Pity the Millennials!

Millennials were already hurting from the 2008 economic crash, which brought the U.S. economy to a standstill, and by the 2010 Obamacare law, which incentivised the creation of part-time jobs over full-time jobs. Now it appears Millennials will bear the economic consequences of dysfunctional immigration policies, too.

“Young Adults: Then and Now,” a recent Census Bureau report on how today’s 18 to 34-year-olds compare with their 1980 peers, is a discouraging set of statistics for Millennials today.
 
Despite rising educational achievement (Bachelor's degrees +6.6%), young people have lost ground economically and in terms of independence, as AEI economist Mark Perry’s summary chart (right) reveals. Compared with their 1980 cohorts, more Millennials are living under their parents' wings (+7.4%), slightly fewer live on their own (-0.4%), and substantially fewer are creating their own families (i.e., marrying -24.4%). Economically, fewer are employed (-4.3%), more live below the poverty line (+5.6%), and their median income is down (-$1,962/year).

The bigger news in the Census Bureau report, however, is in the stunning growth in the percentages of young adults who are foreign-born (6.3% in 1980 vs. 15.4% today), speak a language other than English at home (10.9% in 1980 vs. 24.6% today), and minority (21.6% in 1980 vs. 42.8% today).

The growth in "minority" percentages seems to be entirely due to the Hispanic population. The Census Bureau defines "minority" as all people classified as "Hispanic" and "all people who are races other than White."  Based on Census Bureau data (charted below), non-Hispanic "racial minorities" actually declined from 31.6 million in 1980 to 29.1 million in 2013, while "Hispanic minorities" grew substantially, from 14.6 million in 1980 to 53.9 million in 2013. (Census Bureau data doesn't tell us what percentage of the Hispanic minority is here legally vs. illegally. Perhaps it should.)

In 1986, Congress passed a law giving amnesty to those who had entered the nation illegally before 1982, and the beneficiaries of that law were mostly Hispanic. The law ushered in preferential go-to-the-head-of-the-line treatment to foreign relatives to legally migrate to the U.S. to join those who had received amnesty.

Prospective illegals read the immigration rule changes for what they were – a huge reward for lawless behavior – and the flow of illegals into the country continued unabated. Now President Obama is attempting another mass amnesty of illegals by executive order, although a federal court has blocked his attempt for the moment. [See update below.]

A new report by the business analysis firm IHS, headlined Hispanics Will Account for More than 40 Percent of the Increase in U.S. Employment in the Next Five Years, offers these predictions:

• Hispanic employment growth will average 2.6 percent per year over the next 20 years. 
• The Hispanic share of total U.S. employment will rise from 16% in 2014 to 23% in 2034. 
• By 2020, labor force growth is expected to slow to the point that the annual change in the labor force is roughly equal to the amount of net migration. 
• The number of foreign born Hispanics will grow from 22 million in 2014 to over 29 million in 2034. 

Now we learn from a Congressional Research Service memo obtained by Breitbart that illegal immigrants allowed to get Social Security Numbers as a result of Obama's executive amnesty actions could be eligible to file back tax returns and obtain up to four years of federal welfare benefits amounting to thousands of dollars: for a family with three children, the four-year federal welfare back payment would amount to $35,521.

Pity the Millennials, who were already facing stiff economic headwinds from poor public policy choices of the current and past administrations. If Obama's executive amnesty isn't stopped, they will be paying back their student loans, struggling to get their own careers going, AND paying for very generous new welfare payments to thousands of new amnestied illegals.

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UPDATE:  For more on what's at stake in this court case, see Immigration and the End of the Rule of Law, in which Jonathan Tobin writes, "The stakes in this argument don't merely revolve around the status of illegals. If liberal federal judges and the president are determined to trash the rule of law in this manner, we are on the verge of a full-blown constitutional crisis."

Illusory "Middle Class Economics"

While the president claims his "Middle Class Economics" is working, economist Stephen Moore lists "a dirty bunch of hidden indicators pointing to an American economy that may be in a lot worse shape than Washington is telling us," especially for the middle class families.

• It's been 10 years since Americans in the middle class got a pay raise that kept pace with inflation.
• Food, energy, tuition and health care prices have been running two to three times the official inflation rate.
• Income inequality worsened in each of Obama's first four years in office, breaking all-time highs in both 2011 and 2012.
• Small business creation hasn't been this low since 2001.
• The national debt has grown by $7.3 trillion. Total debt was $11 trillion when Obama took office; today it's $18 trillion, and additional $120,000 of debt for each U.S. worker.
• The percentage of Americans under 25 who are in the workforce is at its lowest level since the early 1970s.
• Entitlement spending on Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and Obamacare is expected to nearly double in 2024 compared to 2013.

Read full article, Obama's Illusory Economic Recovery: Official Statistics Ignore the Real Hardships Families Face, by Stephen Moore

Same-Sex Marriage Alters Job-Based Benefits

"Until recently, same-sex couples could not legally marry," reports Julie Appleby of Kaiser Health News. "Now, some are finding they must wed if they want to keep their partner's job-based health insurance and other benefits."

With same-sex marriage now legal in 35 states and the District of Columbia, some employers that formerly covered domestic partners say they will require marriage licenses for workers who want those perks.

“We’re bringing our benefits in line, making them consistent with what we do for everyone else,” said Ray McConville, a spokesman for Verizon, which notified non-union employees in July that domestic partners in states where same-sex marriage is legal must wed if they want to qualify for such benefits.

Employers making the changes say that since couples now have the legal right to marry, they no longer need to provide an alternative. Such rule changes could also apply to opposite-sex partners covered under domestic partner arrangements.

“The biggest question is: Will companies get rid of benefit programs for unmarried partners?” said Todd Solomon, a partner at McDermott Will & Emery in Chicago.

It is a reminder that "when marriage laws change, so do tax laws." Some same-sex advocates aren't happy with those changes.

It is legal for employers to set eligibility requirements for the benefits they offer workers and their families — although some states, such as California, bar employers from excluding same-sex partners from benefits. But some benefit consultants and advocacy groups say there are legal, financial and other reasons why couples may not want to marry.

Requiring marriage licenses is “a little bossy” and feels like “it’s not a voluntary choice at that point,” said Jennifer Pizer, senior counsel at Lambda Legal, an organization advocating for gay, lesbian and transgender people.

More at Once, Same-Sex Couples Couldn't Wed; Now, Some Employers Say They Must, PBS

Growing Business-Builders Essential to Growing Economy

While the president painted a deceptively rosy picture of our economy in his State of the Union address, a more reality-based assessment was delivered recently by Gallup CEO Jim Clifton in Business Journal. He argues that American leaders, having misdiagnosed the cause and effect of economic growth and job creation, are making our economic problems worse.

"This economy is never truly coming back unless we reverse the birth and death trends of American businesses," asserts Clifton. "When small and medium-sized businesses are dying faster than they're being born, so is free enterprise. And when free enterprise dies, America dies with it."

• Approximately 6 million businesses with one or more employees in the U.S.—the real engines of economic growth—provide jobs for more than 100 million Americans and much of the tax base for everything, from military to social safety net spending.

• Since 2008, U.S. business "deaths" (shut-downs) have outnumbered new business "births" (start-ups), and we have fallen to 12th among developed nations in terms of business start ups behind countries such as Hungary, Denmark, Finland, New Zealand, Sweden, Israel and Italy.

• Fewer businesses mean declining revenues and smaller salaries to tax, followed by declining aid for the elderly and poor and declining funding for the military, for education, for infrastructure — in short, for everything.  

Citing Gallup polling data showing Americans believe the economy (59%) and federal spending and budget deficit (58%) are cause for a "great deal" of worry, Clifton argues that ordinary people seem to intuitively understand what America's leaders do not:  that businesses and entrepreneurs are the critical drivers of a strong economy.

Our leadership keeps thinking that the answer to economic growth and ultimately job creation is more innovation, and we continue to invest billions in it. But an innovation is worthless until an entrepreneur creates a business model for it and turns that innovative idea in something customers will buy. Yet current thinking tells us we're on the right track and don't need different strategies, so we continue marching down the path of national decline, believing innovation will save us.

Because we have misdiagnosed the cause and effect of economic growth, we have misdiagnosed the cause and effect of job creation. To get back on track, we need to quit pinning everything on innovation, and we need to start focusing on the almighty entrepreneurs and business builders.

Source: American Entrepreneurship: Dead or Alive?, Jim Clifton, Business Journal, January 13, 2015

WH Tax Punishes Moms Outside Labor Force

The $320 billion tax increase the president will propose tonight in his State of the Union address reveals his "tax policy as power and punishment, tax policy as vengeance" mindset, argues Ira Stoll.

...how this administration approaches tax policy not from the point of view of raising the revenues necessary to run the government, and not from the view of creating the maximum incentives for growth and innovations, but rather as a kind of zero-sum, redistributionist means of political warfare.

A few items Mr. Stoll considers particularly punishing:

• "one earner" families would pay higher taxes so that "two-earner" families could get a $500 "second earner" tax credit along with a tripled "child care" tax credit;
• high earners who have saved money in Individual Retirement Accounts all their lives would see their retirement accounts taxed retroactively; and
• families who have saved 529 college savings accounts for their children would be taxed when they withdraw the funds to pay for their children's college bills.

Calling it "Destructive Social Engineering," the editors at National Review Online write that the tax code is already heavily biased against saving and investment, and Mr. Obama's proposal would make it even worse. Moreover, his plan takes a gratuitous slap at mothers outside the paid labor force:

Most mothers, especially of small children, prefer to work part-time or drop out of the labor force for a time. Commercial child care is the least favored option for most parents. The president's plan encourages families to do what they do not wish to do and penalizes them for refusing.

 UPDATE: See also Obama Tax Hike on College Savings Plans Breaks Middle Class Tax Pledge

Barnett: How to Finally Kill Obamacare

Law professor Randy Barnett, who directs Georgetown University Law School's Center for the Constitution, writes in USA Today that "there is now a clear path to repealing and replacing the Affordable Care Act next year."

• There is now a serious financial risk to the ACA now that the Supreme Court has agreed to hear King v. Burwell, which challenges the legality of the IRS ruling that — contrary to the law's specific language — permits federal subsidies in states that have not built their own state exchanges.
• Opponents of ACA should begin to develop — and have ready — a viable alternative law, one that has gone through the regular order legislative process.
• As a rule, Supreme Court justices are reluctant to invalidate a law on which many relied. It will be far easier for the justices to enforce the law's existing language if they know there is a viable alternative that can be enacted by both house of Congress and signed by the president within a week of their ruling.
• The alternative law should:
• completely repeal, in its first line, each and every word of the ACA;
• restore the private insurance market using actuarially-based insurance priced according to risk;
• restore consumer choice to buy true private insurance limited to the terms they want to pay for, including policies insuring only catastrophic costs, and medical savings accounts;
• increase competition among insurers by allowing state regulated policies to be sold across state lines so people don't have to change insurance when they move; and
• increase equity by extending tax benefits now available only to employer0based insurance.

By having a legislatively-vetted replacement in the pipeline and in the public discussion before oral arguments are held in March, Barnett argues, Obamacare's opponents can make a favorable ruling against the law much more likely.

Why the Middle Class is Hurting

"The American middle class has absorbed a steep increase in the cost of health care and other necessities as incomes have stagnated over the past half decade, a squeeze that has forced families to cut back spending on everything from clothing to restaurants," reports the Wall Street Journal, which provides this chart on changes spending and income in middle class households since 2007.

Source: Basic Costs Squeeze Families, Ryan Knutson and Theo Francis, Wall Street Journal

Obama's Amnesty Impact on Social Security

The long-term financial condition of Social Security and Medicare will vastly worsen as a result of Obama's executive order legalizing an estimate 5 million illegal immigrants.

• Most workers pay into the programs for their working careers, between 40 and 50 years. But millions of Obama's newly legalized are working-age adults with children, so many could be in their 40s or older.  Thus they could pay FICA taxes for the next, say, 15 or 20 years — less than half the average American worker — and be eligible for the full array of Social Security and Medicare benefits.
• In addition, most will be lower-income workers. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates that foreign-born, full-time workers earn about 80% of native-born Americans ($33,500 vs. $41,900).  Social Security is a social insurance program and is structured to provide disproportionately more benefits for lower-income workers. Medicare pays the same regardless of how much a worker pays in.
• Given the demographic unknowns, estimating the amnesty's financial cost to our retirement programs — and so to U.S. taxpayers — can only be approximate. But using a basic simulation model, we believe the government will receive about $500 billion in payroll tax revenue (including Part B and drug premiums), and expect it to pay out some $2 trillion in benefits over several decades. 
• In one executive order Obama may have created his biggest income transfer scheme yet, and imposed the worst financial challenge to our two already-struggling retirement programs. And millions of Americans can expect to see their taxes go up in the future to pay for it.

Source: Obama's Amnesty Will Create a Fiscal Nightmare for Entitlements, Merrill Matthews and Marke E. Litow, Investor's Business Daily

Obamacare's Hidden Taxes on Jobs, Wages

Many have already felt the pain of Obamacare's impact on their health insurance coverage and medical care, but that's only half the story. The other half is the negative, long-term impact Obamacare has on jobs and the opportunity for personal career advancement, as University of Chicago economics professor Casey Mulligan explains in the November Imprimis.

The key is Obamacare's "tax distortions," i.e., those changes in behavior on the part of businesses and households for the purposes of reducing their costs (tax burdens) or increasing their subsidies (tax benefits). These tax distortions "create all kinds of productivity problems and will have visible and permanent effects on the economy."

Obamacare effectively creates three new hidden taxes on full-time employment and business expansion via the employer mandate and the federal premium subsidies:

• Since the employer mandate applies to full-time employment, Obamacare effectively penalizes (or taxes) employers who offer full-time employment to workers and rewards employers who offer part-time employment to workers.
• Since the employer mandate applies only to employer with 50 or more employees, Obamacare effectively discourages (or taxes) businesses that grow and expand, hurting employees who would have advanced financially as a small business grew into a larger, more profitable business.
• Since state exchange premium subsidies (tax breaks) are progressive and based on worker earnings — the more a worker earns, the less he/she receives in government tax breaks — Obamacare effectively creates a new hidden tax on wages.

"In conclusion," writes the author, "I can make you this promise: If you like your weak economy, you can keep your weak economy."

Source: Effects of the Affordable Care Act on Economic Productivity, Casey Mulligan, Imprimis.

US Welfare Spending Second Only to France

"We Americans pride ourselves on not having a 'welfare state'," writes Robert Samuelson. "We're not like Europeans."  In fact, our 'welfare state' is bigger than all European countries but one.

Call it a massive case of national self-deception. Indeed, judged by how much countries devote of their national income to social spending, we have the world's second-largest welfare state -- just behind France.

This is not just conjecture. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) -- a group of wealthy nations -- has recently published new figures on government social spending. Covered is unemployment insurance, disability payments, old-age assistance, government-provided health care, family allowances and the like. ...

But wait. Direct government spending isn't the only way that societies provide social services. They also channel payments through private companies, encouraged, regulated and subsidized by government. This is what the United States does, notably with employer-provided health insurance (which is subsidized by government by not counting employer contributions as taxable income) and tax-favored retirement savings accounts.

When these are added to government's direct payments, rankings shift. France remains at the top, but the United States vaults into second position with roughly 30 percent of its GDP spent on social services, including health care. We have a hybrid welfare state, partly run by the government and partly outsourced to private markets.

Below are the OECD rankings, courtesy AEI's James Pethokoukis:

Obama Adds More Foreign Workers to US Than New Jobs Since 2009

"President Barack Obama's unilateral amnesty will quickly add as many foreign workers to the nation's legal labor force as the total number of new jobs created by his economy since 2009," reports the Daily Caller.

Foreign Workers = 6,000,000  *

• Obama previously provided or promised almost 1 million extra work permits to foreigners
• His reported plan, to be announced today, will distribute 5 million more work permits to illegal immigrants

U.S. Jobs Created Since 2009 = 5,977,000

• Total U.S. jobs in 2009 = 139,894,000
• Total U.S. jobs in 2014 = 145,871,000

*Note: This number does not include the normal inflow of legal immigrants granted work permits.

Source: Obama's Amnesty Will Add As Many Foreign Workers as New Jobs Since 2009, Neil Munro, Daily Caller

'Net Neutrality' - Don't Buy the Con

If you love smooth-streaming music and HD movies or videos over the internet, chances are you will hate 'Net Neutrality' — a government internet regulation proposal that is as big a con in packaging as 'The Affordable Care Act'.

As explained here and here, the proposed Federal Communications Commission's Net Neutrality regulations will force Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to treat all internet traffic equally, giving the same priority and speed to text, video, audio, and interactive content, whether consumers like it or not. 

• Net Neutrality is a bad deal for consumers.  Because internet bandwidth space is finite, ISPs must pay for every megabyte of bandwidth their consumers use. ISPs currently pays those bandwidth costs by offering higher-priced product differentiation packages to on-demand video services such as Amazon and Netflex so that the end users (you and me) can enjoy fast lane, smooth movie streaming at a relatively low cost without slowing down their neighbours' internet connections. 
  
  If Net Neutrality becomes law, ISPs won't be allowed to do that, and movie viewing is likely to become a choppy, unhappy experience. Worse, if ISPs can't charge big user companies like Amazon and Netflex for bandwidth use, ISPs will likely begin charging consumers (you and me) for the bandwidth they actually use, just as cell phone carriers charge consumers for data they use.   

• Net Neutrality is a bad deal for web companies.  ISPs shouldn't be forced to treat all web companies equally. Currently the bigger, established companies are paying a greater share of the cost because they use far more bandwidth than smaller, less established companies. However, "Net Neutrality effectively forces startups to subsidize the bandwidth requirements of established companies, by equally distributing the cost of service to everyone, even those who do not benefit from faster speeds."  

For more, read:

Here's What 'Net Neutrality' is ... and What to Think About It
Rebutting the President on Net Neutrality

New Labor Dept Rules Would Hit Working Women Hardest

The Department of Labor's proposed new rules on overtime pay would significantly hurt working women's ability to negotiate workplace flexibility tailored to their personal and family needs, argues economist Diana Furchtgott-Roth.

• The new rules would apply to several million new female workers who are currently classified as executive or professional, many of whom now enjoy highly valued workplace flexibility.
• The new rules would prevent women from negotiating "comp" arrangements in which they take additional time off in exchange for extra time worked.
• The new rules would have a chilling impact on women's opportunity to telecommute and/or work from home, since employers will be required to keep careful track of worker's hours to avoid being sued for overtime violations. Working mothers, in particular, find these flexible work arrangements highly beneficial when a child becomes sick or a babysitter cancels.

A better solution for working women, argues the author, would be to leave undisturbed the workplace flexibility that many millions of women have already successfully negotiated.

As for "comp" arrangements, she argues another proposal — the Working Families Flexibility Act of 2013, which passed in the U.S. House of Representatives last year — would be a more woman-friendly solution:  offering "workers who worked more than 40 hours a week a choice of 1.5 hours of comp time per overtime hour worked, rather than overtime pay." 

Source: Obama's War on Working Women, by Diana Furchtgott-Roth, Manhattan Institute.

Progressives' War on the Economy

Several recent articles illustrate the painful economic consequences of liberal-progressive rule. Contrast these against the final article below showing the economy of Texas under conservative rule.

Real Household Incomes Fall 5.9% Under Obama — "From this analysis, Americans have lost real income gains during an economic recovery for the first time in American history."

ObamaCare Slows Hiring, Raises Prices in 5 States: Fed Survey — "In a Philadelphia Fed survey of regional manufacturers out Thursday, 18% said they employ fewer workers due to the Affordable Care Act than they would in its absence. Just 3% say employment levels are higher as a result. Further, 18% said part-timers make up a greater share of workers due to ObamaCare ... just 1.5% said they've scaled back part-time work in response."

Government Dependency in America Nears Tipping Point -- "New data on federal public assistance programs show we've reached an ignominious milestone: More than 100 million Americans are getting some form of 'means-tested' welfare assistance..." [chart right].

Now consider this from AEIdeas:

Chart of the Day: Texas Jobs — "The chart tells a powerful and important story about the strength of the Texas economy, which has experienced an employment increase of more than 1.3 million workers since late 2007. In contrast, civilian employment in the other 49 states is still almost 1.3 million jobs below the December 2007 level!"

Study: All Employment Growth Since 2000 Went to Immigrants

"Government data show that since 2000 all of the net gain in the number of working-age (16 to 65) people holding a job has gone to immigrants (legal and illegal)," report Center for Immigration Studies scholars Steven A Camarota and Karen Zeigler in a new study.

Among their findings:

• The total number of working-age (16 to 65) immigrants (legal and illegal) holding a job increased 5.7 million from the first quarter of 2000 to the first quarter of 2014, while declining 127,000 for natives. 
• In the first quarter of 2000, there were 114.8 million working-age natives holding a job; in the first quarter of 2014 it was 114.7 million. 
• Because the native-born population grew significantly, but the number working actually fell, there were 17 million more working-age natives not working in the first quarter of 2014 than in 2000.
• Immigrants have made gains across the labor market, including lower-skilled jobs such as maintenance, construction, and food service; middle-skilled jobs like office support and health care support; and higher-skilled jobs, including management, computers, and health care practitioners.
• The supply of potential workers is enormous: 8.7 million native college graduates are not working, as are 17 million with some college, and 25.3 million with no more than a high school education.

The authors drew these conclusions with regard to the Senate's 'Gang of Eight' bills and current immigration debate:

With 58 million working-age natives not working, the Schumer-Rubio bill (S.744) and similar House measures that would substantially increase the number of foreign workers allowed in the country seem out of touch with the realities of the U.S. labor market.

Three conclusions can be drawn from this analysis:

First, the long-term decline in the employment for natives across age and education levels is a clear indication that there is no general labor shortage, which is a primary justification for the large increases in immigration (skilled and unskilled) in the Schumer-Rubio bill and similar House proposals.

Second, the decline in work among the native-born over the last 14 years of high immigration is consistent with research showing that immigration reduces employment for natives.

Third, the trends since 2000 challenge the argument that immigration on balance increases job opportunities for natives. Over 17 million immigrants arrived in the country in the last 14 years, yet native employment has deteriorated significantly.

Goldman: Understanding the Exhausted US Economy

The dreadful jobs number in December was the first signal that the U.S. economy is dead in the water, argues David Goldman @ PJMedia. The second signal came this week when "the Institute for Supply Management reported the steepest drop in manufacturing orders since December 1980." A Republican, Goldman presents some unusual ideas to resuscitate the exhausted economy. He begins by showing "two disastrous underlying trends."

One is the decline of real median household income.

The other is the collapse of the labor force participation rate, which is the flip side of the coin: if fewer adults are working, median household income will be lower.

Then there are the problems of business and the Fed:

Gillespie: Youth Revolting Against Obama

"Millennials may be young," writes libertarian Nick Gillespie, "but they're not stupid."

Citing the latest Quinnipiac poll showing 54% of 18- to 29-year-olds now disapprove of the job President Obama doing (compared to 36% who approve), Gillespie argues (with strong uncensored language) that the love affair between Obama/Democrats and youth actually began waning immediately after Obama took office in 2008.

In 2008, Obama won 66 percent of votes cast by 18-29 year olds. In 2012, he racked up just 60 percent. More tellingly, the participation rate among younger voters dropped precipitously between those elections, with Obama pulling 2.4 million fewer votes from 18-29 year olds in 2012. The second time around, he just wasn’t putting young asses in the voting booth anymore.

Obamacare may be the "cherry on top of a shit sundae," says Gillespie, but there are lots of other fault lines including Obama's stimulus fail, foreign war and nearly-war policies, increased deportation of illegals, drone strikes, privacy invasion and a government with way too much power over their lives.

Yet the biggest reason for the soured relationship is likely to be personal economics:

As bad as Obama’s time in office has been for older Americans, nobody has taken it on the chin quite as bad as kids under 30, who are more likely to be unemployed, broke, and facing decades of sub-par wages if and when they do finally get a job.

FACT: ObamaCare Causing Part-Time Nation

"Bureau of Labor Statistics data show that the ratio of part-time to full-time jobs has completely flipped this year from historical trends," writes health policy expert Grace-Marie Turner.  "Last year, six full-time jobs were created for every one part time job. This year, only one full-time job is being created for every four new part-time jobs" [emphasis added]

The shift to part-time has accelerated over the past several months because of the “look back” provision in ObamaCare that sets the baseline this year for the number of full-time workers a company employs to determine their compliance with the employer pay-or-play mandate.

The administration may have been trying to stop the damage when it announced in July it would delay for a year the reporting requirements for the health law’s employer mandate – the requirement that businesses with 50 or more employees provide health coverage that is acceptable to the government or pay a fine of $2,000 to $3,000 per employee per year.

The damage is real, and the one-year delay is unlikely to have a significant impact on hiring. Businesses are not going to hire full-time workers for year or less only to have to fire them next year.

In our still struggling economy, we should be making it easier for businesses to grow. Instead the law is causing huge dislocations in the labor force and imposing major new costs on businesses — money that could have been invested in growth and new hiring.

ObamaCare is hurting more than the job market. Consumers will see prices of virtually everything soar as businesses of every size are forced to raise prices to cover the high costs of ObamaCare. As Turner notes, "A recently-leaked letter from Delta Air Lines to the Obama administration states that the 'cost of providing health care to our employees will increase by nearly $100,000,000 next year,' much of it due to Obamacare." 

Read her full article.

Pennington: Millenials Can Do Something About this Mess

Millenial Maura Pennington, writing in Forbes with a followup in Ricochet, laments that millions of her peers "Live at Home and Support the Policies That Keep Them There."  She argues the solution is to "stop supporting anti-growth politicians pushing agendas that strangle the economy, weaken the dollar, and surreptitiously erode civil liberties."

Consider this isn't the first time young people have faced a sluggish economy ... When Ronald Reagan took office, there was double-digit inflation and unemployment.  In December 1982, unemployment hit 10.8%, which is higher than anything we’ve experienced since.  Yet, with a strengthening of the dollar luring investors back to American business concepts, and a decrease of the income tax penalty on productivity, by the time Reagan left office, unemployment was down to 5.3%, the S&P 500 had soared over 200%, and inflation was all but forgotten.  People were working.  For the twenty-somethings who remember their first birthday parties or Christmas mornings in the late 1980s, it was a time of plenty.

Reason for Optimism

He has "a little over 1200 days left in office," a scandal-ridden Barack Obama recently reminded an audience. To which one New York newspaper editorial writer responded, "I imagine that he is not the only person counting down the remaining days of his presidency. ... Given his high recent disapproval polling numbers, I doubt that President Obama will have trouble finding people willing to help him pack his bags as he prepares to vacate the White House."

Given, too, his grossly heavy hand on the free-market economy, no doubt every business sector (and every job seeker) is anxious for that new day.

One business sector isn't waiting, though. As this graphic by AEI's CarpeDiem blog shows, U.S. crude oil production has soared in the last couple of years to 1990 levels.

Bottom Line: A two million bpd [barrels per day] increase in US oil output in only 24 months, almost exclusively from the dramatic increases in shale oil production made possible by revolutionary drilling technologies, is an important energy milestone and has to be one of the most remarkable success stories in the history of US energy production.

Welcome to America’s shale energy revolution, which continues to be one of the strongest reasons to be optimistic about the US economy.

If the energy sector can accomplish this feat despite Obama, just imagine what all other business sectors can do after he leaves office and his anti-free market policies end.