According
to a recent study by the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), 11
million employees of small businesses will face higher premiums under the new
law. They also project that 6 million will see their premiums reduced. This is
due to Obamacare not discriminating based on age. So, older workers will see
their premiums likely go down, while younger workers will see theirs go up.
This comes as just another blow to the signature health law that defines
President Obama's presidency. Coupled with the failure in implementing the
program, people receiving notices that their insurance is cancelled, and
reports of people not being able to get access to medication, this provides
even more ammunition for the Republican party come election time. This is precisely
the problem when the government acts before it has all the information. We were
told to pass the bill to know what's the consequences would be, well it's
passed and so far it's been mostly bad news.
The
White House is sticking with optimism. Currently, the number of young people
signing up for Obamacare hasn't met the projections. This presents a problem
because the young population is supposed to help offset the costs for those who
are older. A report was conducted by the Kaiser Foundation that showed 40% of
enrollee's needed to be under the age of 35. The current statistic is at 27%. The White House is claiming that based on the
data they are seeing, they are not worried and that they do not need to meet
the 40%. They are claiming that if a lower percentage of people sign up, then
premiums will only increase around 2.5%. While that number seems small, I doubt
the young (who are already paying higher premiums) see this increase as
something small. Coupled with the news of small business employees paying more,
then the lack of youth to subsidize the program, the likely cost of what people
will pay is unknown. To try and help the youth sign up, Michelle Obama was on
"The Tonight Show" saying that the youth are not invincible. That's
true, but the youth are also typically among low income earners so they are deciding
to not pay the high monthly premiums. And, because they are young, they
typically don't need most of the services required under Obamacare.
A
Republican proposal has been put forward to help simplify the tax code.
Currently, there are seven brackets, under the new plan that would be reduced
to two, 10% and 25%. There would then be a 'surtax' on the richest of the rich
at 10%. According to the Joint Committee on Taxation, the proposal appears to
work and almost all Americans would face a tax rate of under 25%. The details
of the plan will be released, so we will know more about it tomorrow.
A great
column by Thomas Sowell. His focus for the article is in regards to upward
mobility, no doubt this was brought on by a recent article citing a study
saying the US doesn't rate 'high'. With these studies, when income mobility is
studied, what typically isn't taking into account is people who don't aspire to
move up. We all believe that everyone in the lower classes wants to get into
the higher ones. Not everyone aspires for greatness and wealth. By looking at
numbers like High School dropout rates, it's not surprising that people in this
category don't end up being wealthy. And when the mobility numbers are presumed
to be 'low' all we can do is think of how to bring them up. But the only way to
do this in realty is for the state to be with children all their lives, pushing
for something they don't want to achieve. Maybe something more interesting to
study isn't the numbers of social mobility, but to try and define possible
mobility barriers.
An
opinion column was written that claims global warming is a fact, and one of the
major contributors, humans. This comes from a report that was done by the
Guardian newspaper in the UK. They assessed thousands of global warming
journals and found that 97% agree that global warming is happening and humans
are in part to blame. Now, for one, many journals dealing with climate change
are most likely to be sympathetic to the cause. As with all journal articles,
they go through a selection process before they can be published. So, an easy
way to get rid of the dissenters is to not publish their studies. What is more
likely a more accurate assessment of what climate change analysts believe is to
survey them specifically. This was done and found that only 52% of climate
scientists support the idea that global warming is man made. More than 1,800 meteorologists
were surveyed in this study by George Mason University and Yale University. So,
why the contradictory numbers? Well, unlike the CNN article would have us
believe, there is still room for debate over global warming.
I can't
get enough of economists being proven wrong, especially when it's Paul Krugman.
Dan Mitchell from the Cato Institute flat out shames Krugman in his claims that
Germany is an example for Keynesian economic policy. While it's true that the
government of German still grew, in comparison to other nations it was a good
deal slower. Krugman is blasted nations that promoted austerity measures and
tries to show how poorly they are because of it. Then claims that Germany is
doing well because of Keynesian policies. As the data shows, Germany's rate of
growth was slower than those countries Krugman claim implemented 'austerity.'
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