Sunday, August 4, 2013

Who'd A-Thunk It ???

My unofficial economics mentor #1, Don Boudreaux at Café Hayek, is starting a new series called "Who'd a-Thunk it?" 

I assume he's going to post things about the inevitable consequences of government policy, and the shocked, shocked reactions from supporters of those policies when things don't work out as planned.  (You know, the law of unintended consequences, things seen and unseen, markets responding rationally to punishment, etc.) 

In other words, "Who'd a-Thunk that punishing businesses by making them pay for healthcare would cause businesses to hire fewer employees?"

Boudreaux is accepting your submissions.  The first to be published was supplied by my unofficial economics mentor #13 (yeah, I have them numbered), Greg Mankiw.  It's from an email he received Saturday morning:

I have been teaching multiple sections of economics for four years now at several Colleges and Universities in the State of Indiana. I have also been a frequent user of your texts in the classes that I teach.

With the implementation of the ACA (Affordable Care Act) these institutions are giving notification to their part-time faulty that their individual teaching schedules will now be limited to three sections. At the college this will likely result in the cancellation of 20-25% of the class sections in economics, and I would assume other areas will have a similar result. The students are not fully aware of the situation and many will be surprised that their desire to get a college education is now being impacted by the need to avoid the full implementation of the ACA.

Regardless if you are a Republican or a Democrat I would hope full-time faculty would voice their concern regarding the impact the implementation of the ACA could have on the attainment of higher education for the current student population and upon the lives of the dedicated part-time faculty that have been devoted to serving this student population.
My hope is that if faculty across the nation brought this to the public attention that we as a nation could have a more open and complete dialogue regarding the course we wish to set as a nation.

Good stuff, isn't it? 

Elections have consequences.  Who'd a-Thunk it? 


 

1 comment:

Unknown said...

what's the harm of little lying blaspheming IDI*TS!


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