Headlines I Wish I Hadn’t Seen
Mandatory mileage standards are somewhere between 2.4 and 13 times more expensive than a gasoline tax would be. By some calculations, raising fuel-economy standards is more costly than climate change itself.
Health Care Policy and Reform Insights | NCPA
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Recognition and Awards
Don’t buy the “apples and oranges” argument from the SSDI lobbyists. Disability insurance is for people who CANT work, and unemployment benefits are for people who are looking for work!
117,000 Americans get jobless and disability benefits.
I know there are people really struggling with the economy. But I’ve also heard about people gaming the system. Awhile back I talked to a man who said his wife decided to retire after having been laid off. To keep her unemployment benefits going, she applied for jobs she didn’t want and then turned down a $75,000 per year job offer. Yet, she didn’t lose her unemployment benefits because the job only paid 75% of her former pay.
I’ve heard it said that men aren’t changing with the times. Men aren’t going to school to acquire the skills needed for the modern workplace; they’re waiting around for high-paying, factory jobs that don’t exist. The factory jobs that do exist require skills like math, computer science and engineering that some men simply don’t have because they were too busy in high school playing video games to do their homework. Women are more studious, earning more college degrees and rising up the corporate ladder. In some cases, men are taking advantage of this by letting women become the primary breadwinner. Slate had an article about women who out earn their husbands. Some of the wives complained their husbands were slackers. Another article in Slate suggested women are having to lower their expectations because there simply aren’t enough successful men to go around.
It’s disparaging to see the unemployment not only among men, but among young people as well.
Young people are going to be hurt the most, and the sad thing is that they will turn to the government to fix it, not their own ingenuity or indsutriousness.
Women have always gone for the one (read: loser) they think that can “change”. (/end humor)
I don’t agree with the criticism of calling for better, more efficient engineering that was “negotiated” with car manufacturers, not ordered. I don’t believe the solution lies in jacking gas prices up to $8/liter will help keep money in anyone’s pocket. Our spread out cities require certain amounts of driving that simply cannot be gotten around for many people. Gas prices have quadrupled in the short time that I have been driving and I have adjusted accordingly. There is no such thing as a ‘leisure drive’ for me anymore– every time I get in the car it is with a purpose, and I try to maximize my time behind the wheel with careful route planning and stacking errands.
Was intrigued by the by the mention of the “adult baby” collecting disability:
I felt compelled to look into this bizarre mention further and found that this man is capable of running errands around town on his own, doing construction projects, and runs his own online forum — but still for some reason needs money from the rest of us to live his fantasy life. Well, I’d like to live on the beach and not work but that’s just not in the cards now is it? When Coburn brough this issue to light, Stanley Thornton (the “adult baby”) threatened suicide publicly in the Washington Times:
These are most certainly NOT the type of people that should be allowed government assistance.
117,000 Americans get jobless and disability benefits.
Who said fraud? cheating? lack of dignity? dishonor? These are few of the MANY adjectives to describe such horrific reality. You are either unemployed…which means you can work but you don’t actually have a job…or you are disabled…which means you CAN’T work, even if you wanted to. How does it even make sense for one person to receive government benefits under both conditions?
All thanks to a very generous system that doesn’t take into account all those individuals who DO pay for their “stuff.”
Gregory Mankiw has some interesting posts on gas taxes and the Pigou Club
http://gregmankiw.blogspot.com/search?q=pigou
A gasoline tax would have no cost to the economy at all, provided that (a) all of the revenue generated is returned in the form of lower taxes elsewhere, and (b) the tax being reduced is at least as harmful to the economy as a gasoline tax, and (c) the change is phased in gradually so that transport contracts have a chance to adjust.