Yeah, my post titles are pretty lame. But I was thinking about the fact that employer-sponsored insurance is part of the problem with healthcare — in large part because I think that employers ultimately have to offer one-size-fits-all plans (for national employers, for consistency among their locations, and for small employers, because they simply are too small to offer multiple plans and make arrangements with multiple providers) and the solution to high healthcare costs has to come from, let’s say,... Read more

There are a lot of issues with ObamaCare. Some of the largest issues, and those which surely many Democrats could be persuaded of, have to with discontinuities. For instance, eligibility for subsidies: up to 133% of poverty level, once gets Medicaid, at 134% of poverty, it’s into the premium support system. Depending on one’s point of view, that’s a loss (for those happy about the full benefits, without copays, that Medicaid provides) or a gain (for families where the difficultly... Read more

Ha! That would be a laugh. Blogger tells me that the “comment on other blogs and link to your own” works to a degree. If you do stop by, say “hi!” here. In the meantime, I’m on vacation, so blogging will be light (good weather) or heavy (lousy weather). See you in a week! Read more

(Sorry, this is a long one — bear with me!) So a week or so ago, Judith Warner had an article in the Tribune (actually reprinted from Bloomberg) about maternity leave and limitations on women’s advancement, and now there’s another one, linked to by Megan McArdle, on women who opted-out and now want back in, and are discovering that they earn a fraction of their former salary (though, since, as is the case in many articles of this genre, the... Read more

Ugh — even that term is an irritant to me.  We use the suffix “-free” when we promote the lack of something as a positive:  fat-free, sugar-free, interest-free, debt-free.  The “-less” suffix is fairly neutral:  yes, there’s homeless and jobless, but there’s also effortless, for instance.  People who promote the term “child-free” ultimately show, not their claimed plea of being neutral about the fact of not having children, but their opinion that children are bad and that it is positive... Read more

With respect to the birth rate, that is. Their TFR (total fertility rate) is 1.4 children per woman, with a growing percentage of woman remaining childless and large numbers of only children.  (I would assume that, just as for France — per my post from the other day — the rate is even lower for ethnic German women, balanced out by a higher rate for immigrant = Turkish women.)  It’s one of a number of countries whose populations are already... Read more

So the AEI has put out a new proposal for a VoucherCare-like healthcare system, which on the whole I think is pretty promising, but seems to be yet another paper with no real indicators that anyone’s going to aggressively push this.  But look at the comments on the National Review article about the proposal!  Commenter after commenter, quite determined that, if someone fails to purchase a health insurance policy and becomes sick, it’s their own tough luck.  And even when... Read more

So a while back, I posted about living wage calculators. And here’s what I’m thinking: studies like this are all well and good — but I haven’t yet seen a researcher look at the actual spending patterns of the poor: how much they spend on clothes (at the Goodwill?), on transit, on housing, etc. Note to self: look a little harder to see if such studies exist or not! Read more

It’s not hard to find, actually.  Pretty much the first hit on “Illinois food stamps” is the food stamp calculator. Here are some numbers: For a family of 5 with no income at all, and no assets, the benefit is $793/month or $183/week, or $1.75 per person per meal (giving breakfast, lunch and dinner equal weight). With $1300/month income ($7.50/hr, 40 hours per week), the benefit drops to $676/mth or $156/week. With $2,600/month income and $500/month child care (e.g., two... Read more

Ford Heights has no library.  The library taxing district takes in $20,000 per year, because the Chicago suburb is so small and so poor; its library closed some years ago, and the neighboring town cancelled its cooperative agreement because Ford Heights wasn’t keeping its end of the bargain.  In the meantime, Ford Heights has been spending its library taxes on consulting fees, debt repayment and some potentially questionable expenses.  But the town simply cannot afford a library (nor a police... Read more