Analysis: Obamacare Gutting Middle Class

Analysis: Obamacare Gutting Middle Class

on Sun, 4 Aug 2013

While President Barack Obama has claimed he is a champion of the middle class, two of his signature initiatives--comprehensive immigration reform and Obamacare--threaten to further gut America's middle class. 

Regarding Obamacare, economic analyst John Mauldin determined Obamacare may actually create a "new underclass" with "disastrous implications for the country." He explained that the country has a "younger generation that is having trouble finding full-time work and developing the skills needed for the transition to more stable, higher-paying employment."

Besides potentially giving the federal government the ability to control nearly every aspect of an individual's lives, Obamacare is already diminishing opportunities for America's workers. This is why senators like Mike Lee (R-UT) and Ted Cruz (R-TX) are leading efforts to defund it.

Mauldin notes one of Obamacare's unintended consequences is a "dramatic rise in the number of temporary versus full-time jobs" resulting from "employers having to pay for the health insurance of employees who work more than 29 hours a week." This "redefinition of part-time as less than 29 hours a week and the new costs associated with full-time employment due to Obamacare simply accelerated a trend already set into motion."

In June, part-time jobs increased by 360,000 and "reached an all-time high of 28,059,000 – three million more part-time positions than when the recession began at the end of 2007."

According to the Congressional Budget Office, an estimated "7 million people will lose their employer-provided health insurance at the end of the year," which means they will "likely soon be paying $1400 a year (minimum) in mandated taxes (the level set by the Supreme Court), and those costs will rise dramatically over the next few years, according to the current schedule."

This, according to Mauldin, is a "huge" and "vicious" "lower-middle-class tax increase" that "comes in the middle of the slowest recovery on record."

For instance, "young people who have no insurance and are making more than $10 an hour will be paying about $1300 a year, or close to 10% of their after-tax income."

Mauldin concedes that Obama did not intend to deliberately harm the economy by championing Obamacare, but it is nonetheless a significant stealth tax increase that has dealt a significant blow to the economy in the "real world where you and I live."