Friday, February 21, 2014

Spinning the CBO

They say statistics don't lie, but liars use statistics. Case in point: President Barack Obama’s top economist, Jason Furman, tried to obfuscate the impact of Obama's, and the Left in general, demand for an increase in the federal minimum wage. While passing over the CBO's projection that doing so would result in 500,000 people losing their jobs, Furman posited that increasing the minimum wage would " lift many [employees] out of poverty". A projection, based on statistical modelling done by the CBO.

Furman is also the man tasked with spinning the CBO's dire predictions about the effects of Obamacare on opportunity in this country. The CBO projected that "Obamacare would decrease labor participation by the equivalent of 2 million jobs by 2017". “This is not businesses cutting back on jobs,” Furman said during the conference call, in an attempt to put a favorable spin the CBO-provided numbers. “This is people having new choices.”

I would like to know if the people who might have been "lifted out of poverty" by the increase in the minimum wage are the same people who then face Furman's Choice: reduce their work hours and income to maintain their insurance subsidy or accept the increased income and the reduction in take-home pay that comes with it. That is a Hobson's Choice created by government policies which ultimately results in trapping low-income employees in poverty and limiting their upward mobility. Another tragic consequence of the law of good intentions.

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