Jobs will come when government stops trying to save them

March saw the strongest job growth rate since May 2007, but the White House is warning Americans that we still have a “long way to go” before the unemployment rate gets back down to levels we’ve become accustomed to in the past three decades. According to Fox News:

Obama’s chief economic adviser Lawrence Summers said on a pair of talk shows that a year after the passage of the stimulus bill, the U.S. economy still has “a long way to go.”

Summers said pushing the unemployment rate down from its current 9.7 percent level won’t be easy.

No, it won’t be easy, particularly since the Democrats and the President have absolutely no interest in taking the steps necessary to encourage economic growth.

Filed under: economics, Government, taxes, bailout, costs, democrats, fail, jobs, obama, stimulus

Almost Forgotten: The Insurance Mandate Lie

The other day, I was reminded of one of the lies we’ve been fed about the Health Care Takeover the Democrats are desperately trying to pass through the Houses of Congress: The Individual Mandate, which would be just like your mandated automobile insurance. This specious line of reasoning has been almost forgotten amidst the arguments over abortion funding and the Constitutionality of reconciliation and trying to “deem” a bill passed by rule.

The individual mandate would require every American to purchase health insurance, or to pay a penalty (I call it a fine, because that’s what it really is) if they choose to go without. Proponents of this insurance mandate argue that it is like automobile insurance, where we are required to purchase liability insurance for our automobiles before we can drive them on the roads. They say that this mandate protects individuals from the financial harm of medical bills they cannot afford.

In this limited line of reasoning, they are correct, but that isn’t the whole story.

Filed under: economics, health care, insurance, cost, democrats, health care, healthcare, mandate, premium, public option, reconciliation, takeover

Mandated Madness

In all the fuss about the House Health Care “Reform” bill, we have failed to talk about one of the biggest drivers of health insurance costs in the nation today: Insurance mandates.

What insurance mandates do is force these small risk pools together in a negative way: When the risk pool for broken leg is combined with the risk pool for cancer, the risk pool is not more efficient, it is simply more risky. If the likelihood of a broken leg in a given year is 2%, and the likelihood of being diagnosed with cancer is also 2%, combining those risk pools does not result in a larger risk pool of 2%. Cancer and a broken legs are generally exclusive; that is to say, people who get cancer are unlikely to suffer a broken leg at the same time. So the risk index has grown from 2% to a combined 3.99% (after all, some people who break their legs will also develop cancer). The more mandates that are added, the more the insurer is required to cover, the greater the cost of the risk pool.

The financial risk pool is even more complex, but I’ll try to simplify it.

Filed under: economics, Government, insurance, liberty, democrats, health care, house, insurance, local, mandate, reform, state

Take the Hit

Author’s note: I use an extended metaphor relating politics to football throughout this post.

I’m not alone when I say that I love sports.  Whether it’s watching the Atlanta Braves or the Kansas City Royals, the Georgia Bulldogs or the Washington Redskins, the Detroit Redwings or the Philadelphia Flyers, I enjoy watching and sometimes playing sports, as do most Americans and people throughout the world.

Most sports are physical, where some form of contact between players is either a happenstance of the game or designed into the sport itself.  Take a look at football, where linemen push each other around attempting to either protect or sack the quarterback, and where tackling the ball carrier is a requirement.  In hockey hard hits, checking and the occasional shove are common.  Baseball sometimes requires a base runner to plow over a catcher.  In most sports, there is some manner of either striking, moving or standing in the path of another player.

The other day, I wrote about Barack Obama’s being upset with George Stephanopoulos’ use of a dictionary during an interview to define the word “tax.”  Since then, the analogy between politics and sports has been impossible for me to ignore.

Probably the most important position in football is Quarterback.  I’m a defense-minded fan and like to argue that linebackers make or break a team, but the reality is that without a quarterback to lead and to hand-off, toss, pass and occasionally even run the ball, the team cannot score points to win.  In the analogy between football and politics, the Democrats are currently on offense, that is, they are trying to push their agenda.  On the other hand the Republicans are on defense trying to stop the Democrats from “scoring,” or passing legislation.  Barack Obama is the quarterback, while Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, Joe Biden and other Democrats are other offensive players. 

Filed under: Government, health care, media, politics, analogy, cap and trade, democrats, football, health care, metaphor, obama, politics, republicans, sports