Gumming up the works

In reference to Obamacare President Obama said:

A lot of Republicans seem to believe that if they can gum up the works and make this law fail, they’ll somehow be sticking it to me.

What advocates for Obamacare and statists in general don’t seem to understand is that you cannot expect anything but people attempting to “gum up the works” under these situations. Anytime there exists a desired product or service and willing buyers those products and services will naturally, without any coercion, be exchanged for money or barter from the buyers.

Government is coercion. It is applying force. The “force of law” is a common phrase for a reason. Laws and government in some circumstances can help. It’s difficult to argue that using the force of government to enforce contracts entered into by willing parties is anything other than “a good thing”.

But on the other end of the spectrum when the force of government is used to require people purchase a product they did not want, supply a product below cost, outlaw products desired by the market, or sell only products wanted by only a few then things are different. In these instances, all present with Obamacare, government itself created obstacles to the free exchange of product and money. No one should expect the majority of people to embrace it. If it was something people wanted then they would have willingly done it before being forced to by the government. If the force of government is required before something will happen then government is “gumming up the works” of what people naturally want to do. And one should not be surprised when people expend effort in attempting to avoid or eliminate the obstacles placed in their path by government.

For Obama to complain that people opposing Obamacare are “gumming up the works” should be a defining example of the classic meaning of chutzpah.

Share

39 thoughts on “Gumming up the works

  1. Everything in BHO mind is about him. State funerals, opposition to laws, battles over budgets or raids on Bin Laden. It is always about him.

    What a self centered butt head!

  2. Sounds like a good time to use another word, one I just came across today. It’s because he’s a proglodyte.

  3. There’s one statistic that’s obvious but hasn’t been widely publicized. I did just find it: http://dailycaller.com/2014/01/01/its-official-obamacare-debuts-with-more-cancelled-plans-than-enrollments/
    The bottom line: Obamacare has *increased* the number of uninsured.
    Well, I suppose that’s par for the course. The general rule of government programs is that they don’t do what they are advertised to do. Instead, they are either useless, or they have the *opposite* effect. And there is a reason for this. If government programs were actually able to deliver, they (at least some of them) would become unnecessary. So it’s important for government programs never to succeed, because (a) then you can always claim the problem still exists so the program has to continue, and (b) you can say that the problem is worse so the program has to become bigger.
    Obamacare is just the latest example, but the same sort of scam has been going on at least as long as the Federal Reserve Act.

  4. Joe; It seems that, for some unexplained reason, you want people acting selfishly, with no regard whatsoever for the common good, or the Greater Good, and no regard for resource protection, sustainable living, or for future generations. Surely experts, who’ve studied these things and who know and understand the concept of the Greater Good, should have the ability to guide people and bring us together where we’re making the right choices. If the Human Race is move onward and upward, and get beyond a base existence of competition, rivalry, great wealth and property holdings surrounded by poverty and want, and disregard for the long term outlook, then surely we must come together in common purpose. If it is in our nature to disregard these truths, then surely we must strive to change our nature or face extinction.

    Many see all of this as self-evident, and here you are completely ignoring it as usual.

    I say you have some explaining to do.

      • Maybe.

        I still think you have some explaining to do as an answer to the generic communist arguments I present. Devil’s advocate and all. I enjoy doing this because I think I can present the communist point of view better than most actual communist rank and file (zombies)– I leave out the exclamation points, most of the all-caps emphases, and the standard, frothing-at-the-mouth personal attacks, sexual insults and references to race and political parties.

        It’s easy enough to respond to the feces-throwing, barking moonbat with blood shooting out of his eyes, and it seems that a lot of the internet chatter is generated by searching out and finding the moonbats to hold up as examples. It’s (maybe) less easy to deal with a cool-headed, more careful argument that’s more artfully disguised as reason guided by compassion. If I were doing the best possible job, you’d be unsure yourself whether I were being sarcastic or whether I’d gone fully off the deep end.

        And so I present this challenge. A sparring match if you will. I’ve been trying this here and there in an attempt to draw you and others right down to the very nitty gritty of the differences in world views. You can see that over the last several months I’ve already drawn several parallels, pointing out that the arguments from the two sides often sound very much alike in their rhetoric. The purpose is to flesh out the differences at the most basic level.

        I’m not convinced that many of those who think of themselves as libertarians are going to be comfortable being led down that path.

        Your move. Comments or new posts; whatever.

    • Secondary or even tertiary point: Everyone can express an opinion. But until you express it in numbers which actually represent the benefits and costs you haven’t proved anything beyond that you can string words together and form sentences.

      Primary point: Government is force. At the most basic level it is the power to kill people that oppose it. Who granted and where and when did government get this power to compel the whole of society to work for the “common good” instead of protecting the individual ability to make their own decisions and chart their own course in life? It is immoral to force another to do their bidding for the good of another when their previous actions harmed no one. Your “greater good” argument is nothing but a weak justification for slavery by another name. Advocates of such a society deserve all the scorn, revulsion, ostracizing, and political as well as physical resistance due any other slaver.

  5. I would suggest to the dear president, that if your policy plans require 100% buy in from people diametrically ideologically opposed to you, that there might just be a flaw in said policy plans…

  6. Just because you guys have jobs providing you with fabulous health insurance — well, don’t assume everyone else has the same thing

    And I notice the Republican alternative proposal was to ….. do nothing? What kind of a solution is that? It makes me think of the Miley Cyrus song on SNL “Forget the haters ‘cause somebody elected us”
    Read more at http://www.hitfix.com/comedy/complete-lyrics-to-miley-cyrus-we-did-stop-from-saturday-night-live#sZuiCK5I06WlGdIQ.99

    These “elected leaders” are sticking it to you as much or worse than Obamacare ever will — yet you just keep pushing the party line.

    • I’m pretty sure Lyle and probably Rolf buy their own health insurance. And both of my brothers do.

      I have no idea what the official Republican alternative proposal is. But I’m pretty sure it’s not what should be done. And that is completely deregulate the market.

        • I read most of the first link but got too disgusted with it. “Too many choices” when selecting a flight? That’s a problem? Jobs were lost when unprofitable railroad lines were abandoned? Buggy whip makers lost their jobs too. Should the government have kept them making whips until they retired?

          Economics is about the optimal allocation of scarce resources. There has never been a system invented that does better job at that than the free market.

          Anytime you use government force to change the market dynamics you are consuming resources (adding costs) to implement the change as well as blocking the natural (lowest cost) paths of the flow of goods and services.

          You can’t just point out some isolated benefit to government coercion and claim it is a “good thing”. You always have to enumerate the costs of that benefit and look at the whole picture.

          If you want to do that for the health insurance/care industry and claim deregulation is a bad thing go right ahead. I’ll take the other side. Make your case a well as you want/can, email it to me and I’ll even post it as a blog entry instead of a comment.

        • The big problem with that is that what people keep calling “deregulation” is usually nothing of the sort. Insurance is intensely regulated. The problem is that most of the regulations are essentially written by large insurance companies. Competition with a free flow of information will drive down costs. Bailouts ensure stupid risks are taken.
          And, looking at ObamaCare, doing nothing WOULD have been far preferable.
          Yes, until just recently I did buy my insurance on the private individual market. My wife’s new job has good healthcare. But I’d MUCH rather still be on the old free-ish market than ObamaCare. Consider: in the last decade, I’ve spent at leas one year in each of the five income quintiles, in no particularly logical or predictable order. So how the bloody hell am I supposed to figure out my subsidy, or lack thereof? It’s a HUGE risk, and assuming a “middle-road” income guess, I’d pay more for less, with higher deductibles.

        • The idea that banks are “deregulated” is laughable. Banks have been working under ever increasing regulation for decades as anyone with any knowledge of the banking industry would know.

      • Joe, my man, airline dregulation has been absolutely HORRIBLE for the consumer. I mean, it’s only resulted in a 50% reduction in inflation adjusted ticket costs to the point that just about anybody can afford to fly. It was SOOO much better for the consumer when only the wealthy could afford a plane ticket right?

        Consumers also benefited mightily from airlines having to wait quite literally YEARS for the Civil Aeronuatics Board (CAB) to approve new routes instead of the airlines being able to flexibly offer routes based on demand. Who actually wants enough flights between popular destinations anyway?

    • “And I notice the Republican alternative proposal was to ….. do nothing? What kind of a solution is that?”

      “First, do no harm.”

      If the available options are “make it worse” or “do nothing”, (even if it’s only because you don’t know what else to do) then “do nothing” is the appropriate action.

      • Doing nothing is making it worse. The percentage of our GDP that goes to healthcare is the highest in the world, and growing! How much money do you think the USA can spend on healthcare?

        • “Doing nothing is making it worse.”

          Alright, I’ll clarify for you: If the available options are “do nothing” (make it worse) or “Obamacare” (make it worse faster), then “do nothing” is still the appropriate action.

        • We’ll spend up to the point we can’t spend any more and then we won’t. We spend that much because we demand the absolute best top of the line care and in the highest amounts. It’s a choice we make and it’s not a bad one. We spend a higher percentage of GDP than the rest of the world on lots of other things, TVs, cars, you name it, and it’s seen as a good thing because it means we have the $$ to spend.

          In any event, if you want to stop people from spending more, then FURTHER separating people from the price signaling mechanism like Obamacare does is not the answer. In fact, in a lot of ways, it’s a recipe for greatly expanded costs.

          If anyone tells you they can cut health care costs without cutting care, they’re a liar, because in reality, the only thing that costs is the care.

        • And in line with above, the growth rate of health care expenditures in the US was tapering off by at least 2006. Why? Because people either didn’t have the money to spend or decided not to spend it, which is the way it should work.

        • The fact that the US spends X amount of its GDP on health care is not in an of itself a “problem”.

          There is no “right” amount of our great wealth to spend on healthcare. And I’m utterly sick of people who claim to know what the nation is “supposed” to spend.

        • The percentage of our GDP that goes to healthcare is the highest in the world, and growing!

          AND?

          This is supposed to be a bad thing?

          It is an empty statement.

        • “The percentage of our GDP that goes to healthcare is the highest in the world, and growing!”

          As others have pointed out, that fact – by itself, at least – is a meaningless statistic. The next question to ask is “Are we getting our money’s worth?” Or, in other words: Is that higher spending getting us better healthcare than the rest of the world?

    • The GOP has made many proposals, ubu, that you want to ignore them does not mean that they are “nothing”.

      That’s always been a dishonest party line talking point.

  7. I think Obama is just preparing for the inevitable failure by assigning blame to the Republicans ahead of time.

    • I think you’re right. It’s like pulling off to switch drivers after you’ve been speeding and you know your car’s been Id’d.
      Good luck convincing the cop it wasn’t you and you just switched drivers.

    • Of course he is. If he’s half as smart as he thinks he is, he knew the ACA would fail spectacularly, but he though it would happen after he left office, not the day it launched. If an R was in office, it’s easy to blame them. So, the back “plan” is to blame the only Rs around, the House, as obstructionist, even though they keep passing bills only to be squashed in the Senate. And the media lets him. When it’s tar and feathers time, I think a few major media heads need to be served up on pikes as well.

  8. Obama is brazenly lying again. Yeah, real shocker. The GOP has done absolutely nothing to “gum up” Obamacare. Not a thing. Nada.

    Obamacare is a failure solely because Professor Dithers Wiggleroom aka Obama is an incompetent as are the Democrats that drafted the legislation. All the problems come from their own drafting problems, their incompetent understanding of the insurance business and their inability to lead anything more complicated than a Starbucks drivethru.

    • I agree. My earlier point was that he’s trying to get that sound bite out there now, so that when it fails he can say “I tried to give you Utopia but those nasty republicans just wouldn’t let you have it.”

    • You beat me to it.

      Nobody has gummed up the works.

      It is working as the Democrats designed it.

      Period.

      Even with Obama illegally trying to change the law to save it.

Comments are closed.