Jobless Uptick Masks Some Positive News

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Not only is Obamacare making employers reluctant to hire (just talk to small business owners), it is also already causing job loss.
Just one example is the decision by Assurant Health, a health insurer based in Milwaukee that specializes in individual and small-group policies, to lay off 130 workers.
Employers are logically reluctant to hire and will take steps necessary to survive (ncluding lay offs) in this era of uncertainty that is resulting from the flawed, hyper-partisan health "reform" bill that was rammed through and which many Democrats didn't even read.

Stan of OH 2:28PM September 04, 2010

Tiresias,
Word of advice, to make a credible argument, you're going to have to do better than cite flawed "studies" from the ACLU (well-known amnesty proponents).
Mass immigration (legal and illegal) does negatively impact native born workers, as credible research shows. For example, Harvard professor George Borjas has found that by "increasing the supply of labor between 1980 and 2000, immigration reduced the average annual earnings of native-born men by an estimated $1,700 or roughly 4 percent."
With a U-6 underemployment rate of nearly 17%, and record unemployment for teenagers, it is quite obvious that if we enforced our current immigration laws and started removing the 7 million illegal foreign workers, many if not most of these jobs would open up for unemployed working class Americans, including African-Americans.
And any "path to citizenship" amnesty for the low-skilled 11 million illegal aliens here would have dire fiscal impacts on American taxpayers. The Heritage Foundation estimated that if the 2007 Bush/Kennedy amnesty bill had passed it would have imposed a net burden of well over $2 TRILLION on American taxpayers.

Stan of OH 2:11PM September 04, 2010

Tax cut for the wealthiest income eraners should be expired to alleviate the budget deficit. If the wealthiest income earners do not receive a tax cut, they will face a smaller impact in their living standards than the poorer income eraners. For instance, a poor family may benefit a lot from $1000-$4000 tax cut a year. They may use it to pay to pay for their children's summer schools or buy an old car for their children in college. In contrast, wealthy income earners will be able to buy their children a car in college, pay for schools' tuition comfortably without the extra cash. However, I do believe that all citizens should be treated equally and share equal responsibility. But the budget deficit is getting larger, and the economy is getting worse, letting taxing cut expired on the rich first is a better option than letting it expired also on the poors who are facing unemployments and facing greater impact wihout the tax return each year.

ellyn of TX 1:37AM September 04, 2010

Stan,
Do your research on the relationship between Immigration and Unemployment. A quick search yielded the following articles:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5312900
http://www.aclu.org/immigrants-rights/immigrants-and-economy
Both of these articles cite economic studies that show that illegal immigrants don't increase American unemployment, or lower American wages. Illegal immigration is an important and complicated debate, but it should not be used as part of an argument about America's economic situation.
In fact, as the second article I linked points out, economist has shown that Amnesty towards non-criminally-connected illegal aliens would boost the American economy.
When doing research on highly discussed topics like immigration and economics, be sure to see which articles are from respected sources that cite respected scientific inquiries, and which articles use only the authors opinion and do not cite evidence. Usually these later articles are authors continuing a rumor that support a belief they already held regardless of evidence.q

Tiresias of CA 5:38PM September 03, 2010

Stan,
1. How is "ObamaCare" making employers reluctant to hire? That sounds like an unsupported claim that the Republicans are throwing around. The point of the Health Care Reform is to fold more people into the Health Care system, thus lower costs for everyone, especially large employers.
2. This article by Kurtzleben does an interesting job of pointing out the impatient American expectations. The economy fell apart seemingly overnight, but there were many years of poor economic policies by radical, incompetent Republicans that built this disaster. The first job of the Obama administration was to stop the recession. Economist agree this has been successful. The next step of rebuilding the economy may take many years. The economy must regrow, we can't magically revert to a time when the economy was better.
It is much too soon to say Obama's policies have failed. Especially since his ability to govern has been seriously hampered by an uncompromising Republican minority. Let him govern, and watch the effects over time. I have confidence.

Tiresias of CA 5:25PM September 03, 2010

what I see is the direct result of 20 yrs of criminally neglegent shortsighted incompetentet leadership .
I wouldent want obamas job we had the clintons with nafta . and then we had gw who I want brought up on charges along with cheney
both partys work for the real owners of this country and its not the people I hope things rebound long enougff for me to liquidate my assets and expatrate

scott flues of NC 5:20PM September 03, 2010

This is like running your car into the ditch and then complaining about the size of the wrecker.

tom of FL 5:17PM September 03, 2010

If Obama truly cared about decreasing the unemployment rate and getting more Americans back to work, he would stop gutting enforcement against illegal aliens.
About 7 million illegal aliens hold jobs in the U.S., and since Obama and DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano have stopped the workplace raids and gutted the 287(g) program, they are giving de facto amnesty to the vast majority of these illegal foreign workers and their extended families.
Obama and Napolitano say they want to focus on who they deem to be "criminal" illegal aliens, but despite their wild spending spree in other areas, refuse to give the proper resources to ICE and other agencies so we can't start decreasing the overall number of illegals who are negatively impacting localities and taxpayers all over the United States.
It is sadly clear that Obama wants illegals to stay so he can turn them into Democratic voters, and he is willing to throw unemployed working class Americans under the bus in the process.

Stan of OH 5:14PM September 03, 2010

No matter how much the mainstream press tries to protect Obama, it is clear his stimulus has failed, and Obamacare is (logically) making employers reluctant to hire.
Remember that this failed adminstration assured us the unemployment rate would not exceed 8% if they passed the nearly $1 trillion irresponsible stimulus scheme. Now the official rate is inching up 10% again, while the U-6 rate also went up to nearly 17%.
This was another bad jobs report, and until we vote these radical, incompetent Democrats out of office, jobs will remain scarce.

Stan of OH 5:03PM September 03, 2010