Wednesday, March 10, 2010

The main problem is unemployment - not healthcare


The Obama administration and Democrats in general are in trouble because they are not urgently and effectively addressing the issue that most Americans want them to: the frightening economic insecurity that has put a chokehold on millions of American families. 

The economy shed 36,000 jobs last month, and that was trumpeted in the press as good news. Well, after your house has burned down I suppose it’s good news that the flames may finally be flickering out. But once you realize that it will take 11 million or more new jobs to get us back to where we were when the recession began, you begin to understand that we’re not really making any headway at all.

It’s also widely known by now that the official employment statistics drastically understate the problem. Once we take off the statistical rose-colored glasses, we’re left with the awful reality of millions upon millions of Americans who have lost — or are losing — their jobs, their homes, their small businesses, and their hopes for a brighter future.

9 comments :

  1. http://www.corestandards.org/Files/K12ELAStandards.pdf

    Just to show you how dangerous Obama is becoming with his control freak attitude, he wants to impose that every elementary school student in the country be required to read specific books (list starts on page 28 of this PDF file). Schools will no longer be able to pick their own books that fit basic criteria.

    Hamayvin yovin that books with improper material will be required reading for yeshiva kids if the megalomaniac gets his way.

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  2. Yes; the problem is jobs.

    But what are those without health care supposed to do in the mean time?

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  3. @ Obama Coup. Did you even read this? The title of the graph is "Texts Illustrating the Complexity, Quality, and Range of Student Reading K–5" and below it is the following explanation: Given space limitations, the illustrative texts listed above are meant only to show individual titles that are representative of a wide range of topics and genres. (See Appendix B for excerpts of these and other
    texts illustrative of K–5 text complexity.) At a curricular or instructional level, within and across grade levels, texts need to be selected around topics or themes that generate knowledge and allow students to study that topic in depth."

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  4. And if you think our healthcare system doesn't need a major overhaul, chew on this for a while: 62% of bankruptcies each year are caused by medical expenses and of those, 78% had health insurance.

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  5. I am a Human Resources consultant who works nationwide.

    In the past 3 months I have been busier than I can handle because the companies I work for are in a hiring frenzy.

    This is due 100% to Federal Stimulus money.

    One of our clients builds solar power plants all over the world and they are hiring engineers to design the power cells to fill the orders for new solar power plants that are being built all over the country with Federal stimulus money.

    This money not only ends the recession for the solar power plant company, but it also helps hundreds of small businesses like ours that supply the solar power plant company.

    Keynsian economists estimate that for every dollar spent by the Federal government, five dollars of GNP are generated and of course taxed. That is quite a high rate of return!

    But the high tech hiring surge does not just affect the scientists and engineers who will design the solar power plants.

    Another one of our clients who is in the self storage business is also hiring like crazy because they anticipate huge growth from the relocations of all those engineers, scientists and other employees that are bound to arise from the sudden influx of domestic capital investments as a result of the Federal stimulus money.

    B"H, our business, as an indirect result of the Federal stimulus money is busier than we can handle.

    We have already hired a new person and would like to add another employee.

    Ironically, what stops us is the high cost of health insurance premiums. We can afford to hire another person, but the health insurance adds another 10-15k to what we must pay. And in the US, no one can afford to work for a company that does not offer health insurance.

    It makes more sense for someone to go work for Whole Foods and earn $10-15 per hour but get health insurance which is worth another $7.50 per hour than it does to work for us and earn the $20 per hour that a Human Resources consultant with 2-3 years experience earns.

    As a result, we have been recruiting retirees to work for us. Since they are already on Medicare, each hire costs us as much as 15k per year less than hiring a younger person.

    And while there is no substitute for experience, it is obvious that the future of this country's economic growth is not in training 70 year old retirees to do a job.

    And that is why universal access health care is important to any country that hopes to prosper in the future.

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  6. How are things in Eretz Yisrael?

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  7. The democrats are interested in health care for reasons that have nothing to do with health.

    They want to institute one payer health care that would put all the people at the "tender" mercies of the Leftist rabble.

    They want to create a tremendous government work force that will be beholden to the Democrats and vote for them to stay in power.

    The health issues can be dealt with in much simpler ways such as allowing for nationwide competition for insurance instead of keeping the outdated law restricting competition to the state.

    It's a raw power grab and that's why it trumps everything else.

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  8. I didn't read the PDF file carefully because a newspaper report said that the Administration intends to make the book selections mandatory.

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  9. Debra Stitt,

    because ObamaCare helps you personally, you come up with that simplistic optimistic view that it is good for the country as a whole, which it is not.

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