Fill The Book

The NYTimes has an oped stating that the way to get people eat healthier at home is to pay people to eat at home, or for housework generally.  This is insane both as a means of making us healthier and as feminist nanny state coddling.

First off we provide the poor with EBT cards so they can live on something other than ramen.  But in proverbial horse to water fashion they spend it on chips and pastries rather than nutritional food.  Granted this isn’t exactly the same as paying them to bust out their cutting boards and turn on their stoves, but how does one actually plan on policing the house work? Track their receipts? Analyze their urine for dietary changes? Examine their smart meters to see if the stove or dishwasher was used?  And that is generally the problem with paying the stay at home parent a wage even if it was a good idea, which it isn’t.

There is widespread abuse in every government program, because people no longer are ashamed of being on those programs and they feel entitled to the benefits.  It helps that they can rationalize it as not stealing because they aren’t even taking it from the taxpayers anymore with us borrowing about 1/3^rd of what we spend.  In truth, however, that is how government wants us to think about government because the more we accept government the more government they can sell us later.  But the result is, with no viable means of keeping people honest, we are just going to be paying people to do whatever they want to do.

Very few people don’t have the time.  Sure there are a few days a month where you can’t find the time, but unless you are regularly pulling 12.5 hour days (including travel time) you really do have the time to cook, clean and manage your house.  It is just that the TV, Internet, or perhaps even your kids are more enjoyable.  In fact, the way to get people doing more housework and outdoor activity wouldn’t be to pay them, it would be to tax their data usage and electric consumption for nonconforming appliance (aka TV, PS3) etc. like tobacco which you could ferret out if you in fact had smart meters installed on their homes.

This brings me to my last gripe about the article, which is the concept of house work not being appreciated and needing payment.  No house work is not appreciated in the general sense, and really it shouldn’t be.  House work is the same as basic hygiene and dressing for the weather.  There are min. thresholds necessary for functioning but above that it is more about individual comfort levels.  Nobody should be paid for keeping themselves functional, and if you think that is a good idea then you might as well just hand people a check for being alive.  Getting paid to do something that others want to be done is appreciated because it moves beyond just keeping yourself functional into genuine productivity.

That being said, just because generally I shouldn’t appreciate house work, doesn’t mean I shouldn’t appreciate housework when it is done for me as it reduces my burden on maintaining myself.  And really that is the way it ought to be because as soon as people start sticking dollar values on it all of a sudden there is $100-200,000 of untaxed income inside my household and the IRS will start licking its chops.

As is to be expected parts of Obamacare are not going to be enacted on time, and the administration will look to delay implementation.  That of course is unlawful, but we don’t particularly worry about that anymore.  Meanwhile, some conservative pundits are actually in favor of throwing the Democrats a bone and delaying its implementation.  I guess the argument goes that it is going to be delayed anyway so it doesn’t cost the GOP anything and it gives them more time to craft their arguments against it.  Huh?

The GOP has plenty of outstanding arguments against it.  The problem is low information voters don’t care.  Their president assured them it’s a good thing and that is good enough for them.  They know it’s really complicated and a couple people are going to get hurt but most people are going to be helped.  They are completely wrong, of course, but there is nothing anyone can say that will change their mind until they are personally affected by it.

The GOP has nothing to gain, therefore legally delaying implementation is fundamentally a bad idea.  It’s not going to give them positive press coverage for being bipartisan by hanging up their Nobama ways.  The Democrats aren’t going to agree to say Ryan’s budget plan or entitlement reform in exchange.  Hell, the GOP probably couldn’t even get modest reform of the bill that would actually improve it in exchange for delay.  What is more there is substantial opportunity for loss.  A one year delay pushes a bunch of bad headlines out of the news until after the midterm election.  Why would anybody in the GOP want that?  But the real problem isn’t 2014 its long term.

Americans apparently are incapable of keeping facts coherent for extended periods of time.  As a specific example of this, Bill Clinton gets credit for welfare reform and balancing the budget in the 90’s, and that was the line that has been peddled for the last 5 years by the dems and in the media.  Never mind that the GOP forced Clinton’s hands on both and he went along kicking and screaming.  At the rate Obamacare is going it will be nearly a decade before people realize what an epically poor idea it was.  This is just enough time for them to forget where the bill came from in the first place and blame congress generally.  In effect, time will allow the GOP to share in this blame long term and that becomes much more likely the less bad press the ACA gets.