My must read of the day is "Obamacare not a job killer. But is it still a campaign issue?" by Doyle McManus in the Los Angeles Times:
The initial headlines on the CBO report made its findings sound worse than they turned out to be. Some Republicans, seizing on the news, claimed that the CBO was forecasting the loss of 2.5 million jobs. But that wasn’t true. In fact, the CBO was forecasting that the law would prompt some workers to decide to quit their jobs or work fewer hours. That’s not the same thing.
Is that good news or bad news? Mostly bad — but not all bad. The biggest reduction in labor, the CBO said, will probably come from low-income workers eligible for Medicaid or Obamacare subsidies who don’t want their incomes to rise so high that they will lose benefits. "The health insurance subsides that the act provides to some people will be phased out as their income rises, creating an implicit tax on additional earnings," the CBO pointed out. In other words, at some levels there’s an incentive to stop working — not a good idea, as conservatives pointed out.
On the other hand, for some workers, the CBO said, Obamacare means they’ll be able to retire earlier than they would have otherwise; no more "job lock" while employees wait for Medicare. Democrats argued that the upside was real too.
None of the "benefits" mentioned by McManus make it worth the long-term harm this law will cause countless people, primarily low-income families.
Encouraging people not to work is to deprive them of an important opportunity. People find self-value and worth through working and having a job.
Dr. Richard Cytowic, a neurologist and Pulitzer Prize nominee, once argued that people are driven by "effort rather than the result." Cytowic wrote:
"If you want self-esteem, then do estimable things. Accomplishments and know-how can't be handed out or downloaded into someone's brain like they are for the characters in The Matrix. They must be earned through individual effort. It is the endeavor that generates a sense of pride and inward esteem. Imagine handing a fisherman a prize catch. You may think you're doing him a favor and saving him the trouble, but you are robbing him of the pleasure instead. A fisherman wants to catch his own fish, not be given one."
We need to help people work, not incentivize them to drop out of the workforce. If we do that, we’re robbing individuals of more than just success; we’re robbing them of happiness and personal fulfillment.