[crisnoble]

Freezing federal hiring literally will cost jobs, so is in no way pro worker. Employees of the government are workers too. The ACA benefits my wife who was able to quit her job to start a business without worrying about being denied healthcare for her pre-existing condition. The ACA benefits all workers in businesses who now are required to offer healthcare plans which meet a minimum standard. Workers will not benefit once businesses can go back to deciding that offering a group health insurance plan is an optional benefit.

[jakeogh]

"Freezing federal hiring literally will cost jobs"

Jobs in government, not in private industry. Would you rather we all go on the gov payroll?

[breatheoften]

Since we are speaking in ridiculous hyperbole -- if everyone worked for private industry and no one had the option to work for the government -- what do you expect would be the effect on the distribution of wage and labor benefits?

[nrjdhsbsid]

None? What does government jobs have to do with equality? Well over half of US works for private companies already, the impact of no government jobs would be minimal if you ignore the obvious problem that we wouldn't have a government.

Arguably companies would come in to replace the government. Private security, private trash pickup, private road maintenance. It would work, but I'm not sure how well

[crisnoble]

All I was trying to say that the current round of executive actions are being taken for businesses and without regards to effects on workers, but you put it more succinctly.

[jakeogh]

Businesses would like to make their goods as cheap as possible (by using cheap labor outside the US). What he has proposed (tariffs) forces them to build here, hence the jobs are here.

[crisnoble]

Business would like to make their goods as profitable as possible, they have never shown any willingness to pass on savings to customers.

[jakeogh]

That's the point, they are supposed to make as much money as possible. That's why you need competition. If corp A's competitor is selling the same product at a lower price, then corp A loses out on the profit. It's a nice feedback loop.

[nrjdhsbsid]

Federal jobs are a net negative for the economy. Private jobs are funded by profit from selling products. Federal jobs are funded by taking money from everyone to pay for them. Freezing federal hiring should have no short term effect on the economy, long term it will mean less government services but lower taxes.

I heavily support the pre-existing condition clause in the ACA but the rest of it is a clusterfuck. The way it's designed inscentivizes only the riskiest people to join groups and everyone else to go without insurance.

The ACA's "profit model" is also greatly skewed towards overcharging the young and healthy. Our oldest generation is the most wealthy population group and our youngest are reletively one of the poorest in US history... As a young healthy male my insurance cost has gone from $55 to over $300 a month due to the ACA. I recently just ditched insurance because that's too much money to pay for a service I get hardly any benefit from.

It's yet another money siphon built by the boomers to fuck over the mellenials.

[crusso]

Government jobs are paid for through taxation. Taxation is a form of theft and at best should be considered a necessary evil for running the government that everyone agreed to - as outlined in the Constitution. The Constitution never allowed for the massive Federal work force we have. It's a bit of a leviathan that needs to be reduced.

Sure, the ACA has some short-term, especially anecdotal benefits. I'm glad your wife was able to use it productively while it was available to her... but the ACA is loaded up with give-aways paid for with other people's money - so it's unsurprising that there are some who think it's a good deal for them.

If I give you my neighbor's big-screen TV, I'm sure you'd have a great story about getting a big-screen TV. But you aren't the only party in that transaction.

Long term, the system set up by the ACA is collapsing. Insurers are fleeing from the markets because they don't make economic sense without ever increasing government subsidies to the industry.

Worse, the big promise of the ACA was that it would lower costs for everyone without changing their doctor-patient relationships. Those were lies. Not just mistakes, but pre-meditated and documented lies.

[nrjdhsbsid]

The ACA just piled onto the clusterfuck we already have. At a federal level we've already got Medicare, Medicaid, Tricare, and now the ACA. Within medicare we have "parts" A through D that offer a bunch of intermingled benefits. Even when someone has medicare it's a huge fucking pain in the ass to figure out which "part" to bill and if you send it to the wrong one they won't pay.

Many states have their own programs as well.

It's a gaint fucking mess they need to cut the shit and just throw everyone on Medicaid