Hot on the heels of a CBO report that predicts people will be incentivized not to work because of Obamacare’s subsidies (a report that gets the Captain Obvious award, more on that in a moment) comes some truly stupendous sophistry from the administration and its bootlickers.
First, the report. The health care subsidies in ACA, which (as one would expect) diminish as one’s income increases, are predicted to decrease the size of the labor force in the nation by 2.5 million full time workers. This should be obvious – if you give someone assistance based on his low level of income, and you tell him that assistance will diminish or go away if he earns “too much,” and that assistance is significant compared to what he’s earning, well, of course he’s going to find a way not to earn “too much.” Either he’ll work less or make it appear as he’s working less by shifting into the underground economy. It’s no different an outcome than we get from paying extended unemployment benefits. Fewer workers, reduced tax revenues, increased tax burden on the ever-shrinking share of people who do work, ever-expanding class of people who live off the productivity of others – welcome to the new American way.
Yet, as is the norm in modern politics, this negative side effect isn’t acknowledged as a weakness in the law that should be corrected, but instead touted as a boon and a benefit. White House Press Secretary Jay Carney came out with this lulu:
Over the longer run, CBO finds that because of this law, individuals will be empowered to make choices about their own lives and livelihoods, like retiring on time rather than working into their elderly years or choosing to spend more time with their families. At the beginning of this year, we noted that as part of this new day in health care, Americans would no longer be trapped in a job just to provide coverage for their families, and would have the opportunity to pursue their dreams.
A parade of liberal apologists has come out and regurgitated the same spin i.e. “you don’t have to work to provide for your family any more, we’ve got it covered. Go out and have fun.” David Mamet has described socialism as the abdication of responsibility. Here we have the people in charge, as well as many others who we’re told are smart, actively encouraging this abdication. There’s a pernicious effect on other elements of our lives that derives from this encouragement – if you are told you should “pursue your dreams” instead of taking care of yourself and your own when it comes to income, isn’t it likely that you’re more prone to the same abdication in other aspects of your life? Could we connect the obesity “epidemic” to this encouragement? How about out-of-wedlock births and absentee parents? Living within your means? Saving for retirement? Paying off your credit cards every month? Getting some exercise and putting some healthy food into your mouth? Studying a useful subject in college or learning a productive trade instead of four years of partying, a major in creative basket weaving, and a six-figure student loan debt (that you then want government to excuse or refinance at artificially low rates)? Personal responsibility is not a one-off notion or a menu – it’s a mind-set, and we have government actively moving people away from it.
Yet our liberal friends and the government also lament the moribund state of the economy. That is, of course, when they’re not spinning furiously to tell us how great everything is. Is it truly lost on them that incentivizing people not to work removes their productivity from the economy? Economic activity, i.e. the free exchange of goods and services, is (obviously) dependent on the creation of those goods and services. That creation comes from productive human activity, i.e. work. When you make or do something that someone else is willing to give you money he’s earned for, you’ve created wealth. When you don’t, you don’t create wealth. It’s not rocket science.
Our government and its cheerleaders are encouraging people not to create wealth, and finding ways to facilitate that non-creation by burdening a minority of citizens. From the laundry list of public assistance programs to the extension of unemployment benefits beyond the original promise to, now, Obamacare’s subsidies, we have mountains of evidence that the Left (and lest we have any doubt, all that’s happening today in this regard is rooted in leftist thinking and liberal policy) puts wealth creation at the bottom of its list of priorities. Now consider:
- The nation’s tax system and structure is incredibly progressive (more so than you’ll find in most of Old Europe, where they at least have the courtesy to soak the poor as well as the rich).
- Pop culture and political discussion are awash in wealthy bogeymen (Koch Brothers, anyone?) and unless a millionaire or billionaire is devoting his wealth to the ‘correct’ causes and messages (George Soros and most of Hollywood’s elite, for example), he’s presumed to be a Bad Person.
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The nation is sitting on vast stores of now-accessible petroleum and natural gas, yet the Left would rather eat hot gravel than allow them to be tapped.
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If you’ve succeeded in building a career or a business and find yourself with some modicum of accumulated wealth, you’re expected to “give back,” presumably because you’ve become wealthy by taking rather than by providing (goods, services, jobs, investment capital).
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“Fairness” in political language is now synonymous with taking that which people have created and earned and giving it to others.
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The estates of wealthy people are re-taxed at a punitive rate, a tax that’s justified as a way to prevent the accumulation of wealth in the hands of a few.
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Those who advocate against government over-regulation are presumed by liberals (no proof necessary) to be in the pockets of big business and therefore acting with bad intent and in bad faith.
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The poor of the world, people who are just now climbing out of subsistence living and into their equivalent of a middle-class, are viewed as a pestilence because they’re consuming more resources (including the dreaded carbon-based energy) rather than applauded and encouraged for daring to want a better life.
The conclusion seems obvious. I bet, however, that if you were to ask a liberal why he hates wealth so much, he’ll tilt his head to the side in puzzlement. If pressed, he might respond with a deflection that invokes “social justice,” itself another bit of sophistry that falsely presumes that the wealthy became so only at the expense of the not-wealthy. Economic ignorance aside (wealth is not a zero-sum game), the presumption comes with a built-in remedy: reverse the wealth transfer by taking from the wealthy and giving to the not-wealthy. And, if in doing so, the not-wealthy are incentivized to dial back their own wealth creation, hey, that’s a good thing. Lets make everyone happier by making the nation poorer.
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