RollingStone February 6 2014
There’s a reason why people hate politics in this country. Or, at least, a reason they hate reading about it: It’s boring.
It’s the same kind of boring that prevents all but the most desperate from getting off with bots in chat rooms. When you want to interact with a human being, and get a machine instead, it’s pretty much always a disappointment.
Yet this is the way our political media is delivered. Every new news item goes through a mechanized process, traveling through a flow chart designed to break down all information into one of just two types of product: meat for Republican readers, and meat for Democrat readers. Nobody else gets to eat. And even if you don’t mind one or the other, nobody can stand the same meal a million days in a row. It’s the numbing sameness and predictability that makes you crazy, as the latest flap over Obamacare proves once again.
Two days ago, the Congressional Budget Office released “The Slow Recovery of the Labor Market,” a dry and painful report that makes the twin obvious points that a) the economy has really sucked since 2007, and b) the long-term outlook for jobs in this country is less than thrilling.
It’s a depressing document, about the last thing in the world you’d voluntarily read on the toilet, but from the point of view of horse-race Hill politicos, it contained a bombshell passage. This is from a section about labor participation, i.e. the number of people willing to go to work:
The Affordable Care Act (ACA) will tend to reduce participation, with the largest impact from new subsidies that reduce the cost of health insurance purchased through exchanges. Specifically, by providing subsidies that reduce the cost of health insurance purchased through exchanges. Specifically, by providing subsidies that decline with rising income (and increase with falling income) and by making some people financially better off, the ACA will create an incentive for some people to choose to work less.