Image 01 Image 03

Le·gal In·sur·rec·tion

/var/www/vhosts/legalinsurrection.com/httpdocs/wp-content/themes/bridge-child/readFeeds.incFALSE

LATEST NEWS

Yesterday we covered the CBO Report on loss of labor provided by workers as a result of Obamacare subsidies,  CBO confirms Obamacare subsidies create disincentive to work harder. It's all about how the implicit marginal tax rate -- taxes plus loss of benefits -- creates a disincentive to work hard because for each dollar you earn, you lose a huge percentage, sometimes more than 100%, of that earned dollar through higher taxes and loss of government benefits. It is economically rational, in this circumstance, not to work harder.  It has nothing to do with laziness, but with government creating an incentive not to work. Here's the testimony today from Doug Elmendorf, head of the Congressional Budget Office, via National Review:
“By providing heavily subsidized health insurance to people with very low income, and then withdrawing those subsidies as income rises, the act creates a disincentive for people to work relative to what would have been the case in the absence of that act,” Douglas Elmendorf told the House Budget Committee on Wednesday. “By providing a subsidy, these people are better off, but they do have less of an incentive to work.”
None of this is new. Here's Elmendorf's testimony from February 2011 regarding the same effect, although at that time the projection was only 800,000 jobs:

Some patients in California are finding out that once they’ve managed to sign up for a health insurance plan through the state exchange, it still may be difficult to determine whether or not a doctor actually accepts their insurance plan. From the LA Times:
After overcoming website glitches and long waits to get Obamacare, some patients are now running into frustrating new roadblocks at the doctor's office. A month into the most sweeping changes to healthcare in half a century, people are having trouble finding doctors at all, getting faulty information on which ones are covered and receiving little help from insurers swamped by new business. Experts have warned for months that the logjam was inevitable. But the extent of the problems is taking by surprise many patients — and even doctors — as frustrations mount. Aliso Viejo resident Danielle Nelson said Anthem Blue Cross promised half a dozen times that her oncologists would be covered under her new policy. She was diagnosed last year with non-Hodgkin's lymphoma and discovered a suspicious lump near her jaw in early January. But when she went to her oncologist's office, she promptly encountered a bright orange sign saying that Covered California plans are not accepted. "I'm a complete fan of the Affordable Care Act, but now I can't sleep at night," Nelson said. "I can't imagine this is how President Obama wanted it to happen."
Nelson received a temporary extension from her new insurer through March 31 after numerous complaints to the company and public officials, but says she will look into other policies before the close of open enrollment, according to the LA Times.

Files paperwork to run for Congress...

This all was predicted. Obamacare subsidies decrease the incentive to work harder because as one's income increases, the subsidies vanish. It's what we call the implicit marginal rate which takes into account not only tax marginal rates, but also loss of government benefits. In the key 30-50,000 range, the implicit marginal rate has exceeded 100% even before Obamacare (see Featured Image above) -- meaning that it is economically irrational to earn an extra dollar because you will lose more than one dollar through taxes and loss of benefits. Obamacare makes that problem even worse because of the high cost of Obamacare health insurance which depends on subsidies to render it even somewhat "affordable." Lose those subsidies and the cost of mandatory health insurance becomes onerous. The CBO is predicting a loss of 1-2% of employee hours because workers choose not to lose the subsidies, as reported by Reuters (h/t Bryan Preston)(full report embedded at bottom of post):
A historically high number of people will be locked out of the workforce by 2021, according to a report by the Congressional Budget Office released Tuesday. President Barack Obama's signature health-care law will contribute to this phenomenon, the CBO said, citing new estimates that the Affordable Care Act will cause a larger than-expected reduction in working hours—eliminating the equivalent of about 2.3 million workers in 2021 versus a previous estimate of an 800,000 decline. "CBO estimates that the ACA will reduce the total number of hours worked, on net, by about 1.5 to 2 percent during the period from 2017 to 2024, almost entirely because workers will choose to supply less labor—given the new taxes and other incentives they will face and the financial benefits some will receive," said the report.
The CBO Report states (in Appendix C):

Jerry Seinfeld was interviewed for Buzzfeed Brew, and gave a perfectly sensible answer about "diversity" in comedy, namely that if you're funny, you're funny, and comedy is not a census designed to look like the pie chart of America. It's perfectly sensible, except to Gawker, which is trying to inspire 2-minutes of Seinfeld hate:

Jerry Seinfeld, the most successful comedian in the world and maker of comedy for and about white people, isn't interested in trying to include non-white anything in his work.

When asked why he featured so many white men in his web series Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee during a Buzzfeed interview on CBS This Morning, Seinfeld seemed offended by the very question. "It really pisses me off," he said. "People think [comedy] is the census or something, it's gotta represent the actual pie chart of America. Who cares?"

BuzzFeed Business Editor Peter Lauria seemed hesitant to pursue the frank answer, but the comedian continued on anyway. "Funny is the world that I live in. You're funny, I'm interested. You're not funny, I'm not interested," he said. "I have no interest in gender or race or anything like that." He seems to suggest that any comedian who is not a white male is also not funny, though he's also likely fed up with the amount of bad comedy he's been forced to sit through in his (waning) career.

Which is too bad, because Seinfeld is downplaying the work of everyone from Richard Pryor and Bill Cosby to Aziz Ansari, Mindy Kaling, and Eddie Huang, who are all in various stages of their own sitcoms that just might turn out to be the next Seinfeld....

In conclusion: Yes, comedy should represent the entire pie chart of America, and the glorious, multicolored diversity pie should be thrown directly at Jerry Seinfeld's face.

No, you fool, Seinfeld isn't denigrating anyone.  He's saying that we should judge comedians by the quality of their comedy, not the color of their skin.

Where did I hear something similar to that before?  Definitely not at Gawker.

Someone saw this coming from a mile away:

After an announcement just last week that he'd be taking an indefinite sick leave, the President of Ukraine returned on Monday, as the political crisis continues there. From Reuters:
Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovich returned to work on Monday after four days of sick leave, issuing a warning about rising "radicalism" after more than two months of unrest on the streets but giving no word on a new prime minister. Yanukovich, caught in a tug of war between Russia and the West, is seeking a way out of a sometimes violent confrontation with protesters who have occupied city streets and public buildings following his decision in November to spurn a trade deal with the EU and accept financial aid from Moscow. As he returned to work, looking in fair health, a day before a new session of parliament, the political opposition took heart from fresh expressions of support from Western governments and pressed for more concessions to end protests. However, the European Union, whose foreign policy chief is due in Kiev late on Tuesday, played down suggestions it was working with the United States on a large-scale aid package aimed at nursing the economy through a political transition.
It remains an uncertain situation upon Yanukovich's return.

An interruption to a post-game interview. What was with that? ...