I found it interesting that the headlines of certain very-obviously liberal news websites all say something about the Obama win, but dont talk about the market plunging.
I saw a headling saying “much work needs to be done”. Yea? So, the 4 years wasn’t enough?
And how about businesses. When they see their stock plunging, are they supposed to say “oh look! let’s hire more people! yay!”. Is that it?
Painful cuts are going to be needed somewhere to get this country back on track. The poor and needy living off govt won’t vote for what needs to happen, they are much too short sighted, only caring about the next free food stamp going their way. So, the rest of the country follows into oblivion.
Romney wasn’t proposing any siginificant cuts, so I don’t see how a republican loss changes that. Furthermore, the US deficit has fallin from ~12% to 7% (projected) in 3 years, so we’re headed the right way. I don’t think a 1 day stock move is worth making headlines and a big fuss over in a conversation focused on fundamentals. If you want to make it an irrational discussion of stock prices we could just say stocks went up in the last 4 years and reach an equally meaningless conclusion. Stocks don’t take into account trillion dollar wars and boosting defense spending by several trillion dollars as Romney proposed.
The economic cycle will make the next 4 years much better. People overestimate the role Presidents have on the economy. They play a greater role on social issues and their influence is greatest on future generations when they nominate judges.
We are going through a deleveraging phase, the last 4 years is normal if you look at every financial/banking crisis in history.
One Obama supporter noted “Mitt is saying Obama should be fired for not succeeding in balancing the budget in 4 years, yet his own plan purports to require 8-10.”
I’m not from US, but I’ve been bombarded with CNN election coverage for the last few weeks at my gym. Before the event, they made it out to be one heck of a close fight in the making. And it was, at least in terms of popular vote.
I’ve read a few articles. It actually mirrors the average recovery after a credit bubble. It was an interesting graph that juxtaposed average credit bubble recoveries with all others.
I’ve also read the 30 hour rule at employers for Obamacare damage control. That’s just a result of regulation – people always try to get around it.
I think a lot of people think about an election in the same way they think about the NFL or whatever sport you may enjoy. That’s why a lot of peope hardly change votes.
I may be way off base here, but I see Obama vs Romney a little like Futurama’s John Jackson vs Jack Johnson (they’re basically the same), and yet people feel extremely passionately about one or the other.
Bromion, about leaving the country, I don’t think you’ll get it much better elsewhere. This politics = sports team (or religion as Chikka pointed out) seems to be true everywhere - I can say it’s the same in Brazil, and we also have more corruption and usually more populist measures as well. An american on the poverty line is still rich by many standards outside US.
Of course, your Entitlement Generation comment is key. I couldn’t agree more with that. An entire generation that doesn’t like to work that hard or that feels jobless because they can’t get a white collar work right away is a very dangerous thing for the long term.
The natural thing would be to lose a job and then get another one, or get a worse job, go wash cars around the neighborhood or something. Now people lose their jobs and go twitter on their Ipads about how they can’t get a position at Google because of the evil banks/democrats/republicans/chinese/sea turtles/green goblins, etc…
Maybe kids should be more encouraged to do work on the side at high school or college, so they can see how manual labor isn’t actually the end of the world and helps put some food on the table. Studying is awesome, but not that awesome when it turns people into spoiled lazy know-it-alls.
I’m not taking a position, and I’m usualy pretty anti-government myself, but I legitimately got curious here. Is this an expression or do you physically keep binders full of examples?
I agree they’re basically the same, or at least very similar in the grand scheme of possibilities. Or said differently, they have to compromise (as they troll for votes) so much that they appear to be more or less the same, at least to me.
I probably would have been equally disappointed with Romney. Actually seeing the results when I woke up yesterday, I was surprisingly negative about it – surprising because one or the other was going to be in office, so I shouldn’t have had a strong reaction when one got elected. I’m over it – short-term reaction.
I don’t think Obama did a wonderful job and earned himself a second term, but felt Romney was the more dangerous vote for the future of America. His tax plan was essentially doubling down on the bet that growth would get us out of the deficit problem, but at a time when Europe is going through austerity measures and China is slowing, that’s a very risky bet and in my mind an unlikely proposition. I’m from the midwest and work for a small business so I should lean right but let’s be honest - the main goal of starting a business is to make money (not create jobs) and a decrease in taxes will lead to greater profits but not necessarily more jobs.
Recently, MIT economist Daron Acemogelu released a co-authored book called “Why Nations Fail”. It mostly states that “inclusive politcal institutions” are needed for “invlusive ecnomic institutions”-- and inclusive ecnomic institutions are what brings prosperity. An "inclusive political institution is basically the rule of law-- property rights, anti-corruption measures, low taxes, etc… what I’m saying is the decrease in troops sounds great but didn’t do us, the world, or the middle east any good. We should be in there insitlling inculsive politcal institutions… obama doesnt get this. He’ll abandon the area and it will be in poverty for another 100 years.
Yes, the main criticism here has been that an election that was likely a certain win for Obama was made out to be a closer race, which it never really was. People don’t watch TV if they think the election is decided.
All politicians lie but not all lies are created equal. Anecdotes follow the same rule and are meant to bring the candidate closer to the public rather than form a basis for rational decision making.
Yea I agree with higgmond and bromion. You can’t look at 2010-2012 because it wasn’t a on-off light switch. I have direct word of mouth evidence from employers (including my last employer), and my personal experience, it all echoes the same.
My last employer says after Obamacare kicked in, their insurer boosted premiums 30%, the firm later took down what their policy covered and then started letting people go. (quote: “in direct response to increased costs”)
When I was unemployed during the transition period of Obamacare, and was looking to buy my own insurance, I was literally told by Anthem & United, “if you sign up before this date, it’s $180 a month”. if you sign up after ObamaCare kicks in, your premium is $250." Same Exact Plan. same coverage, same Everything. the only difference was ObamaCare.
Now, small business across the US must be facing exactly the same thing. If premiums go up 30%, you either don’t pay it (by reducing hours so they are not a full-time employee), or you literally hire fewer people. Small business margins are generally quite low already, they won’t eat 30% cost increases w/o cutting something.
Even if it’s not an on off light / switch, if this is truly happening hours should be falling or flat. No getting around. Now we could do mental gymnastics with the statistics, but realistically, it’s just not the case. What people say, especially the vocal ones, and what actually occurs are often different.
Labor force participation has also been decreasing over that period. It was around 66% in 2006. Now it’s around 63%. So there are indeed fewer people in the work force. This supports the argument that fewer people are working, but they are working longer hours. The portion of this that is attributable to Obamacare is uncertain, of course.
From a high level, it’s pretty clear that Obamacare is a tax on employment, since it increases the amount of healthcare that companies need to provide for employees. In the absence of healthcare cost decrease, it would be rational to conclude that companies will hire fewer people. The effect is probably not as big as some people here are suggesting, but there will be some effect.
The number of people covered by healthcare overall has increased - there have been many studies that show this. However, this has happened at the cost of existing healthcare subscribers. This is evident in higher premiums or somewhat worse coverage in plans that don’t increase costs. My healthcare plan got more expensive and less flexible in 2012.
For every full time hourly job I’ve had, I’d always been scheduled for 40 hours max. Any more htey’d have to pay overtime. I can’t think of a single reason why employers wouldn’t change that gerenal rule to 30 hours (for unskilled jobs) to save a lot of money.
I assume they’ll have to fill the extra work by hiring more people. Soo more 2nd jobs ooor MORE EMPLOYED PEOPLE!! Jobs crisis solved! Thank you Affordable Care Act!
(Ohai)Fair enough. Not sure I’d choose 2006 statistics as the benchmark (economic peak), but if you asked me “will higher health care costs have some impact on hiring” the answer is probably yes. But my counterpoint was just that the effect is not this wide ranging job apocalypse that’s being described by the earlier posters, but something much more muted. If healthcare costs go up 30% and healthcare is say 10% of salary (being really generous here), then you have a 3% increase in wages that will gradually vest. Assuming there’s some very small inflation (maybe 1-2%) over that period, just skiping the obligatory inflation wage increase puts you back at no impact to hiring decisions, with more people being covered with healthcare.
(RevAcct&Co)This whole garbage of “employers will just put a 30 hour cap on work” doesn’t mesh with basic labor economics. First off, 1.5X overtime and a 3% increase (see first paragraph) are not even comparable. I did contract work for awhile after college and again just after grad school. I was making EASILY 15-20% premium over my friends for similar work who were full time employees with benefits. An efficient job market means $15 /hr labor = $15 / hr labor. In other words, they can’t just say, "We were paying you $20 an hour to do this job, now with obamacare, we’ll miraculously cut your hours to 30 and you’ll make the same $20, but without benefits. No, they’d either say, well we’ll cut you to 30 hours and you’ll make $25. Now, hiring and firing as well as lost productivity costs are MUCH higher than 3% and that is a fact. So, to say they’d fire you over a 3% increase is the height of stupidity, and I’d say most pundits are missing the point:
ULTIMATELY, EMPLOYERS AND EMPLOYEES WILL SHARE THE 3% INCREASED BURDEN. This happens in most rising cost scenarios with equal bargaining power. 1.5% a peice vesting over the next 2 years is not a big deal like everyone on Fox and this thread are crying about. In 2 years, an employer can wave inflation increases and BAM, problem solved.