Good lord, that sounds like… Socialism!!! Why don’t people support themselves?
That’s the free market in action. If working doesn’t provide enough incentive without threatening them with inadequate health care, I guess it just didn’t need doing.
Yes, and if the coercion of withholding adequate healthcare is looming over their heads, they can be compelled to to work for less, under worse conditions. I can see how it is better for investors; for workers, not so much.
How do you know that I’m “all about individual responsibility and freedom of choice”?
I mean, it’s not like I’m opposed to either of those things – in fact I think they’re pretty worthy goals – but I don’t want to be defending every caricature you come up with.
As a general rule, the government should try to avoid limiting individual responsibility and freedom of choice. But at the same time, the government should also consider whether government laws or policies create perverse incentives for people.
For example, I don’t think the government should outlaw high cholesterol foods in order to force people to live healthier lifestyles. But if tax policy was skewed such that it actively encouraged people to eat high cholesterol foods rather than healthier alternatives, that would be something to consider.
That would possibly be true in certain circumstances. But in general, employers set policy based on the employee population as a whole. Many of these people have the option of working for other employers who also provide health coverage, so this would not be a factor.
What’s interesting in this regard is that one aspect of the CBO’s discussion was the suggestion – in a discussion of employee productivity that the ACA might contribute negatively due to increased turnover.
Ultimately this is not reflected in their assessment (too speculative and counterbalanced by other factors).
No it’s not the free market in action. Absent government intervention, working would provide enough incentive. The government is skewing things by removing that incentive.
So you believe it is appropriate for health insurance to be coupled to employment?
All else being equal, I would rather that health insurance not be linked to employment. If these are delinked, that is a positive attribute.
However, I also think lessening the incentive to work is a negative, and this is also worthy of consideration.
But shouldn’t the incentive to work be based on the value of the salary and benefits, not on their availability?
That’s correct.
According to the CBO report, one impact of the ACA is to lower the value of the salary and benefits in various ways, and thus decrease the incentive to work.
That’s pretty much the point of this thread.
I must have missed that part. How does the ACA reduce salary/wages?
You obviously don’t spend much time around trailer parks, subsidized housing apartments and unemployment offices. And, no, I’m not being facetious. Even well up the economic ladder, the CBO report correctly illustrates why working overtime to earn that next $5,000 doesn’t look all that appealing if it means your ACA subsidy gets cut or eliminated next year. I knew there would be left-wing spin here, but I’m not buying the argument that encouraging people to work less, or to not work at all, is a positive for society.
It reduces net salary because more of people’s salary increases are absorbed by taxes and lower subsidies (the latter being the bigger factor).
I’ve quoted extensive excerpts from the CBO report on this topic in this thread, most recently in post #78.
You took out a few words. The ACA reduces the value of salary/wages by increasing the net cost of health insurance as one’s income rises.
The problem with that view is that as time goes on, to accomplish the same amount of work we need less people. Automation is eating up your man hours. Why hire ten people when one person can automate nine of those people away?
The thing that always comes up as a retort is “Yeah, but we’ll find something for them to do.” Well the problem is that we have millions of people just surviving while the new paradigm takes shape. So once there’s opportunity, you’ll have a backlog of people to hire. The wave of the last set of people that got laid off, plus the new and shiny whippersnappers.
We simply do not need all of those unemployed people to be working, right now. And unless something comes along that will require vast amounts of either unskilled or skilled labor, we probably won’t fill the gap anytime soon.
And whatever shall we do with all these useless people?
Why is encouraging people to work overtime when doing so is proven in studies to be an overall efficiency loss a positive for society? Why is having people cut into their personal lives, spending less time with their family, raising children, deteriorating their health, etc, considered to be a positive for society? When we already have people who cannot find work at all, why is encouraging others to take up even more work than usual in especially inefficient ways considered a good thing?
Would it surprise anyone to learn this just the latest talking point handed down from the right-wing puppet masters?
Unknowable. You’re conflating the need to work with work ethic. Either person might be doing just enough to keep his job. Either one might be over-delivering due to some “work ethic”. Not to say their might not be a relationship between the two, but they are two different things.
What is your definition of “work ethic”?
There’s a big difference between being compelled to work and being compelled to work for an employer in particular. What I’m objecting to is a law that makes people feel less compelled to work since they can expect taxpayers to cover part of their living expenses. Which in the actual world as we know it means that those who do wish to work are compelled to work more than they otherwise would so that others can work less than they otherwise would.
And again, when lower income people have an incentive to lower their income further, or at least not grow it, because of a law you support, it’s time to quit complaining about inequality. Set priorities, and stick by them. By passing ACA, liberals essentially prioritized providing health care over income inequality. Which is fine, but stand by that choice and be happy about it.
Who do you think needs more of a work ethic to go to work every day - the guy in an air conditioned office and a comfy chair who goes to lots of meetings or a guy out in the sun on a roof.
I’m the first guy, and lots of people work a lot harder in the physical sense than I do. And I get paid a lot more than they do. There are reasons for that, but my work ethic isn’t one of them.
Income inequality is about opportunity, not choice. If all those on the bottom got there because they chose not to work at high paying jobs or long hours, I bet there wouldn’t be a lot of sympathy. I’m with Karrius - while there are people not working who want to work, why do we want to pressure people to work who don’t want to work and can afford not to work. Getting more people off unemployment would benefit government budgets quite a bit.
This issue happened to come up just yesterday, in a conversation with a friend of mine who is on these various programs. He said his effective marginal “tax” rate is 70% - and that’s without paying any income taxes at all (or at least he didn’t mention any).
He says in addition to his rental subsidies being anything above 30% of income, his food stamps also work the same way, meaning that as his income increases his combined take from these two programs decreases by 60% of the increase. In addition, both he and his wife are self-employed, and pay a 10% employer withholding tax on their own income, making it 70% of his income.
The ACA income subsidies didn’t come up and I didn’t raise the issue as I have no doubt he is on JerseyCare (the NJ version of Medicaid).
[The context of our discussion was not any sort of political ideology, but rather a practical one, regarding whether there’s a way for his wife to structure some compensation as non-income such that it would not reduce their take from social programs. He felt there was a dearth of guidance available in such areas because there were very few people on these programs who were both scrupulous about keeping to the letter of the law while also scheming to take advantage of any available loopholes. To which I would add that this is also the results of the income bracket - there are very few lawyers/accountants/financial planners who are going to spend any time coming up with strategems for maximizing social assistance, in the way they might spend the time coming up with tax planning ideas for wealthier clientelle.]