Tag: middle class

New York Times *finally* tells its readers: #Obamacare is awful for the middle class.

The New York Times is starting to get a bit nervous about this health care law thing.

Ginger Chapman and her husband, Doug, are sitting on the health care cliff.
The cheapest insurance plan they can find through the new federal marketplace in New Hampshire will cost their family of four about $1,000 a month, 12 percent of their annual income of around $100,000 and more than they have ever paid before.

Even more striking, for the Chapmans, is this fact: If they made just a few thousand dollars less a year — below $94,200 — their costs would be cut in half, because a family like theirs could qualify for federal subsidies.

So much so that they’re now gingerly starting to tell their readers what you and I already know: “While the act clearly[*] benefits those at the low end of the income scale — and rich people can continue to afford even the most generous plans — people like the Chapmans are caught in the uncomfortable middle: not poor enough for help, but not rich enough to be indifferent to cost.” I welcome this sudden decision by the New York Times to join us here in Reality Non-Unicorn, and hope that they enjoy their visit.  Indeed, the Old Grey Lady is more than welcome to settle here permanently. Continue reading New York Times *finally* tells its readers: #Obamacare is awful for the middle class.

#rsrh QotD, The Great Obamacare Health Tax Hangover edition.

Datechguy notes that, contra the somewhat misogynistic and certainly low-rent exuberance coming out of the DNC over having the Obamacare health tax upheld, Democratic street monsters are quietly freaking worried about how the ruling will interfere with their candidates’ electoral chances.  The problem is that nobody likes to run on tax increases, and Obamacare is an at minimum five hundred billion tax increase* on the middle class. After noting that, and the large sums of money being raised by the GOP on short notice, Datechguy concludes.

As General Nathanael Greene said after Bunker Hill: I wish we could sell them another hill at the same price.

Ayup.

Moe Lane

*The US Supreme Court also defanged the Obama administration’s plan to foist Medicare costs off on the states, so expect it to become a heck of a lot more obviously fiscally irresponsible, very soon.

‘The Trillion Dollar Fix.’

I hope you meant that as a drug reference, Megan.

R.S McCain summarizes Megan McArdle’s post about our current economic strategy in three words: “It won’t work.” Which is a fair assessment, both in what Megan’s analysis and in her conclusions. Personally, I would have preferred it if Stacy could have been able to summarize both with one word, though: “Oops.”  Not to be a broken record about this, but I didn’t need Megan to tell me that we enjoy, ah, suboptimal economic oversight. I already knew. Or that the current administration seems to default to style over substance. I already knew that, too. Or even that we are going to have to raise taxes on the lower and middle class to pay for all of this. A lot of us knew this already.

But apparently, we just weren’t trendy enough to satisfy a sufficiently large portion of the electorate.  To those of them reading this and smirking, at this point: real quick.  You know that tax cut that some of you college kids received?  Yeah, the $13 dollars a week thing that didn’t even register with most people.  Anyway, turns out that the IRS messed up:

— A single college student with a part-time job making $10,000 would get a $400 boost in pay. However, if that student is claimed as a dependent on a parent’s tax return, she doesn’t qualify for the credit and would have to repay it when she files next year.

Continue reading ‘The Trillion Dollar Fix.’