Category Archives: Business

Business, Economics, Health, Media Criticism, Political Commentary

SCOTUS Saves ObamaCare Again

16 Comments

So, once again, it’s up to the voters to get rid of this legislative atrocity.

[Late-morning update]

Wow. By amazing coincidence, they released this ruling that words mean whatever they want them to mean on George Orwell’s birthday.

[Afternoon update]

No matter how King v. Burwell was decided, this was always going to come down to 2016:

Supporters of the law have already telegraphed that their next move is to end the political debate by urging a Pax Obamacare to which all Americans must acquiesce. Last week the president said, after “five years in, what we are talking about it is no longer just a law. It’s no longer just a theory. This isn’t even just about the Affordable Care Act or Obamacare . . . This is now part of the fabric of how we care for one another.”

While the ACA is certainly the “law of the land,” as it has been since its enactment, nothing in the Court’s decision today imparts any additional legitimacy on this law as a public policy meriting political acquiescence. To borrow from the president’s words, it is still “just a law.” So nothing in this decision should deter Republican presidential and congressional candidates in the 2016 election from continuing to press their campaign to “repeal and replace” Obamacare.

Politically, it’s actually probably better for Republicans and those others of us who want to repeal it, but it’s a terrible terrible precedent, legally.

[Update a few minutes later]

Roberts rewrites the PPACA to save it (again).

[Mid-afternoon update]

Sorry, Obama, but it’s still not a done deal:

Obamacare has only enrolled about 40% of the subsidy eligible market in two years worth of open enrollments. That level of consumer support does not make Obamacare either financially sustainable or politically sustainable. The surveys say the 40% who have enrolled like their plans. Of course they do, they are the poorest with the biggest subsidies and the lowest deductibles. The working and middle-class have most often not signed up for Obamacare because it costs too much and delivers too little.

That Obamacare is not financially sustainable is evidenced by the first wave of big 2016 rate increases by so many large market share insurers. The next wave of rate increases a year from now will also be large and will be in the middle of the 2016 election.

These rate increases will further undermine the political sustainability of the law that has been reflected in five years of polling.

On to the election.

[Later-afternoon update]

“Let us recall why the Affordable Care Act is so messed up.”

Business, Economics, Political Commentary, Space, Technology and Society

Andy Weir On Elon Musk

6 Comments

Ashlee Vance had a conversation with him:

I love that NASA is working on new technologies and new stuff, but it just seems way more expensive than alternatives. You’re talking about spending $20 billion on a booster to put 150,000kg in orbit. Meanwhile, SpaceX intends to put 53,000kg into space for $100 million per booster. You could buy three of SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy rockets for $300 million, then spend $1 billion to assemble whatever heavy thing you wanted to put in space, and keep the other $8 billion. It just seems like this huge discrepancy in expenses. Governments don’t always do the economically viable thing, right? There’s a lot of politics involved.

You don’t say.

Business, Economics, Education, Law, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Popular Culture

The Law-School Bubble

5 Comments

How it happened:

The small town lawyer used to loom large in the American psyche. When an American of a certain age pictured a lawyer he thought of Abraham Lincoln, Atticus Finch, Perry Mason, or Matlock.

These lawyers were regular guys who took the business that walked in the door. If you went to law school expecting to be Perry Mason or Matlock you were certainly disappointed by how boring your life was, but not by what you earned.

After L.A. Law and The Firm Americans stopped thinking of lawyers as solo practitioners and somehow decided that all lawyers were good looking, interesting, and super, extra rich. This drew a whole new wave of confused history majors from college to law school, and floated a thirty year boom in the number of law schools, the number of law students, tuition, and profits. This was awesome news for law schools, less so for everyone else.

It didn’t help that it was subsidized by the student-loan program.

Business, Economics, Law, Media Criticism, Political Commentary

The National Raisin Reserve

1 Comment

Prepare for life without it:

…it seems likely that this is the end of the National Raisin Reserve, because I doubt the government will be interested in maintaining a program that actually costs taxpayers’ dollars to run, rather than just farmers’ raisins. It may also have an impact on the 20 other crops that are subject to market orders, from almonds to spearmint, though it seems safe to bet that these will be litigated, with the government strenuously arguing that the market orders for these crops are nothing like that nasty, unconstitutional, wrinkly old National Raisin Reserve.

More broadly, this is a welcome move to limit the government’s generally expansive notions of when it may take your property without payment. However, don’t get too excited, because it doesn’t do too much to limit eminent domain where compensation is offered, or “regulatory takings” in which government rules make your property practically worthless, but not quite so worthless that it has to pay you for the lost potential uses.

There’s a lot more work to do, particularly on civil forfeiture.