Also in the report is news that the average work week continues to shrink, down to 33 hours. Historically employers start loading their existing employees up with more hours before they start hiring new workers. There is no recovery here.

I’ll grant you the non-farm payroll numbers look encouraging, but i want to see the numbers continue for another quarter before i start cheering. Being one of the folks unemployed for more than six months I’m painfully aware of the fact that employment is a lagging indicator. That said, the 10.2% number is not meaningless- even if it’s merely a psychological barrier it can have devastating effects on hiring practices in marginal industries as employers hold out to see what’s happening next before committing to new hires.

I’m particularly eager to see how things look in February… or to have a job of my own next week ;).

Why? Congress has a long and glorious history of cancelling Medicare cuts.

Forcing people who don’t want coverage to buy insurance is not a great achievement. And no, Obamacare is NOT going to cut the deficit at all, the Medicare cuts are a lie and everyone knows it. The Obamacare proposal is an unprecedented blow to civil liberties and a fiscal disaster.

Ezra Klein’s analysis is moronic even for him. He’s using the transparently dishonest “let’s start the costs three years later than the revenues dodge” so his numbers are way, way off even before the Medicare lie. He also ignores the fact a trillion dollars in new taxes will devastate the economy even as premiums go though the roof.

And, if that weren’t enough, let’s remember these programs have generally ended up costing way, way more than intended. If they’re off by even 1/3, Obamacare is going to add $2T to the deficit instead of $800B– and Medicare currently costs three times what it was supposed to. So it’s not impossible this could cost us $5T dollars.

Since Obama took office in January, you can see a pretty solid correlation with his policies and teh recovery.

This is wishful thinking bordering on delusion. Obama’s policy involves massive tax hikes that haven’t been implemented yet. The economy will naturally recover on its own, unless gov’t screws it up. The stimulus has probably done nothing useful.

Did you read the second link? Government programs do not create prosperity, they destroy it .

It will not reduce cost and it will not improve the delivery of medical care.

It might create quite a few jobs however, because it’s going to take an army of folks to decipher.

http://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/empsit.pdf

the worst of it was in January, and since then its been getting better – of course as teh rate of unemployment decreases, still the gross number of unemployed rises and wont stop rising until the rate of job growth croosses teh inversion point and becomes positive again. So Chart 1 is a long term aggregate but Chartr 2 shows the impact of policy in eth short term.

Since Obama took office in January, you can see a pretty solid correlation with his policies and teh recovery. The stimulus (Which President Bush initiated and Obama continued) seems to be working. Jobs are a lagging indicator, of couorse – thats an important poimt,

According to CBO and JCT’s assessment, enacting the amendment would result in a net reduction in federal budget deficits of $68 billion over the 2010–2019 period. That estimate reflects a projected net cost of $8 billion over 10 years for the provisions directly related to insurance coverage; that net cost reflects a gross cost of $61 billion that is partly offset by about $52 billion in additional revenues associated with the coverage provisions. Over the same period, the other provisions of the amendment would reduce direct spending by $49 billion and increase tax revenues by $27 billion.
…
By 2019, CBO and JCT estimate, the number of nonelderly people without health insurance would be reduced by about 3 million relative to current law, leaving about 52 million nonelderly residents uninsured. The share of legal nonelderly residents with insurance coverage in 2019 would be about 83 percent, roughly in line with the current share. CBO and JCT estimate that enacting the amendment’s insurance coverage provisions would increase deficits by $8 billion over the 2010–2019 period.

note that if you are skeptical of the “imaginary medicare cuts that will never happen” then you have to take that 68 billion number above with equal grain of salt. Fior the record, the original legislation, without the GOP amendment, cuts teh deficit by almost 100 billion. This means, as Ezra Klein summarizes,

The Democratic bill, in other words, covers 12 times as many people and saves $36 billion more than the Republican plan. And amazingly, the Democratic bill has already been through three committees and a merger process. It’s already been shown to interest groups and advocacy organizations and industry stakeholders. It’s already made its compromises with reality. It’s already been through the legislative sausage grinder. And yet it saves more money and covers more people than the blank-slate alternative proposed by John Boehner and the House Republicans. The Democrats, constrained by reality, produced a far better plan than Boehner, who was constrained solely by his political imagination and legislative skill.

I understand your preference is that we do nothing about health care reform at all, and leave the status quo. But for the record, the alternatives being offered by the GOP are actually worse in both fiscal terms and in terms of actually covering people.