New ObamaCare TaxesSee the details and citations.
01/16/13 - Independent Institute by John C. Goodman [edited]
Americans will pay $500+ billion in 19 new taxes and fees in the next 10 years to fund health reform. Some will be identified as taxes. Others will be in higher prices, higher insurance premiums, or lower wages.
73 million taxpayers earning less than $200,000 will see higher taxes on Medical Devices, Insurance, Drugs, Medical Savings Accounts, Indoor Tanning, High Cost Health Insurance, Illness, Wages, Investments, and Home Sales.
Central Planning in 1848CafeHayek
At Cafe Hayek - 04/26/11 [edited]
H.L. Mencken wrote about French central planning in 1848 by their best and brightest geniuses.
“Every day they announced some new and grander scheme to bring in the millennium, and every day they abandoned some busted one. Meanwhile, the plain people could not find jobs. The French taxpayer had to pay, in the end, for all of the crazy building of
gaudy railway stations, dredging of rivers, and digging of canals.”
“The Brain Trust proposed that the Rotten Rich were scoundrels who ought to be squeezed. This proceeded easily to the thesis that any man was a scoundrel who had any property whatsoever, and he ought to be squeezed equally. The rich mostly managed to escape, but the little fellow could not get away, and squeezed he surely was.”
Avalanche of ObamaCare RulesConservatives4Palin
11/02/12 - Conservatives4Palin by James V. DeLong [edited]
Grace-Marie TurnerPresident of the Galen Institute, doing primarily non-profit research in market-based health policy. notes that the Department of Health and Human Services has issued 13,000 pages of regulations, way behind providing all the rules for implementing the 2,700 page ObamaCare. There is chaotic uncertainty for everyone: health care providers, state governments, employers, and consumers.
The unions and the Democrats expect federalized health care to produce a huge flow of union dues, much of which will be applied to campaign contributions.
The health care industry is silent about repeal. Its members were bribed and bludgeoned into support, and they expect bonanzas such as subsidized insurance costs.
11/12/12 - Cato@Liberty by Walter Olson [edited]
NYPost: The LIPA VP of Operations told 300 Rockaway residents that they must hire a licensed city electrician to inspect their homes before LIPA could restore power. He suggested they print out inspection forms from the Internet. “But we don’t have power!” the crowd shouted back.
Walter Olson: In a sane world, occupational licensure would be relaxed in such an emergency. Lives and gigantic economic damage are at risk. But, this is New York. Being a licensed electrician in a neighboring county isn't enough.
Three states with extensive tree damage forbid unlicensed tree trimming. Many people would have liked to hire someone from a neighboring state to clear a blocked driveway.
AMG: LIPA is a government agency intended to deliver better service than a private company earning a profit.
LawsuitBusiness Week: LIPA’s failure to provide electric services was occasioned by neglected vital maintenance including tree trimming and transmission pole inspections and replacement.
Jobs Report Less Awful - Media Declares RecoveryMises.org
Mises - Ryan McMaken - 04/01/11 [edited]
Bob Murphy described the “recovery” like this: "Say you break a leg while running. Now you have to crawl, but you are able to get from here to there. According to the National Bureau of Economic Research, you are
in recovery when you are crawling faster than when you first hit the ground in agony."
The job market has become somewhat adept at crawling through the mud, so today’s lackluster, but positive, jobs report has the usual sources declaring that the labor market is “making some serious progress.”
Bill QuickAt DailyPundit: The subtext to the entire Obama campaign is “Now that I’ve destroyed your job, would you be better off if I took away your unemployment check?”
Mark LevinAmerican lawyer, author, conservative commentator, and radio host.: Do Republicans want the economy to do badly to help them win the election? No, they remain opposed to the policies which are causing our financial crisis. Video 12:27.
Arthur C. BrooksPresident of the free market American Enterprise Institute 1/1/09, previously the Louis A. Bantle Professor of Business and Government Policy at Syracuse University.: President Obama's proposes to eliminate the Bush-era tax cuts for households making over $250,000 a year. This would reduce the annual deficit by only 5%. That leaves 95% of the deficit to be paid by the middle class.
Michael GrahamFree market author and Boston radio host.: If I had to send an angry, outraged letter to either Chick-Fil-A (we don’t support gay marriage) or the Islamic Society of Boston (we support stoning gay people), I think I’d make a different choice than Mayor Menino did.
Dr. Daniel Galyon - 04/20/12 [edited]
I worked in the British National Health Service in the 1980s, a tremendous learning experience. England still has clinicians who can do remarkable work with scarce resources.
Working at an NHS hospital is like going back 20 years. The infrastructure, equipment, surgical tools, and medications are backward compared to any medium-sized hospital in the US.
Ironically, many nations afflicted with ObamaCare
style systems have moved toward private, decentralized approaches.
Teaching health care economics, I point out that the cellphone revolution began when President Ronald Reagan dismantled the [government regulated] monopoly of AT&T.
It is incredible that people would trust their government and insurance companies to micromanage the trillions of daily decisions that must be made when thousands of doctors take care of millions of patients.
Matt Patterson - 03/09/12 - OpenMarket [edited]
The government has been spending our wealth for decades. First everything we made, then everything we are ever going to make, and now everything our children and their children will ever make.
It is not hard to guess how future generations will judge us for the theft of their prosperity.
America is not alone in this debased condition. The rot is deep and widespread; it is civilizational. The entitlement promises made by national and local governments of the West are so vast that they can never be kept.
Gov't Official Confiscates School Lunch
Robert J. Avrech - 02/15/12 [edited]
They are doing it because it’s good for you; because it’s good for society; because it’s cost effective; because they have a degree in it; because like Plato’s philosopher king, they think long and hard about it while you selfishly make a living, support your family, and worship G-d; because they know better.
It starts in the outer ring of your life: light bulbs, toilet flushes, shower nozzles, cars, and guns, then spreads to encompass the environment. First the earth is freezing, a few years later it’s global warming, then it’s climate change. Finally it enters your guts via government health care and food.
They are doing it, making you a slave, because you voted for Barack Obama.
So, That Was What Iraq Was About
Victor Davis Hanson - 03/27/11 [edited]
We know now that the Bush-Cheney “shredding” of the Constitution was simply a liberal talking point. Remember tribunals, wiretaps, intercepts, renditions, preventative detention, Predator drones, and Guantanamo Bay.
Obama has either embraced or expanded all of those anti-terrorism protocols, and even hired the very lawyers and deans to legitimize them, people who used to sue the government to stop them.
Libya is the capstone of the entire liberal reset. The MSNBC talking heads now support bombing an oil-producing Muslim Arab country, that does not threaten our national security, without congressional approval, and with fewer allies than went with us to Afghanistan and Iraq.
So, we realize the entire Iraq hysteria was simply partisan politics, not about principles. That is why we won’t see Rendition II at the movies, a return of Cindy Sheehan to network news, or Michael Moore in the VIP seats at the 2012 Democratic convention.
Roger L Simon - 04/03/11 [edited]
What is it about Obama that makes him so boring? I submit it is something quite simple — he has nothing to say. He is a boring person, the quintessential “hollow man” in the T.S. Eliot sense. He is kind of a
socialist, kind of a liberal, kind of a multi-culturalist, kind of an environmentalist, kind of globalist, kind of a budget cutter — but none of them with any real commitment. Basically, he’s a vague and uncommitted person pretending to be otherwise. He is the man who voted “present,” now in the presidency.
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