Incentives

Incentives matter. People pay attention to them. The larger the incentive, the more effective it is. Look at Obamacare. You get heavy subsidies right up to exactly 400% of the poverty line. Then you get nothing, you go directly from being heavily subsidized to being the subsidy, all for that extra dollar in income. This might easily mean for a married couple that they pay an extra $10,000 a year for the same health insurance policy (more or less depending on specifics, but this number is not atypical). Then look at the fact that a lot of employers are shifting to providing employee-only health insurance, and dropping coverage for spouses and dependents.

If a working couple are each making $30k a year, they receive a significant subsidy. If one gets a promotion that comes with a 10% raise ( $3,000), then it kicks them into zero-subsidy land and the net loss of $7,000 a year. The incentive for divorce in order to make ends meet is powerful, because if they divorce, then they both qualify for a bunch of other programs, too, which would effectively boost their effective incomes considerably. Meeting bills vs not meeting bills, being able to afford vacation vs not… This ACA thing is a powerful incentive that, if it stands more than two years, will drive a HUGE boom in divorce and application for “single parents with kids needing government assistance.”

ObamaCare is the most destructive bill to American society I’ve ever witnessed pass congress.

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14 thoughts on “Incentives

  1. Punish what you want less of, reward that which you want more of. That precept works for economics, family unit stability, self defense, et al. By your fruits you shall know them, and their fruits are all rotted.

  2. Actually, I believe it is all part of the Cloward-Pivens strategy Saul Alinsky taught Obaka and he is now proceeding with it. In essence its goal is to collapse the current system by overloading it, and destroying the morals and customs to replace it with the socialist utopia; everyone dependent on the State for all things. Sadly, the current Fascists in this administration don’t understand the whole idea was proven wrong by the USSR experiment.

    This is a long read but just scanning pertinent parts gives one a gauge on how well it is working so far.
    http://www.theobamafile.com/_opinion/Cloward-Piven.html

    • It’s indeed possible they don’t understand that the USSR showed that this stuff won’t work.
      It’s also possible that they know perfectly well, but don’t care because their lust for power is stronger. The nomenklatura did pretty well in the USSR, after all.
      Ayn Rand described this well in Atlas Shrugged.

      • And that is part of the problem – the useful idiots always think THEY will be part of the ruling elites after the crash, because part of their delusion is a hugely inflated view of their abilities and knowledge. Jim Croce said it well in http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tLKhUnl_yhc . WAY to many people are under the impression that they have the chops to be an effective ruler (not LEADER, but RULER), particularly the young and impressionable.

  3. I’ve told the wife that we divorcing when the oldest child starts his junior year of high school. His college student aid application will say he is being raised by a single mom with no job.

    If she can get a subsidy to ‘rent’ part of the house, so much the better.

    • Yeah, that’s the way the incentives line up. Totally immoral, IMO, but understandable given that’s what the FedGov is telling us they want us to do because of the incentives they put out there.

  4. How would this really work? I know that a healthy single adult with no children who makes $30K a year in income is eligible for very little, if anything. Maybe if they are veterans?

    • I did not specify a married couple with no children. I’ve seen several stories in the last couple of days where a family with a couple or three kids were right around the cut-off point, and were looking at serious increases in their medical insurance rates. Different stories had different scenarios.

    • According to that, I likely qualify for more than a half-dozen programs. No, thanks, I’m not applying and giving them the rest of my info.

  5. “…the most destructive bill to American society I’ve ever witnessed pass congress.”

    Probably, and they already have us arguing or upset over its details when we should be focusing on repeal. The dangling pieces of bait here in the agitation propaganda are the various details like the one pointed out here that we’ll cry foul over. Then they’ll come back with proposed “fixes” to those details. Uh, no! That’s how we lose. We DON’T WANT IT TO WORK!

    Look at it this way; if the ACA launch had been all tidy and “sensible” and “fair” and the web site had worked perfectly, what would we be arguing about?

    OK, so now argue that argument, which is a moral one. It says “get the government out of the medical industry (and all others) and then keep it out” not because governments are incompetent and inefficient, but because they’re even worse when they’re competent and efficient, because they’re taking control of things they have no business controlling.

    I’ll keep saying this until everyone embraces it;
    If my freedom has to be attacked, I’d rather have it attacked by incompetent morons than have it attacked by highly efficient geniuses.

    How about you? You want more competence and efficiency in the attacks against our liberty? That’s our argument? We want these attacks on liberty to be more acceptable to the American populace? I don’t.

    This train-wreck of a roll-out is a gift. Accept it and use it to make the moral argument while people are possibly a little open to it at the moment.

    Here’s one;
    Is everyone ready for the Reverened Wright wing of the IRS, auditing your taxes?
    How about a Cass Sunstein Medical Clinic?
    You may have a Cloward/Piven hospital franchise going nationwide soon.
    Next time you need urgent care, you’ll be taken to the La Raza Emergency care facility.

    The communists have convinced about half the country that the profit motive is a horrible evil. Heh. Wait until “Social Justice” in your medical care is more important than profits (or anything else).

    Or we could simply have freedom and liberty, but who’s talking about that?

    • The problem I have with this abomination of social engineering is that refutation is just too complicated for my leftist brother and his wife, the frothing-mouthed Stalinist for whom all problems are solved by condemning greed in others. They have the attention spans of parakeets, and no argument with the complexity of two linked bumper stickers has a chance against the idea of “wouldn’t it be nice to go to the doctor and pay only $3.00 for the visit?”. and isn’t “X” fair?” Well, if all you need is immodium or ibuprufen, that might be ok, but for anything more complicated, I want to see someone with some diagnostic chops and the authority to prescribe from a BIG ASS LONG LIST OF AUTHORIZED MEDICATIONS.
      Admittedly, currently getting an MD after your name is equivalent to getting astronaut training for a pilot’s license, but for medical checkups I want to see someone with more training than that of an ambulance attendant.

  6. Pingback: ACA leads toward divorce | The View From North Central Idaho

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