Obamacare already costing US manufacturing jobs

[Chris]

Toyota located a plant in Canada because they have universal healthcare.

 

[thereisnospoon]

Can someone please splain to me how a nominal tax caused less people to need hip joints?

It doesn't....The tax increases the cost of creating the product. The added cost makes the product price less competitive.

 

[Jeremy]

Here is a news flash for the resident libs.

Healthcare is oppressive in this country because of cost.

Taxing the suppliers of goods and services is counterproductive to solving this problem.

Fucking with insurance companies that assist the public in covering for said costs is a straw man.

YOU LOOSE!

 

[Chris]

Obamacares is saving American lives.

If Republicans had their way, everyone would have guns, and no one would have healthcare.

 

[Conservative]

Toyota located a plant in Canada because they have universal healthcare.

that was one factor. you conveniently neglect to mention this part...

Toyota, Moving Northward - New York Times

But last month Toyota decided to put the new plant, which will produce RAV4 mini-S.U.V.'s, in Ontario. Explaining why it passed up financial incentives to choose a U.S. location, the company cited the quality of Ontario's work force.

What made Toyota so sensitive to labor quality issues? Maybe we should discount remarks from the president of the Toronto-based Automotive Parts Manufacturers' Association, who claimed that the educational level in the Southern United States was so low that trainers for Japanese plants in Alabama had to use "pictorials" to teach some illiterate workers how to use high-tech equipment.

But there are other reports, some coming from state officials, that confirm his basic point: Japanese auto companies opening plants in the Southern U.S. have been unfavorably surprised by the work force's poor level of training.

 

[Conservative]

Obamacares is saving American lives.

If Republicans had their way, everyone would have guns, and no one would have healthcare.

prove it. cite your source for this statement.

 

[Jeremy]

Obamacares is saving American lives.

If Republicans had their way, everyone would have guns, and no one would have healthcare.

Jesus Christ you suck at this.

 

[thereisnospoon]

What cost us manufacturing jobs was Republicans moving millions to China from 2001 to 2008.

About 40,000 U.S. manufacturing plants closed between 2001 and 2008, resulting in the loss of millions of good-paying jobs. From 2001 to 2007, 2.3 million jobs were lost just from the U.S.’s huge trade deficit with China.

Manufacturing a Better Future for America | Alliance for American Manufacturing

You may be with the wrong party. Are you sure you've thought this through?

Republicans? Ok which party is responsible for the crushing regulations, absurdly high corporate taxes AND China's 'most favored nation' trade status?

 

[Quantum Windbag]

If anything, it's the tidal wave of Pub BS fear mongering about Health Reform...Pub Dupes!

Feel free to provide evidence, like I did.

 

[thereisnospoon]

Obamacares is saving American lives.

If Republicans had their way, everyone would have guns, and no one would have healthcare.

prove it. cite your source for this statement.

I no longer bother responding to Chris' horse shit drive by posts.

 

[Chris]

Toyota located a plant in Canada because they have universal healthcare.

that was one factor. you conveniently neglect to mention this part...

Toyota, Moving Northward - New York Times

But last month Toyota decided to put the new plant, which will produce RAV4 mini-S.U.V.'s, in Ontario. Explaining why it passed up financial incentives to choose a U.S. location, the company cited the quality of Ontario's work force.

What made Toyota so sensitive to labor quality issues? Maybe we should discount remarks from the president of the Toronto-based Automotive Parts Manufacturers' Association, who claimed that the educational level in the Southern United States was so low that trainers for Japanese plants in Alabama had to use "pictorials" to teach some illiterate workers how to use high-tech equipment.

But there are other reports, some coming from state officials, that confirm his basic point: Japanese auto companies opening plants in the Southern U.S. have been unfavorably surprised by the work force's poor level of training.

Every other industrialized nation in the world has national health insurance, and they pay HALF per capita what we pay for healthcare. Why? Because there are inherent cost savings in a national system. The Germans have had a national health care system since 1886!

The lack of a national health care system puts American companies at a competitive disadvantage.

 

[uscitizen]

Can someone please splain to me how a nominal tax caused less people to need hip joints?

It doesn't....The tax increases the cost of creating the product. The added cost makes the product price less competitive.

Umm how many people that need joint replacement is going to quibble over 100 bucks?

What you are seeing here is the offshoring of the medical industry because of cheaper offshore labor.

Yes a lowered standard in the USA becuase of globalizaton.
And we are just getting started.

 

[Quantum Windbag]

"start collecting a new tax on medical devices from tongue depressors "

I can understand the right wing depression over this.

Heck! cutting govt spending will end Many jobs.

Sending must be cut, the only contention is what to cut.

Great idea. Let's put more stress on the cost of services with additional taxes. That will solve shit.

Might also cut some waste?

Btw I am neutral on the tax. Do not know enough about it yet.
Is this a new tax or just taxing them like if they were in any other business?

It is a tax on medical devices that never existed before, and applies only to manufacture and sale of medical devices. Other than that, it is just like any other tax that applies to all industries.

 

[Quantum Windbag]

Toyota located a plant in Canada because they have universal healthcare.

Funny, Toyota said they were more worried about the training costs because American workers are not as well educated, but feel free to blame health care for that.

 

[Jeremy]

Toyota located a plant in Canada because they have universal healthcare.

Funny, Toyota said they were more worried about the training costs because American workers are not as well educated, but feel free to blame health care for that.

See post #27.

 

[Chris]

But education is only one reason Toyota chose Ontario. Canada's other big selling point is its national health insurance system, which saves auto manufacturers large sums in benefit payments compared with their costs in the United States.

You might be tempted to say that Canadian taxpayers are, in effect, subsidizing Toyota's move by paying for health coverage. But that's not right, even aside from the fact that Canada's health care system has far lower costs per person than the American system, with its huge administrative expenses. In fact, U.S. taxpayers, not Canadians, will be hurt by the northward movement of auto jobs.

To see why, bear in mind that in the long run decisions like Toyota's probably won't affect the overall number of jobs in either the United States or Canada. But the result of international competition will be to give Canada more jobs in industries like autos, which pay health benefits to their U.S. workers, and fewer jobs in industries that don't provide those benefits. In the U.S. the effect will be just the reverse: fewer jobs with benefits, more jobs without.

So what's the impact on taxpayers? In Canada, there's no impact at all: since all Canadians get government-provided health insurance in any case, the additional auto jobs won't increase government spending.

But U.S. taxpayers will suffer, because the general public ends up picking up much of the cost of health care for workers who don't get insurance through their jobs. Some uninsured workers and their families end up on Medicaid. Others end up depending on emergency rooms, which are heavily subsidized by taxpayers.

Funny, isn't it? Pundits tell us that the welfare state is doomed by globalization, that programs like national health insurance have become unsustainable. But Canada's universal health insurance system is handling international competition just fine. It's our own system, which penalizes companies that treat their workers well, that's in trouble.

Toyota, Moving Northward - New York Times

 

[uscitizen]

Great idea. Let's put more stress on the cost of services with additional taxes. That will solve shit.

Might also cut some waste?

Btw I am neutral on the tax. Do not know enough about it yet.
Is this a new tax or just taxing them like if they were in any other business?

It is a tax on medical devices that never existed before, and applies only to manufacture and sale of medical devices. Other than that, it is just like any other tax that applies to all industries.

So you are saying that if they were making ball joints for trucks they would not be subject to a tax as they are for making human joints?

 

[Chris]

It's ironic isn't it?

This thread that is attacking Obamacares ends up proving our need for national health insurance.

 

[ladyliberal]

I don't think anyone credibly disputes that, all else equal, taxing an industry hurts it.

That being said, this is an editorial by an editor for the National Review, citing numbers from an industry advocacy group. It deliberately presents a very one-sided view of the tax.

present the other side, then. Show us where the tax is not the reason for the job cuts, as cited by the companies mentioned.

It's not necessary to cite another article to claim that the tax has not cost 43,000 jobs. Even the advocates' study only claims that the tax *might in the future* cost *up to* 43,000 jobs. Anyway, let's examine that claim:

- While many of the statements in the study are inoffensive others are deliberately misleading (for example, the statement that the US has high corporate tax rates, while true, ignores the much lower effective corporate tax rates), supporting my observation that this report is designed more to influence than to inform.

- While I'm not sure, the study seems to assume that companies can avoid the tax by moving their manufacturing plants overseas. However, the tax seems most likely to be applied at the time of sale, so it's unlikely that it can be avoided this easily. Even if it could, the authors provide absolutely zero explanation for their suggestion that up to 30% of manufacturing could move offshore to avoid this 2.3% tax.

- The referencing within the report is poorly done, leaving the origins of many of their key numbers unclear.

- The study ignores completely the increase in demand from other aspects of the health care law. While some have argued that these will be smaller than one might think, it's absurd to assume that they will be zero. Thus, this study considers the effect of only one part of the health care law while ignoring the manifest benefits to industry employment.

- The study assumes that the industry will fire a fraction of workers equal to the fractional decrease in units sold. In fact, industry will presumably choose to retain many of these workers, some with decreases to their benefits.

- The paper pulls many numbers out of thin air, without explaining how they were derived. This makes it difficult to check what they are doing, and impossible to rely on it. Most egregiously:

The law assumes that the 2.3% tax will lead to a .02%-.2% rise in after-tax prices. There's no evidence to support this, but let's take it as a given for now. They then conclude without explanation that this would lead to a .6%-6% loss of industry revenue (which they misleadingly term "demand"). In other words, without explanation, they conclude that a 2% tax can lead to up to 6% lower revenue! From there, they conclude that industry employment falls proportionately, by 2,300 to 23,000. Oddly, they don't claim the 43,000 number anywhere except in the beginning, presumably relying in some entirely unstated way on their offshoring assumptions.


So what's a more reasonable assumption (again ignoring the beneficial parts of the health care law)?

- Suppose that the supplier chooses to pass the cost of the tax entirely on to the buyer. This isn't a good assumption, of course, but it leads to an overestimate of the change in quantity sold, so that it will still place a bound on the size of the effect.

- Suppose that the demand elasticity is -.17, which is a good guess from a literature review (http://www.rand.org/pubs/monograph_reports/2005/MR1355.pdf) (as an aside, the study claims there's no way to estimate the elasticity of demand- apparently they aren't familiar with the extensive research already done on this subject).

- Suppose, as this study did, that the fraction of labor foregone is equal to the fraction of units that go unsold under the 2.3% tax.

Now, we have a well-posed and very basic economic problem:

The fractional decrease in quantity sold is .023*.17=.00391. Under our assumptions, this is also the fraction of labor foregone. Using the study's value of industry labor (409,000, which for all I know is a gross overestimate) this leads to a loss of about 1,599. This number, for reasons stated above, is still probably a large overestimate. In any case, the number commonly cited from the study seems to be overstated by at least a factor of 20. (Feel free to check me on this, I might well have erred somewhere).

 

[Quantum Windbag]

Might also cut some waste?

Btw I am neutral on the tax. Do not know enough about it yet.
Is this a new tax or just taxing them like if they were in any other business?

It is a tax on medical devices that never existed before, and applies only to manufacture and sale of medical devices. Other than that, it is just like any other tax that applies to all industries.

So you are saying that if they were making ball joints for trucks they would not be subject to a tax as they are for making human joints?

They would, but not the additional tax designed to pay for Obamacare by taxing medical device manufacturers. For the slow that means they have to pay all the taxes everyone else, like the truck manufacturers, pay, and then they pay an additional tax.