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WaPo Praises The Joy Of Being "Untethered" And "Unleashed" From A Job, The "Freedom" Of Unemployment
Now that the full court press to refute the findings of the CBO report which, as we reported, confirmed what was largely known - that as a result of Obamacare, the strapped US economy will have even fewer workers as millions will fall back on welfare state entitlements which make hard work obsolete - has failed, it is time for the propaganda to take a different track: one where not having a job, and in fact losing it due to Obamacare, is hailed as an act of nobility. Sure enough, here comes one of the administration's favorites, the Bezos Times, with "They quit their jobs, thanks to health-care law" which does largely as its name suggests: highlights just how "enabling" and "liberating" Obamacare is for one's life, once a person is no longer burdened by something as trivial as a job.
No, we aren't kidding:
Count Polly Lower among those who quit their jobs because of the health-care law.
It happened in September, when her boss abruptly changed her job description. She went from doing payroll, which she liked, to working on her boss’s schedule, which she loathed. At another time, she might have had to grit her teeth and accept the new position because she needed the health benefits.
But with the health-care law soon to take effect, she simply resigned — and hasn’t looked back.
“It was wonderful. It was very freeing,” said Lower, 56, of Bourbon, Ind., who is now babysitting her 5-year-old granddaughter full time. With the help of federal subsidies that kicked in Jan. 1, she is paying less than $500 a month for health coverage for herself and her husband.
One really can't make this up - it appears that in America's creeping transition to a socialist paradise, the new American dream is living on "Federal subsidies" (paid for by taxpayers) and government welfare. It gets better:
The White House and its allies argue that the government has a role in addressing a failure of the health-insurance market: the high prices and coverage restrictions that have kept health coverage out of reach for so many people. Like Social Security, which provides a safety net so people can retire, the health law may have the effect of leading some Americans to stop working, they say. But they called the impact positive, arguing that people have for too long been stuck in jobs that are a poor fit or that they dislike, simply for the benefits. While some people may make the calculation to just work less to keep more generous benefits, many will use their time to do something more productive, such as start their own business or take care of family members, advocates of the new law say.
“What the White House wants you to think is, if a person chooses to make less income, they must be doing something that makes them better off,” said former Congressional Budget Office director Douglas Holtz-Eakin, now president of the American Action Forum, a conservative policy group. “What conservatives would have you ask is, is it an appropriate use of someone else’s money to put you in that position to choose?”
The CBO acknowledged that there could be some positive economic impacts from unleashing people from their jobs but concluded that there was no good way to quantify that, and therefore left the number out.
Incidentally, "unleashing people from their jobs" may be the punchline of 2014. And why not, everything else is rapidly going to bizarro socialist hell. Actually, here is another punchline candidate: "tethered to a job":
Lower acknowledged that it has been harder to make ends meet without a steady paycheck. But she said there is no way to quantify the peace of mind she feels, now that she isn’t tethered to a job she hates and can help her daughter, a single mother who works full time, with child care.
Lower expected to miss her job. “It was definitely a scary move to make,” she said. “I’m a person who likes routine, and there definitely was an adjustment period.”
But upon reflection, she said, “I’ve adjusted well.”
We hate to break it to you, but "adjusting" to living on the welfare of others, while being untethered, and unleashed from the tyranny of working (hard) and paying taxes is not exactly training for the Ironman Triathlon. Also, the final outcome when the entire population becomes untethered and unleashed is rather unpleasant - just see every socialist paradise in history.
However, what is becoming clear is that slowly but surely, the entire process of labor and being employed is increasingly cast in a negative light: something which is not exactly surprising. At least not to our readers, because, sadly, we were once again just over a year ahead of the prevailing sentiment when, in November of 2012, we wrote "When Work Is Punished: The Tragedy Of America's Welfare State" when we said that "for increasingly more it is now more lucrative - in the form of actual disposable income - to sit, do nothing, and collect various welfare entitlements, than to work. This is graphically, and very painfully confirmed, in the below chart from Gary Alexander, Secretary of Public Welfare, Commonwealth of Pennsylvania (a state best known for its broke capital Harrisburg). As quantified, and explained by Alexander, "the single mom is better off earnings gross income of $29,000 with $57,327 in net income & benefits than to earn gross income of $69,000 with net income and benefits of $57,045." That was then. Now we can add Obamacare... which will further help America's now almost extinct middle class get even more untethered and unleashed.
Of course, it is up to the likes of the Bezos Washington Post to make it appear that this is all not only perfectly normal, but noble and dignified.
Alas, as smarter people than us have pointed out, being untethered and unleashed only works as long as the system has other people's money to distribute to those who chose not to work and pay taxes. Once said money runs out , complete social collapse and revolution usually follows.
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Yes alright already, it was a socialist/fascist fantasy to link health care to work in the first place.
But moving it up to government MAKES IT WORSE NOT BETTER.
I do not know whether to laugh or cry with the Administration's position here. If they believe this BS, the Political class needs a complete reset. If this is just for public consumption, they will lead many middle class employees astray and into financial ruin.
While low income and entry level workers can indeed move with greater freedom from one low pay job to another, the vast majority of middle class workers need to think hard of changing jobs on a whim. The reality today is that job mobility is more difficult than when older generations started out in their careers, at a time of full employment and labor competition for tech, engineering, IT and other professional positions.
Go out and speak to your friendly headhunter and ask them how easy or difficult it is for them to recruit mid level technical workers away from companies they have been with for a long period of time and into new positions at other companies. With most of us working under the "employment at will" concept in most companies, leaving a settled position today, should cause one to think long and hard of the risk/reward paradigm. With unofficial unemployment probably at 15 to 18%, millions having left the labor force and companies reluctant to hire those unemployed longer than 6 months, one has to be very sure of the quality of an new job before leaving the old. Quiting a current job with no replacement job in hand, can be financial suicide.
This administration and WaPo should ask themselves; Why is it that if good jobs are plentiful and one can now move more freely in the corporate sector - why federal, state and municipal employees and education workers are not leaving their cushy jobs with lifetime employment guarantees, good retirements benefits to take a risk into corporate employment.
Puerto Rico is Obama's EM quandary. He wants to make it a state to ensure the Democrats control the country for the next 10 years, but he's got to find a way to get rid of the island's mountain of debt.
Public floggings need to make a comback.
Mainstream media flacks and apologists like this who pimp these outlandish storylines can go to the front of the line.
Sounds like people that work are going to be shunned at parties. Probably not even invited. Mind you, they won't have time for parties anyway. Too busy to maintain the party goers.
Health care should not tie one to their job. And an employer should not be able to crap all over their employee because of the need for health care coverage.
The slant of this article makes zero sense on all levels.
Remember when portability of pensions was the rallying cry - well that problem was solved by the extinction of defined benefit pensions by most private employers now the availability of health care takes another shackle off wage slaves.
If this person was doing babysitting at a higher hourly rate than their employer had been paying I guess this story would have a completely different slant.
Lots of people were frozen in bad jobs because quitting a job before medicare age was a jump into the abyss, would health care be available at any cost - or just a prohibitive cost. Once people can get their arms around the availability and cost of individual health care then they can make informed decisions.
O/T:
This is sort of upsetting: http://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/new-atlanticist/war-on-terror-is-no...
I don't really know anything about the Atlantic Council, but the "extraordinary crisis" bit, even in context, strikes me as a little too 'newpearl harbor'y.
Written by Harlan Ullman... who's he, you ask?
"Dr Ullman was the principal author of the doctrine of "shock and awe" and was a product of the National Defense University of the United States. It technically is known as "rapid dominance" and is a military doctrine based on the use of "overwhelming decisive force," "dominant battlefield awareness," "dominant maneuvers," and "spectacular displays of power" to "paralyze" an adversary's perception of the battlefield and destroy his will to fight."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harlan_Ullman
"If you dont like your job, you dont have to keep your job"
Those of us that keep on keepin on, work hard, save, pay our bills on time, etc.... We are the schmucks in this game.
And Bitcoin is unlikely to help here:
Bubble Chronicles: Bitcoin Crashing Down Fast to 530 at Mt. Gox
After all the news about the Mt. Gox and Russia making any transactions with Bitcoin illegal, Bitcoin is crashing fast now with Mt. Gox quoting below any other exchanges at 530 and Litecoin is down to 15.Update:
Just about time to untether some of these mother %*#*$%#
All welfare is bad. Corporate and personal. Anyone thinking either side is worse than the other it simply and ideolog. I don't think the hedge is pusing towards the GOP. It is simply exposing in different ways the collective manipulation of all for the benefit of the few. Whether you call them communist / marxist/ socialist/ or facist.. In the end they all want the same thing. Control over you because they know what is best for you. Those who argue on this board about the differences between facism and marxism simply don't get it. I know what is best for me as well as many on the hedge know what is best for them.
Liberty is the individual. The collective hates the individual.
They continue to herd us like cattle after 40 years of a dumbed down education system. Who cares what "ism" you want to call it. Anything other than total freedom is tyranny.
You are Right. Jeffersonian Constitution came as close to allowing any collective in history being individually free. If one reads Jefferson especially his warnings of future Federal Government dangers and what we must not allow, (Which we have), we would be much more FREE! It does amaze me that both sides of political spectrum continues to destroy what he and Madison Created.
Jefferson's philosophies were first violated in real time by Lincoln when he made the collective have governmental preference over the individual and individual States. It directly conflicted and allowed us to grow into a centrally run collective with a massively overpowering Central Government.
I agree with you Jeffersonian principals should be reinstated immediately along with Madison's mandates of privacy! I fear that the latest few governments would never agree!
There is nothing wrong with the state providing healthcare.
This is what separates humans from the beasts.
The sign over the White House gate says:
"Arbeit Macht Frei - NICHT!"
An alternate take; After many years in the real world I bought a small organic farm. I produce 100k of food verses 85k in expenses. Its a 7 day, 52 week job.
I do it because I love it, but the 15k left over puts me at poverty level. The 150/mo 5K deductable health insurance plan was discontinued as per Obamacare...So fuckit...I'll cross over, get medicade..they will probably throw in an ebt card. I'm already starving the beast by contributing no taxes (not even sales tax) but now I can claw back SS that I will probably never see, and income tax that was paid all those years. When and if the system crashes, and the corpoated welfare teat is ended, it will be easy to walk away from the other welfare tit, because the playing field will be leveled for those trying to make a go of it
In the market of free ideas and beliefs, it seems the free market is losing BADLY. Who comes across when the free market evaporates your job/career to Vietnam? Gov't. unemployment checks do. I never saw anyone SING about capitalism when their job was made to go "poof." If the free market demands wage stagnation and suppression...that's going to garner votes for it? When Wall St gets busted time and again for being shown the thieves they are, THIS helps the free market cause?
If the free market wants to win against gov't, it had better offer up something tangible other than PR. You cant eat nor heat your house with PR and ur average Joe out there may be unedcuated but he's not entirely stoopid. The free market has done a great job of coming off like assholes and it wonders why people turn to gov't instead?
Hey gang, let's all quit our jobs and demand that the government take care of us! I feel so untethered!
You might have an idea there: one 24 hour period where the remaining working TAXPAYERS go on strike-just not go to work. Afraid we'd have to omit cops,firefighters and medical folks, but imagine how the country would grind to a halt. What a protest!
We really have arrived at 1984 NewSpeak: war is peace, idleness is work.
I do a lot of volunteer work. This Christmas, I was asked to contact a family in need because they had lost their SNAP. When I asked the wife where she or her husband worked, she proudly stated "Oh we don't work, we are stay at home parents."
I decided it would be tough to tell the organization volunteers that work their regular jobs, then raise money for those in need on weekends and evenings that we were giving money to "stay at home parents."