New York Times: Obamacare frees us from our jobs
Yeah, when I first read this, I had to keep checking that it wasn’t written by someone from the Soviet Union’s old state-sponsored Pravda propaganda rag. But, no it’s the New York Times editorial board, writing a piece that would bring tears of joy to the eyes of Paul Joseph Goebbels.
Apparently, the Obamacare-inspired unemployment has liberated us from those pesky job things we used to have;
The Congressional Budget Office estimated on Tuesday that the Affordable Care Act will reduce the number of full-time workers by 2.5 million over the next decade. That is mostly a good thing, a liberating result of the law. Of course, Republicans immediately tried to brand the findings as “devastating” and stark evidence of President Obama’s health care reform as a failure and a job killer. It is no such thing.
The report estimated that — thanks to an increase in insurance coverage under the act and the availability of subsidies to help pay the premiums — many workers who felt obliged to stay in a job that provided health benefits would now be able to leave those jobs or choose to work fewer hours than they otherwise would have. In other words, the report is about the choices workers can make when they are no longer tethered to an employer because of health benefits. The cumulative effect on the labor supply is the equivalent of 2.5 million fewer full-time workers by 2024.
Yeah, I’m pretty sure that there will dancing in the streets now that Americans have been freed by having the opportunity to make the choice between food and healthcare. We were told that the new healthcare bill would lower the cost of healthcare, but, it appears that the opposite has happened instead. We were told that it would end unemployment, but, again the opposite has happened. So I guess the only thing left to do is to make unemployment and under employment look like it’s a good thing. Enter the propagandists.
Here’s a screenshot of the headline for posterity;
Category: Health Care debate
Are these idiots for real? I have been trying to get back to full time for the last year and half. I was sick for most of 2012, lost my position in my department at a big box retailer. I had basically two choices, accept a part time position in a different department, or leave the company and play job hunt roulette. People just cannot afford to live on part time wages. Thankfully my wife has gone back to work full time, with full benefits. I am still trying to find full time work for myself, as I am now precluded from regaining full time status were I currently am employed. The part time health insurance my company offers is a pathetic joke, with a yearly benefit limit of $5000.00. (The insurance provider got a waiver from Obamacare!) This article is a complete disconnect from reality!
Unless you count mowing lawns and delivering newspapers, my first real job was when I was 15. I am now 70. I dont recall ever taking a job because it did, or did not, offer health insurance. I did take jobs to provide for my family which I was taught was my responsibility as an adult. Sounds like more Obama bull shit to me.
“thanks to an increase in insurance coverage under the act and the availability of subsidies to help pay the premiums”
Um; who do they think is going to pay for those subsidies???
This is the most asinine nonsense I’ve read in quite a while, but we are talking about the NYeT, so no surprise there…
I thought this idea was asinine and stupid like the rest of you….until I started reading the comments. That’s when I got genuinely freaked out. Real people are not leaving comments there….it’s a ghost writer writing comments from “ordinary people” praising this idea to make it seem like there is an enormous amount of support for this idea. This article illustrates the modern day 1984.
all y’all are just a bunch of racist haters/sarc/.
the good thing is, if/when the revolution comes, we’ll be the ones with all the guns….
If I ever found my adult son sitting in the living room wearing girly man pajamas and preciously holding a cup filled with caffine free herbal tea like that … and talking about not being trapped in a job and how his parents are thrilled with him … I will kick the living Holy Baby Jesus out of him and then throw my self in front of a bus …
ANY FRIGGIN’ QUESTIONS ON THIS ONE?
Hey everybody, the “Most Trusted Publication in America” says its a wonderful thing to be enabling shiftless lazy fucks to crap all over the US economy! Of course when I say “most trusted,” I mean I’m fairly confident it will sufficiently remove fresh shit residue when I wipe my ass with it.
I would bet money that this chickenshit was authored by a part-time writer who wears the same stank-ass rancid Obama-hope-change bullshit t-shirt every day because dicksmoker is too Goddamn lazy to do his own fucking laundry.
Holy fucking shit, I sure am swearing a whole hell if a lot in one short-ass fucking comment. I apologize, but this shit has really fucked up my mood.
I have had only two jobs that offered any kind of health insurance or other benefits.
One was the Navy.
The other was the job I retired from.
On the other hand, I never felt TIED
Whoever wrote this asinine piece of crap should have the computer either stuck up his butt sideway, requiring painful surgical removal, or else it should be taken away from him/her/it for good.
I feel like the first picture is a spoof of the position. I am really hoping I’m right.
I’m confused; these people are the Keynesians, aren’t they? Unemployment, as I understand it, is a big no-no for that economic model (it’s also frowned upon in the Classical model). Yet here they are saying that it’s a good thing?
Actually, there is a way for this to make sense: Unemployed people have a higher chance of being on welfare.
That should read ‘I never felt TIED to any particular job based on whether or not it offered health insurance or other benefits.’
@5-That’s interesting. What screamed ‘ghost writer’ to you (note: I think this is garbage, I’m just curious)?
Reminds me of when we used to read the English version of Tass for laughs. Guess the Choom gang is at it again.
@ cannoncocker … Freckled Faced Dumbass, maybe … Stupid, never!
…that Orwell fella sure was a smart guy.
@12- Have you read the comments section? It’s absolutely mind boggling most of the absolute drivel posted there supporting this nonsense. Almost every comment supports this shit. Just read the comments and see if you don’t get the feeling that these are the work of paid or unpaid obamabots i.e. ghostwritten.
@16-Aye, I read it, but then it is the NYT. I figured that stuff just comes with the territory since it’s naturally such a liberal newspaper. I learned a long time ago not to trust anyone’s online argument if it’s based primarily on their (unverifiable) life experiences and credentials (it is simply amazing how many Harvard-edumicated attorneys show up to comment on those Trayvon Martin articles :)). So I basically discounted everything there. But it did strike me as odd how superior the English of many of those foreigners in Israel and Europe extolling the virtues of socialized medicine was. So, I guess there’s that.
Farflung Wanderer: no, that photo was actually used in an ad lauding “the abomination commonly known as ObamaCare” some months ago. There’s a previous article about it on this site somewhere.
@7 Master Chief- I have to assume your son would know how you feel…*wink*
My son now has a son of his own, 7 years old, and some of the things I said to my son when he was still in school have already been passed on to my grandson…I am so proud!
I don’t understand how these fucktards function!
Is there any way to edit a comment? Some dumbass put a question mark in my previous comment where there should have been an exclamation point…
I think he is one of Charles bank’s patients.
This has got to be the most idiotic piece that has come from this so called newspaper. 2.5 million workers going from full to part time status results in less tax revenue, and less money to bolster the GDP.
This does not bode well for this country at all.
@22 OIF off topic. How do you make the frown face icon? Thanks.
@23, same way you make regular smiley faces like mine in #17, except you use the other parenthese so that it curves away from the mouth instead of towards it (this one:”(“). By the way, how do you make your signature huge smiley faces?
Sorry, not away from mouth, away from eyes.
OIF ’06-’07-’08: the actual figures are worse, amigo. The acutal estimate is the loss, in terms of lost paid working hours, of the equivalent of 2.3 million full time jobs. See last link in
http://valorguardians.com/blog/?p=39632
Tying health insurance to employment in lieu of compensation has made a ridiculous situation all around. It developed slowly, but once ingrained into the system it’s almost impossible to get rid of it…
My employer doesn’t provide automobile or homeowners insurance, providing health insurance is just as stupid.
The ACA’s attempt to address all this has been nothing short of a complete debacle, the incompetence of the rollout, of the basic legislation has been obvious to anyone with an IQ over 80. The idea that 2.5 million people will now leave their jobs to obtain a government subsidy to offset the cost of their health insurance is somehow a positive outcome is one of the more obvious bits of political hackery and hypocrisy I’ve ever seen. Encouraging people to do less so the government can do more for them is an unsustainable model.
Of course in a system where everyone receives some form of government kickback (we have 50 billionaires receiving farm subsidies) it’s not surprising to see the most left leaning columnists in the nation supporting this plan….
Friggin’ smiley faces?
Seriously ladies?
We have an unemployed half man half woman sitting on a couch, sipping a fabulous cup of tea, who can get free breast exams, birth control pills and hormone therapy treatments and not have to worry about working! And to boot his parent are thrilled about this …
And all you guys can talk about are smiley faces!
HOLY CRAP!
@24 HS smiley face I use is
colon and Capital D
@28 Master Chief, it’s true, it’s true. For shame.
Here’s hoping that most of the writers/columnists of the New York Times, Washington Post, Minneapolis a__wipe and MSNBC hosts/commentators will take advantage of this wonderful Obamacare opportunity. Add in a bunch of Democratic senators seeking re-election, IRS and EPA “employees”, and DOJ appointees and I think there may be a silver lining to this fiasco. The icing on the cake would be for them all to move to Colorado and California
OH, hell, people — Gorbachev said “I’m a Communist, but this Union is bankrupt. We can’t do this any more.” And China figured out, quite a while back, that a capitalist economy is the only way for a government to maintain stability.
So when are those dipshits in WDC going to absorb the obvious?
@PH-2: About the same time pigs discover aerodynamic principles, unfortunately.
This might sound off topic, but there’s an interesting slap fight going on this week in media circles over an opinion piece in the New York Observer about the friction between the news side at the New York Times, and A.M. Rosenthal’s editorial page. It’s worth reading for anyone curious about how the NYT works internally:
http://observer.com/2014/02/the-tyranny-and-lethargy-of-the-times-editorial-page/
In the fallout, about the only thing anybody seems to agree on is that Thomas Friedman’s canoe tipped over crossing Loon Lake.
What the Observer piece also does is point to a larger problem in the sense that, once again, we have major media, based in New York, talking about New Yorkers talking about New York. As if all wisdom is supposed to shine from New York City’s rectal cavity.
Any of the TAH crew who live in NYC shouldn’t take such a statement personally; it’s not about the people who live there, it’s about a concentration of media hegemony. Back in the day, if the NYT got something wrong, the knives would get sharpened at papers like the Chicago Tribune, or the Denver Post, or whatever else might be out in “flyover” country. You don’t see much of that anymore, and it does not bode well for the republic.
“Any of the TAH crew who live in NYC shouldn’t take such a statement personally; it’s not about the people who live there, it’s about a concentration of media hegemony.”
I don’t take anything personally you moron dick eater!
(sarc)
Thanks for fixing my jacked-up punctuation in #19!
Let’s see if you can wink and frown at the same time
;(
It’s so funny how they keep shilling for this embarrassment of a “president” by spinning till they strike oil, but they never answer one very simple question.
WHERE’S THE MONEY COME FROM!?!?!??
@38 OWB I only know two as of now, ya big Showoff!
@33: The arrogance of the progressive mind won’t let them see it. They think that the right people haven’t tried it, yet. They think they are the right people. One of them being that limp wristed metrosexual pile of monkey nuts aka pajama boy.
Apparently not!
But, discussing smiley faces is just about as productive as whining (some more) about big media! Of course, that’s not gonna stop me from whining about big media. Some more. Just because I wanna, because it’s like all about ME!
Duck, everybody! Master Chief is working with his shovels again! LOL.
The fuzznuts that wrote this piece of the NuwYawkTim’s is the dumbest mofo I have ever had the misfortune to read. Is it legal to rope his ass and drag him through the sagebrush out in West Texas? Cuz, if it is..I’ll sign up for that detail.
The goal of the NYT, and others of the media is to try to make everything look good and happy until after the midterms. If the Republicans win both House and Senate, THEN they will lay everything covered up so far at their feet.
Which, is pretty much what they do all the time, anyway.
I wrote on another thread my encounter in the doc’s office.
A small family was waiting near me when grandma goes over to the BB and looks at an ACA poster. She sits back down and asks her grandson what Obamacare is. He lowered his voice and with a pained face said, “Grandma, next year my job is taking away my health insurance because it doesn’t cover enough they say. The Obamacare I will have to get is going to cost four times more and won’t cover as much as what I have now.”
I felt really bad for the guy. He looked like a good, regular Joe, working stiff trying to take care of his family. I didn’t say anything. Any comment would have just made him feel worse about the situation he is trapped in. Though I have read these stories many times it was the first personal account I had heard of what this is doing to people. I can’t say enough how rotten I felt for the man.
I wish shame were a concept those in WDC could understand. Understand and self apply. It is truly a shameful thing to do to the working people of America. Unfortunately, I don’t think shameful deeds like the ACA will stop any time soon. I believe there will be more to come. Sadly.
@ #12
I am on my phone right now, otherwise I would copy and paste some of the comments that really raised red flags to me. I’m not technologically savvy enough to try to figure out how to do that on my phone that won’t take a half hour to do, so I will try to explain my mindset the best I can. It definitely looked to me like every comment was someone’s personal story about how awful things were for them when they were “stuck” in a job that they hated just to maintain health insurance, and how wonderful things are now that they are free from the Prison that was their job. And every single comment had a similar story. I think all of us have read enough internet comments to recognize what is most likely someone’s opinion and what seems like BS. There was no way that every single person that read and commented on that article was somehow “liberated” from their job and singing praises to Obamacare. And that is what freaked me out. Clearly, the concept of people being happy to be liberated from their jobs is nothing short of Soviet style propaganda, and on top of that there was an exorbitant number of comments from the “people” supporting this. This seems like a modern day fanfic of 1984 to me. And I see that others here agree with my assessment of a ghostwriter.
@46-it does seem suspicious. The main red flag for me is that an astonishing number of Europeans, Canadians, and Israelis showed up to extoll the virtues of socialized healthcare. The Europeans and the Israelis spoke perfect vernacular English (the type you can’t learn even with a really good teacher; you have to have lived in the country for a really long time) and the Canadians didn’t spell in the British way (where you usually have s instead of z, u after o in words like ‘coloured’, etc.). Me thinks we have a bad case of the sockpuppets.
Let’s see if you can wink and frown at the same time
Well, OWB – apparently Allan Dulles could.
Short account I read from a book on the 1960 U2 incident. Seems Dulles was traveling overseas. He called room service and they sent up a bellhop.
“I’d like some bottled water,” Dulles said.
Unfortunately, Dulles apparently had a tic in one eye. It was acting up that day.
“Yes sir,” the bellhop said – interpreting the tic as a wink. And brought him a bottle of wine.
“No, I’d like some bottled water,” Dulles said – with his tic acting up more.
“OK, sir,” said the bellhop. He then brought Dulles a bottle of liquor.
“No, that’s not it – I want some BOTTLED WATER”, said a somewhat exasperated Dulles, his tic really working now.
Shortly a provocatively dressed lady showed up at his door.
History doesn’t record Dulles’ final response.
Supposedly the story is true. I have my doubts, but given some other accounts I’ve read about Dulles, it may well be true.
@46-Spot on Cannoncocker! I stopped reading after about 20 or so of the same mindless recitations and the first thing that came to my mind was 1984 too! Forward and down with the bourgeois!
@47- That was another strange red flag for me as well, the appearance of numerous foreigners extolling the virtues of their socialist countries programs, all, in as you so aptly described, “perfect vernacular English”. Having spent a lifetime engaging with people all over the world and a spouse who speaks english as a second language I can state unequivocally that even the most educated of foreigners do not speak that way.
@49-Exactly. Even the finest European language school won’t teach you about baseball metaphors or idioms like “easy as pie.”