Category Archives: Economics

Miscellaneous economy stuff

“About That ‘Gutting the Safety Net'”

Posted on by
Reply

That’s the title of a recent Wall Street Journal op-ed.

Critics are accusing President Trump’s 2018 budget of “gutting the safety net” with cuts to food stamps and disability insurance. In reality, the White House is proposing long-needed reforms that would fix a dysfunctional disability system that traps Americans in dependency.

The editor is right as far as he goes, but he doesn’t go far enough.  It isn’t just our social security disability system that is a welfare trap, it’s our entire welfare system.

There is no incentive for folks to get off welfare; in fact, there is a “welfare cliff” designed in that throws up terrible obstacles blocking folks from getting off welfare.  Those obstacles are more concretely illustrated by this:

The less-noticed harm is that a mere 1% of beneficiaries return to work every year….

One reason so few return to the labor force is that payments are essentially a tax on work. A 55-year-old who previously earned about $30,000 a year at work could receive more than $15,000 a year in disability payments, plus health-care benefits and perhaps other cash transfers such as food stamps. That means any job would have to pay more than what he loses in subsidies….

It’s not a safety net.  It’s the Progressive-Democratic Party’s seine, with which it seeks to trap our poor so they can continue trading handouts for votes.

On Whose Side Are These Guys?

Posted on by
Reply

There is a move afoot in Congress to “overhaul” Dodd-Frank, at least to the point of adjusting the threshold size that banks would need to exceed in order to become subject to strict rules on “the capital, mergers, and other business” in which Government will permit these otherwise private enterprises to engage.  Under the present threshold of $50 billion or more in assets, some 37 financial institutions are subject to such Government diktat.

The trick will be reaching a compromise on what should come next.

Republicans tend to favor either setting a threshold of between $250 billion and $500 billion, or basing the designation on a bank’s riskiness rather than on its size. That new range would leave around a dozen or as few as a half-dozen banks facing stricter regulation.

No, there must be no compromise. Strict elimination of Dodd-Frank should come next.

Worse, raising the threshold would, indeed, shrink the number of institutions subject to Government regulation. That, though, would make it easier for Government to expand to completion its control over these institutions.

That’s the stuff of corporate fascism: Government control over what a putatively private enterprise will be allowed to produce and how much of it that enterprise will be allowed.  It’s dismaying that Republicans would propose such an affront to free enterprise and limited government.

Medicaid Transfers

Posted on by
Reply

It’s well understood that Medicaid badly wants reform.  My own view is to give it back to the States by reducing Federal fund transfers to them until the transfers are zero, which also would eliminate Federal strings jerking the States to do everything the same way, the Federal way.

There are lots of paths to that end, and there are a number of other reforms that would help the situation at least a little.  The House plan for repeal and replace of Obamacare, the first step of which was the American Health Care Act, has one such step, the repeal of Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion.

Expanding State participation in Federally provided—with those strings attached—funds—expanding Medicaid—as a number State governors have done, is not one of those reforms.  Not even for Republican governors.

Sixteen GOP governors represent states that expanded Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act, and they are generally loath to see the program cut back.

Nobody forced these persons to mainline the Federal funds drug. They stuck that needle in their veins and addicted themselves, with no outside pressure at all.

These guys are badly mistaken, and they’ve only made things worse for the constituents for whom they claim to work.

Michigan Governor Rick Snyder, one of those 16, thinks the expansion is just peachy keen; he’s still riding the high from his needle.  He says that “600,000 Michiganders have gained coverage and the state’s hospitals have saved about $300 million.”

What he’s carefully ignoring, though, is how much money Michiganders and those hospitals sent to the Federal government in various taxes and fees to contribute to 49 other States’ Medicaid program participation.  How many of those Michiganders could have been helped and how much money could Michigan’s hospitals have saved had the State kept those monies, instead?  How much would those Michigan citizens and those Michigan hospitals have benefited, had they been able to keep their money—their money, not the State or Federal government’s money—instead of paying all those taxes and fees to the Federal government?

Disingenuosity

Posted on by
Reply

At the State level, more and more legislatures are succeeding in ceasing to send taxpayer money to Planned Parenthood.

Planned Parenthood recently announced the shuttering of four of its 12 Iowa’s clinics in Iowa [sic] after the Hawkeye state’s Republican-led legislature voted earlier this year to cut funding to clinics that performed abortions. Also last week, the health care nonprofit announced it was closing its only clinic in Wyoming and three of its clinics in New Mexico in what it called a “realignment of resources.”

Texas and other States have similarly acted, and Congress is moving to stop transfers of taxpayer money to Planned Parenthood, also.  Of course pro-abortion folks are up in arms about this.  Raegan McDonald-Mosley, Chief Medical Officer at Planned Parenthood Federation of America:

This is hardest on people who already face barriers to accessing health care—especially people of color, young people, people with low to moderate incomes, and people who live in rural areas.

And hold-overs from the Obama administration:

Estimates by the Congressional Budget Office indicate that defunding Planned Parenthood would save roughly $200 million in federal spending while reducing health care for as many as 390,000 people.

These claims are disingenuous at best.  If the reductions or removals of taxpayer money to abortion providers like Planned Parenthood are “hardest on people who already face barriers to accessing health care,” if pending cuts really would “reduc[e] health care for as many as 390,000 people,” it’s only because abortion providers insist on allocating the monies they have away from providing health care to needful women toward providing abortions instead—thereby denying health care to those needful babies as well as to the needful women, pregnant and otherwise.

Organizations like Planned Parenthood really do provide valuable health care services to needful women, and to their families.  They could continue to do so largely unabated if only they’d use the funds they bring in for that instead of for abortions.

Department of YGTBSM

Posted on by
Reply

Amtrak has decided to refurbish New York City’s Penn Station, which will involve unavoidable disruption through the summer.  New York Governor Andrew Cuomo (D) doesn’t think Amtrak is up to the task, so he’s bringing New York to the rescue.

The state will step up and do it.  We don’t own Penn Station but we will step up and we’ll take over construction and we’ll do it with a private construction company or let the Port Authority do it.

So generous.  Here’s how the Democrat will execute his generosity.

As long as New York City steps up to the plate with funding, I will step up to the plate with leadership and management responsibility,

Let’s you and him get to work.  Bring your wallet and safety boots; I’ll bring my clipboard.