Stupdity doesn't explain this:
Flush with the victory of passing their nationalization of the health insurance industry in March, the Democratic leadership in Washington was interrupted in the middle of their celebratory bacchanalia by some stuffy businessmen filing unpleasant forecast revisions with the SEC.The more they can do to break up families and destroy the free market economy, the greater will be the cries for the government to accept our liberty in return for its largesse.
Yup, without so much as a “By your leave,” well-known corporations started announcing their formal assessments of what Obamacare was going to cost their shareholders, their employees, and especially, their retirees. A hundred million dollars here, a half billion there… and the surprise of them all, a whopping billion at AT&T.
Not to worry, Rep. Henry Waxman (D, the Grandstands) knew just what to do. As he’s done countless times before, he knew exactly how to terrorize his opponents into submission: he announced an investigation, and started summoning these meddlesome executives to Washington for public hearings on April 21, 2010. No stuffed shirt exec is gonna rain on our parade and live to tell about it!
Only, for once, it didn’t quite work as planned. April 21 has come and gone, with no CEO witch-hunt on Capitol Hill (at least, not in response to this particular issue).
Economists like to attribute things to natural laws of economics and human nature. One of the most useful of these is the Law of Unintended Consequences. By simply acknowledging that life is incredibly complicated, it says that every action is bound to have some unexpected results if you look hard enough. This law therefore explains away almost anything that happens, and gives forecasters and politicians a convenient out if they didn’t see it coming.
The present subject is full of different examples of this law:
- The goal was to force everybody to have health coverage; we couldn’t predict every byproduct of such an important and sweeping reform. Or
- We knew that businesses would have to pay their fair share of the healthcare burden; we couldn’t have anticipated how heavily it would hurt some of America’s biggest employers. Or
- When you’re trying to Change America, some of the unexpected changes are bound to have negative impacts on a few people here or there; you can’t really complain if it turns out that you happen to fall into the tiny subset of those negatively affected people… think of the greater good: We’re Changing America, right?!
Or the toughest unintended consequence of all:
- Sure, the Conservatives predicted that these changes in the tax law would cost American employers, employees, and investors hundreds of billions of dollars… but since we managed to make sure nobody listened to them before the bill passed, we never dreamed anybody would find out about their prediction afterward!
In fact, there are no unintended consequences in Obamacare. Everything that’s happening to America as a result of that bill’s passage was indeed intended all along – from scores of doctors announcing their retirement, to insurance companies having to raise their rates, to employers realizing that they’ll have to drastically cut many of their suddenly much-more-expensive benefits, to investors realizing that many of the companies in which their life’s savings are invested are suddenly worth much less than they were a month ago.
The Democrats planned every bit of it. While markets are not a zero-sum game, politics are: the Left can only gain power when the free market loses power, so they’ve set out to erode as much value and opportunity in the free market as possible, as fast as they possibly can. They knew exactly how much damage they were doing to the American economy by passing this bill; that’s why they passed it. Prosperous, independent citizens don’t depend on government for anything, so you can’t control them. When you play the game of dependency politics, you need to make people dependent on government, the faster the better.
The only question is, can the tide be turned in time?
4 comments:
I'm pretty sure the backlash in November 2010 would be an unintended consequence.
Yeap, every time I drive to my local friendly North Idaho Conoco station to pick up a six-pack of the best beer in the world (Sierra Nevada Pale Ale; drink American!), I marvel at all the socialist tools from Canada driving south on U.S. 95 in their shiny new Chevy Silverados, Ford F-150s, and Dodge Rams* to exchange their Loonies for cheap U.S. dollars and load up at Walmart and Costco.
Hasn't anyone told them that a national health care plan impoverishes and inslaves them? Hasn't anyone told them that it robs them of their freedom and destroys their families? Canucks. They're so fat, rich, and happy, I feel sorry for them. Not to mention those miserable Danes and Swedes.
So how about a little fiction now?
"Everything that’s happening to America as a result of that bill’s passage was indeed intended all along – from scores of doctors announcing their retirement, to insurance companies having to raise their rates, to employers realizing that they’ll have to drastically cut many of their suddenly much-more-expensive benefits, to investors realizing that many of the companies in which their life’s savings are invested are suddenly worth much less than they were a month ago."
Thank you very much, but every American company I'm a part owner of is worth more now than the day this legislation was passed, not less. The U.S. stock market is up, not down, meaning that "many of the companies in which their life’s savings are invested are suddenly worth much less than they were a month ago that" is, on the whole, pure, demonstrable fiction. Why do you perpetuate nonsense?
Oh, so maybe (and I'm not sure of this) it might cost some American companies a few bucks up front. Show me the cost-benefit analysis in the long run and I might be impressed. Just about every industrialized country on the planet has some sort of national health plan. Are you telling me U.S. countries can't compete on a level playing field? You don't sound like an advocate of a free market place to me, Paul. And you, not me or that "socialist" Barack Obama, underestimate America.
* Oddly, you never see truck-loving Canadians in a Toyota Tundra. They like American trucks. That's because American trucks are better.
John, let me just ask you...
Is there any limit to how much taxation the U.S. government can impose?
Is there anything that the federal government can't tell its citizens to do?
And, are you asserting that AT&T did not in fact report that Obamacare would cost them $1 billion?
I don't know what is scarier, that democrats didn't anticipate the effect of this tax code change (or at least the PR effect), or that ATT was double dipping at the tax payers expense to the tune of 1 billion dollars?
I think if the government is subsidizing healthcare through the private sector, it should at least subsidize small and medium business in addition to giant corporations. The sad thing is the tax code change still keeps the unequal subsidies, it just doesn't let ATT get those subsidies tax-free anymore.
I can understand the shock congress seemed unprepared for these consequences. It smacks of incompetence. However, I am baffled people who are fiscal conservatives are lamenting the loss of this 1 billion dollar corporate welfare giveaway.
This seems like sensible and prudent reform that weans corporations from getting special welfare from the tax payers.
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