five in the Clinton cabinet. Three top officials of the Harding administration were in indicted in the Teapot Dome scandal.
Washington Post: "The administration in 1984 secretly sold arms to Iran -- which the United States considered a supporter of terrorism -- to raise cash for Nicaraguan contra rebels, despite a congressional ban on support for the Latin American insurgency. An independent investigation concluded that the arms sales to Iran operations "were carried out with the knowledge of, among others, President Ronald Reagan [and] Vice President George Bush," and that "large volumes of highly relevant, contemporaneously created documents were systematically and willfully withheld from investigators by several Reagan Administration officials." . . . Lawrence E. Walsh, the independent counsel who ran the inquiry, said there was "no credible evidence" that Reagan broke the law, but he set the stage for the illegal activities of others. Impeachment, Walsh said, "certainly should have been considered."
In the weeks leading up to his appearance on Capitol Hill, [Desmond] Tutu said in speeches that it seemed that the Reagan White House saw "blacks as expendable" in South Africa. . . On Capitol Hill, Tutu became a public relations disaster for Reagan. Tutu started off the hearing by saying apartheid itself "is evil, is immoral, is un- Christian, without remainder." I was there, and all breathing stopped, without remainder. Tutu continued:
"In my view, the Reagan administration's support and collaboration with it is equally immoral, evil, and totally un-Christian. . . . You are either for or against apartheid and not by rhetoric. You are either in favor of evil or you are in favor of good. You are either on the side of the oppressed or on the side of the oppressor. You can't be neutral."
skudrunner, if you recall, the economy received the shock treatment from Paul Volker, a Carter appointment.
Saint Ronnie Raygun did nothing but increase the deficit. He was borrowing at very high interest rates so the cost of debt service was much higher than Obama's.
Now much of the trouble experienced by Carter was put in place by Arthur Burns who had his arm twisted by Richard Nixon not to raise raes because it might harm Nixon's reelection chances.
Don't start this nonsense that rethug presidents were not participants in the follies, especially Raygun.
For skud:
REAGAN RAISED INCOME TAXES 11 TIMES, OBAMA NEVER
OBAMA:
In fact, wound up being the largest tax-cutter in presidential history cutting $654 billion in 2011 and 2012 alone. He was in favor of letting the Bush tax cuts EXPIRE for the super wealthy, (which no, is not the same as a tax hike), but even that didn't come to pass. Romney in 2012 even admitted Obama didn't raise taxes.
Obama has consistently CUT taxes, not raised them.
REAGAN:
He got through a big tax cut once he took office. But to hear conservatives talk, that's where the story ends. They forget he raised income taxes in 1982, 1984, 1985, 1986 and 1987.
Actually, he raised taxes 11 times to include four MASSIVE tax increases!
... and was president during one of the largest and longest peacetime economic expansions.
Could the tax cuts during the recessionary cycle followed by tax increases during the expansionary cycle have had anything to do with the robust economy during most of his presidency?
Just curious, not being an economist and all.
Kennedy had a tax cut to spur the economy and it worked, Reagan had a tax cut to spur the economy and it worked Clinton had a tax cut to spur the economy and it worked, bush had a tax cut to spur the economy and it worked.
Obama did not lower taxes. He raised taxes on small businesses (the over 250 hike), raised taxes on healthcare (2.3% MDT) instituted a tax on tanning salons and of course the obamacare tax. We know how his economic policies have worked. Guess the good thing is people can now get the taxpayer to pay for their health insurance so they can get that part time job and spend more time with the families or start a business.
They can't afford to pay for their own health insurance, can't get a good paying job but they can start a business.
Somehow there is fault in that logic
From Forbes Magazine: "It’s a mainstay of conservative orthodoxy that tax cuts create jobs. In fact, the complexity of the tax code does create jobs for high-priced tax attorneys and accountants. But do tax cuts create “real” jobs?
The answer appears to be no for companies big and small. After all, U.S. public companies pay well-below the official 35% tax rate while 13.5 million American workers search unsuccessfully for jobs And start ups tell me that tax cuts don’t affect whether they’ll create new jobs. In short, the tax cut rhetoric, while effective politics, is lousy economics.
George H. W. Bush wisely pointed out in his 1980 debate with Ronald Reagan that expecting to balance the budget with tax cuts and defense spending increases was “voodoo economics.” But along with Reagan’s ascendancy came the rise of huge budget deficits — that Bush wisely helped end when he agreed to raise taxes in 1990."
Tax Cuts Don't Create Jobs
"By 2007, remarkably, the economy was already on pace for its slowest decade of growth since World War II. The mediocre economic growth, in turn, brought mediocre job and income growth — and the crisis more than erased those gains.
The defining economic policy of the last decade, of course, was the Bush tax cuts. President George W. Bush and Congress, including Mr. Ryan, passed a large tax cut in 2001, sped up its implementation in 2003 and predicted that prosperity would follow.
The economic growth that actually followed — indeed, the whole history of the last 20 years — offers one of the most serious challenges to modern conservatism. Bill Clinton and the elder George Bush both raised taxes in the early 1990s, and conservatives predicted disaster. Instead, the economy boomed, and incomes grew at their fastest pace since the 1960s. Then came the younger Mr. Bush, the tax cuts, the disappointing expansion and the worst downturn since the Depression."
“At the level of taxes we’ve been at the last couple decades and the magnitude of the changes we’ve had, it’s hard to make the argument that tax rates have a big effect on economic growth,” Mr. Marron said. Similarly, a new report from the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service found that, over the past 65 years, changes in the top tax rate “do not appear correlated with economic growth.”
Skud,
"Reagan had a tax cut to spur the economy and it worked ...
No, it did not. Reagan also raised taxes eleven times - making your statement self-contradictory.
Clinton had a tax cut to spur the economy and it worked ...
No, it did not. Clinton raised taxes and it worked, although Republicans at the time claimed a Clinton tax increase would crash the economy. It didn't.
"bush [capitalization error] had a tax cut to spur the economy and it worked"
Bush lowered taxes twice, creating the largest deficits in history, and Bush DID CRASH THE ECONOMY, triggering the worst crisis since the Great Depression.
You are either tone deaf, living in an alternate universe, an accomplished revisionist and unrelenting liar, or the DUMBEST troll who ever visited this place. Sometimes stupidity is so total, it turns downright offensive. This time, you have crossed the line!
Regarding Reagan, Shaw and Octo have it right and Skudrunner is wrong. Octo is also right regarding bush lowering taxes, creating a deficit and crashing the economy.
The record shows that the U.S. economy does better under Democratic presidents. A 10/10/2012 Forbes article, reporting on the book Bulls, Bears and the Ballot Box, says "the authors looked at a range of economic metrics including inflation, unemployment, corporate profit growth, stock market performance, household income growth, economy (GDP) growth, months in recession and others. [They] discovered that laissez faire policies had far less benefits than expected, and in fact produced almost universal negative economic outcomes for the nation!
Octo: Reagan also raised taxes eleven times - making your statement self-contradictory.
Right, Regan tax cuts spurring economic growth is a myth. The same article I quoted above says "...Reagan's great economic recovery of the 1980s it is often attributed to the stimulative impact of major tax cuts (ERTA). But in reality the 1981 tax cuts backfired, leading to massive deficits and a weaker economy with a double dip recession as unemployment soared. So in 1982 Reagan signed (TEFRA) the largest peacetime tax increase in our nation's history. In his tenure Reagan signed 9 tax bills – 7 of which raised taxes!"
Cut taxes going into a recession raise taxes after (ie; following recovery) to pre recession levels.
Time for the Olympics...
1/2 truth, 1/2 delusional...
RN #1: Cut taxes going into a recession raise taxes after (ie; following recovery) to pre recession levels.
Time for the Olympics...
RN #2: 1/2 truth, 1/2 delusional...
What portion of your prior comment is delusional? I'm going with "Cut taxes going into a recession" only because I think this is too much of a blanket statement. It might be a good idea to cut taxes on the middle class and working poor, but not necessarily on the wealthy. But tax cuts really aren't that stimulative... so increasing social spending should really be the first course of action.
Government spending is more effective than cutting taxes because, as Jared Bernstein points out, "a tax cut has a multiplier of roughly 1.0 after about a year and a half, and spending has a multiplier of about 1.6." (quote via this PolitiFact article).
"1/2 truth, 1/2 delusional..."
I learned long ago that arguing from authority is a useless exercise because no amount of empirical evidence will dissuade certain folks from their catechism. Discredited ideas run in people's heads like old advertising jingles long after companies and their products have gone out of business. It may take a generation or more for new paradigms to take hold:
Virtually all credentialed economists today agree on the following:
Tax cuts are not the most efficient methods of economic stimulation; targeted spending that capitalizes on the accelerator effect of the money supply are far more efficient methods. Stimulants to consumer spending are not efficient either due to the marginal propensity to import goods and export dollars.
"Supply Side" was never a credible theory from the start. It served as catchphrase for the Gee-Ohh-Pee to justify and muster political favors on behalf of its wealthiest clients. If anything, trickle-down has been counter-productive and destructive; it accounts for massive transfers of wealth from the middle class to the privileged class - reversing a post WWII trend.
Only Sarah Palin thinks Supply Side is grand: She's spent half her life trickling down on pregnancy test strips; hence her antipathy towards contraception.
Post a Comment