The Economist Who Exposed ObamaCare

Wall Street Journal ^ | Feb 7, 2014 | Joseph Rago

[Innovative]

The Chicago professor examined the law's incentives for the poor not to get a job or work harder, and this week Beltway budgeteers agreed.

Mr. Mulligan studies how government choices influence the incentives and rewards for work—and many more people may recognize the University of Chicago professor as a serious economist after this week. That's because, more than anyone, Mr. Mulligan is responsible for the still-raging furor over the Congressional Budget Office's conclusion that ObamaCare will, in fact, harm growth and jobs.

But then the CBO ... reported that by 2024 the equivalent of 2.5 million Americans who were otherwise willing and able to work before ObamaCare will work less or not at all as a result of ObamaCare.

[scooby321]

I guess the democrats wouldn’t let him work for the CBO in 2009. But it was garbage in and garbage out for the CNO

[jaybee]

I totally agree with the author of the article, and add one more point.

The incentive for under-the-table income is now enormous. It is much more beneficial for those under a certain line to add to their income in a way that will not affect their benefits.

[Eric in the Ozarks]

Coming soon; An all cash society.
Black markets where unapproved groceries are sold.

[Excellence]

And people can be paid using bitcoins.

[livius]

Black market labor is one of the big problems of European countries, where there are major disincentives both to employers and employees to having “legitimate” full time jobs. Keeping one’s taxable income down and retaining social welfare benefits while at the same time having more disposable income motivates the under-the-table employees, while not having to pay as much in payroll taxes or other forms of government assessment on employers, plus the freedom to hire and fire, motivates the employers.

One thing that is paradoxical about this is that the situation is created by government policies, particularly tax policies, but at the same time, it results in lowered revenue collection for the government. This was one of the problems Greece had: paying for huge social welfare benefits while at the same time receiving less and less income as people fled the taxes.

[RatRipper]

Leftists operate under their publicly stated premise that people are too stupid to make good decisions for themselves; therefore, government must take care of them. Reality is that, based on all their options, government freebies and all, even people on the bottom rung make rational economic decisions based on what is available to them and what is offered to them . . .they know what the best deal is. Democrats just give them deals like Obamacare using taxpayer dollars, and the real beneficiaries return the favor by voting for Democrats. This is nothing new under the sun. It boils down to buying votes with taxpayer dollars and it is morally repugnant. They just put different wrapping paper on a type of political corruption that has been around for eons.

[GOPJ]

" More to the point, "I knew eventually it would be acknowledged that when you pay people for being low income you are going to have more low-income people.".... .....

liberals have turned to claiming that ObamaCare's missing workers will be a gift to society. Since employers aren't cutting jobs per se through layoffs or hourly take-backs, people are merely choosing rationally to supply less labor. Thanks to ObamaCare, we're told, Americans can finally quit the salt mines and blacking factories and retire early, or spend more time with the children, or become artists.

Well, it's worked that way for welfare recipiants and the disability scammers... lots of new artists in that bunch...