Have you been following the Republican far right’s latest misrepresentation about the Affordable Care Act? Twisting a statement in an appendix to a Congressional Budget Office report on the ACA’s progress, the crazies claim the government admits that affordable health care will kill 2 million jobs.
HOLY mackerel! We’re all flying toward Hell on a skateboard!
What the budget office’s authors actually said is that once people no longer have to hold onto a full-time job, willy-nilly, in order to maintain health insurance, about two million American FTE jobs may be vacated by those who retire early or elect to quit working full-time so as to follow more worthwhile pursuits, such as rearing their children, spending their time in volunteer work, becoming self-employed, or simply living slightly less miserable lives.
That is different from the loss of two million jobs. It doesn’t represent the disappearance of jobs. It represents a reduction in the number of people forced to work at a certain type of employment.
As a practical matter, the CBO is probably right in saying that quite a few people will find better things to do with their time than trudging through the rat-race five or six days a week. I can’t even begin to count the number of people I’ve known, over a lifetime in said rat-race, who have said that the only reason they didn’t start their own businesses was that they had to have health insurance and they couldn’t afford it or wouldn’t qualify for it if they weren’t on an employer plan.
If these dreams now can be made to come to pass, will that actually cause the loss of umpty-umpteen gerjillion jobs?
Consider: Jane quits her job because she’s tired of working for the Man and she thinks she has a better idea. She starts a cleaning business. Within a year, she employs five cleaning staff and an admin to answer the phone. A year later, she’s regularly contracting with an exterminator and a painter, and she’s hired an accountant.
Her old job back at Avaricious Industries, Inc., may or may not be replaced with two part-time positions devoid of benefits. But in the process, she has created jobs for nine people, three of them self-employed in businesses that also create jobs for workers.
Okay: Annabelle, the lazy bum, just goes home and takes care of her kids, thereby creating…nothing? Nevvermind that one graduates from Johns Hopkins medical school and becomes a cancer researcher, another grows up to be a nuclear physicist, and the third goes to Africa to lead an NGO and, at the age of 63, wins a Nobel Peace Prize. As a woman and “just a housewife,” Anabelle’s obviously a drag on society.
So if for every two workers who quit a job, one of them founds an enterprise that ends up employing, on average, five other workers, it would seem that a “loss” of 2 million FTE employees should result in a net gain of five million new jobs.
New lies, anyone?
Preach it, girl! ;o)