Now we get a bit of honesty here....

Critics are missing the larger point. Why should the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) decree that any of us must pay for "insurance" that covers contraceptives?

I put "insurance" in quotes for a reason. Insurance is supposed to mean a contract, by which a company pays for large, unanticipated expenses in return for a premium: expenses like your house burning down, your car getting stolen or a big medical bill.

Right. Insurance is a negative-sum game.  That is, on balance everyone who buys it must lose when everyone adds up their expenses, since nothing is free and the company that aggregates and doles this out must get paid somehow.

Therefore it is not insurance when you are buying "insurance" on something that everyone, or close to everyone, will actually use. 

Insurance is the purchase of a contract that pays off when you have an unlikely event that would otherwise be catastrophically expensive.  By spreading this risk of unlikely but catastrophic outcome while everyone must mathematically lose when all the costs and benefits are added up, the cost becomes palatable to people in general.  This is why homeowners insurance is reasonable in cost -- it's unlikely that you'll have a fire, but if you do the loss would bankrupt you absent the insurance. You thus voluntarily buy the insurance to protect against the risk, unless of course you have a shack, in which case you don't care (and don't buy.)

But when it comes to "Social Insurance" (Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security) these are not insurance programs, in the main.  Nor is the "HMO/PPO" nonsense with coverage of routine expenses.  And it is those routine expenses that have gone through the roof in cost, along with prescription drugs and devices at the same time "catastrophic" events have skyrocketed.

Nobody denies that things like heart stents and "miracle" drugs are expensive to develop.  But the benefit -- and cost -- of those things can be borne by actual insurance, with individual people choosing to have or not have that coverage. 

Routine medical care, on the other hand, along with chronic conditions are another matter.  Those are things that are utterly predictable.  We all get old.  We all go to the doctor more often as we get old.  It is as routine as, well, getting old.

Likewise with birth control.  If you're of fertile age as a woman or a man involved with such a woman then you have this concern in one form or another.  You either both want an unlimited-size family or you do not.  If you do not, and most people do not, then this is an utterly predictable expense.

As for those who say that this sort of thing is "expensive", no it's not.  Not any more than your iPhone is.  If you can afford the cellphone you can afford the birth control.  Is sex more important to you than your toy piece of technology?

It's not about "access" and it's not about "insurance." It's because Americans, when paying even modest co-payments, choose to spend their money on other things. They prefer a new iPod to a "wellness visit" to the doctor. As the HHS unwittingly admits: "Often because of cost, Americans used preventive services at about half the recommended rate."

Yep.  And Americans prefer this because they do not have to bear the cost of this decision.

That is, Americans are free to spend the money on an iPod rather than a "wellness visit" to the doctor because if they make this choice and then get severely ill they can force everyone else to cover the otherwise-avoidable expense they would not have taken on if they eschewed the iPod and went to the doc!

This is where the problem lies and until we admit it and deal with it there is no resolution to our budget mess that is possible.  The simple fact of the matter is that we do not have the ability to pay for that which we've promised to people.  This has resulted in what look like "excellent profits" in various businesses (like Apple) that are factually false as these "sales" are in fact shifted to federal borrowing -- a death spiral that will detonate in our face.

This game must end.  In reality this "debate" about birth control in Obamacare is not about birth control at all.  It is about the Church and the professional left and right creating entitlement programs that serve as nothing more than a cost-shift they cannot fund, then claiming that we "cannot stifle" an alleged but false economic recovery!  This an outright fraud by both the Church and everyone else involved in it, both government and private sector.  So long as the Church was able to make someone else -- anyone else, including their congregation -- eat the cost of their frauds they were perfectly happy with it.  In fact they reveled in it as the Church's historical role in helping the poor through voluntary donations was able to be sloughed off to the taxpayer!  The bleating now, just like that of the doctors, drug companies and hospitals, is all a function of the truth being shoved in their face -- their cost-shifting game has backfired and they are now forced to deal with not only the financial but moral costs of the policies they actively promoted.

There is no recovery folks and there can't be until truth is faced.  The Federal Government is creating the illusion of economic demand that does not exist and has been for more than a decade.  The truth of this is becoming more and more evident as each day goes on and our standard of living is continually eroded as each pillar of debt dependency is exposed for what it is -- a pyramid scheme and thus an outright scam.

You're free to buy into this if you want and to believe in the "faux outrage" of the Catholic Bishops, but that's what it is -- faux outrage. These same people were more than happy to shove you into the hole so the government could take by taxation that which they believed you "should" give as nothing more than a throwback to former Church policy when the Church had the force of law behind it.  By making such arguments and endorsements from the pulpit, something that the Pope just did recently with his claim that "redistribution" is "appropriate", the Church has in fact endorsed Ponzi spending that is no more correct than was the Church's insistence that Earth was the center of the universe.

There are many "churches" that are involved in this scheme and scam and most of them do not have crosses over their altars.  That there is an intersection between the political left, right and various faith-based groups is no surprise -- none of them are willing to abide our Constitution or the math.

The fact of the matter is that fully 61% of Federal Spending (FY 2012) is for blatantly unconstitutional things.  Universal retirement and indigent health care (Medicare and Medicaid), Title I (public education), universal retirement income (Social Security) and universal money and goods assistance to indigent people (welfare in all forms, AFDC, Section 8, etc) are all without foundation in the Constitution of the United States at a federal level.  The growth of these programs was utterly predictable -- with federal medical spending growing from $53 billion in 1980 to over $800 billion last year, a compound growth rate of just over 9%, it is clear that mathematically Medicare and Medicaid alone will eclipse the entire Federal Budget within the next 20 years.  This will bankrupt our nation with certainty unless we stop being stupid. 

The bad news is that when we stop the economic contraction that will inevitably ripple through the economy is going to be massive and the magnitude of that contraction grows with every day we continue to pretend instead of "eating our peas."  This economic adjustment, which I estimate was 10% of GDP in 2000, grew to 20% by 2007 and today is approaching double that amount!  If we don't accept the truth soon collapse will become inevitable.

While you can ignore the Constitution, seemingly without consequence in this country, you cannot ignore math.  Compound functions just are, and the consequence of refusing to deal with them is utterly predictable and in fact certain.

We must stop this now and if there was any sort of honest outrage from these institutions, including the Church, their outrage would be directed at the fact that the majority of what our Federal Government does today is in fact blatantly unconstitutional and thus without justification under The Constitution of the United States.

The very same Constitution that, when it's convenience for them, they bitch about being violated.

The difference between rape and sex is consent. As such I'll be interested in the Church's complaints about contraception when -- and only when -- they stop telling me that being horse-raped on a daily basis by my government is in fact consensual sexual intercourse.

Interesting report....

In the week ending February 4, the advance figure for   seasonally adjusted initial claims was 358,000, a decrease of 15,000   from the previous week's revised figure of 373,000. The 4-week moving average   was 366,250, a decrease of 11,000 from the previous week's revised average of   377,250.

What's the raw number look like?

The advance number of actual   initial claims under state programs, unadjusted, totaled 397,810 in the week   ending February 4, a decrease of 24,477 from the previous week. There were 440,706   initial claims in the comparable week in 2011.

Ok, that looks fairly decent.

But what I want to look at is the big table, as that's the "big deal", although we're (of course) a couple of weeks behind.  And here we see that the numbers are basically flat, with a +7982 figure at the bottom; drops in initial and EUC benefits were offset by more extended benefits.

The only caution on this report is that if there's more long-term unemployment (but the rate itself is stable) that's not positive.  It's not as negative as adding more unemployed would be, but long-term unemployment is far more damaging from a budgetary perspective than those who lose their job but find a new one in a reasonably-rapid timeframe.

Worth watching.... and thinking about.  But do so soon, because if we don't the system will collapse, and then there will be no benefits at all.

Bill puts into graphs in a couple of minutes what I've been writing about for the last five years.  Your choice is to either act on it or go to the store, right now, and buy all the vasoline you can find -- because if you don't act you're going to need it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u24nH03NccI&feature=player_embedded#!

And people wonder why there are more and more folks who are saying (or should say) "fuck it", throw their hands in the air, make no investment in capital formation and just walk off?

A multistate settlement with five large U.S. banks over foreclosure practices would include as much as $17 billion in mortgage debt forgiveness and loan modifications and take three years to complete, according to a letter describing the deal.

The draft letter to stakeholders from state attorneys general outlines an agreement among large mortgage servicers, states and the Department of Justice, which are continuing talks to finalize the proposal.

Perjury is, in most states, a felony.  Uttering (forgery) is also, in most cases, a felony.

But now it is being reported that both NY and California have caved -- making a "deal" all but inevitable.

And you, dear reader, are going to (again) take it in the ass.

What do you think the banks held over these folks?  Might it have been their state bond financings?  Oh, probably.  Property rights and a property registration system that literally pre-dates the Revolution?  No problem, we'll give it all to you, Sir Greedy Bastard, so long as you keep presenting your bare member for us to perform an obscene act upon.

Then we will tell our constituents that we "got the best deal possible" and that "we couldn't have prosecuted."

In point of fact what the states had to do was stop the ridiculous overspending and tell the banksters to pound sand.  But they didn't because you insisted they keep making promises to you they couldn't keep, and so once again the so-called "elected" turn out to be a bad joke.  Representation of the people, by the people and for the people falls again to those who do whatever the hell they want, law be damned.

There is no law any more folks.  Not when it really matters -- when systemic and rampant violations are committed by big business and your fundamental liberty interests are ignored.

We, the people of this nation, deserve this.  We vote for Attorneys General in 43 states and in all but two of the others they're appointed by the governor (and we vote for the governor.)

So get out of your chair this evening, my friends, and go stand in front of the mirror to identify the problem.  Then decide for yourself whether you're going to keep consenting, because up until now, you have and this crap will not stop until you decide you've had enough and insist that the law that applies to you is also applied equally to these institutions and their executives.

Oh look what Barry linked...

Chicago Fed Letter. “Explaining the Decline in the U.S. Labor Force Participation Rate,” by Daniel Aaronson, Jonathan Davis and Luojia Hu. March 2012, Number 296.

The letter goes on explain that "about half" of the labor participation rate decline is explainable by boomers retiring and that "this will continue for some time."

Now look at the graph:

The problem with the thesis in the letter, of course, is that most of the decline happened all at once, but the boomers don't retire all at once.  They do so over time.  In fact the big "step function" took place over the space of less than two years, which is rather dramatic -- and doesn't mesh with a "demographics" explanation.

But if you accept that paper's conclusion then you're in even bigger trouble because the participation rate is what determines the government's ability to extract taxes from the population and thus fund social programs.  Need I remind everyone that between Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security approximately half of all Federal spending is consumed, if you add in Defense it's 75%, and if you add welfare on as well it rises to 87%!

With interest expense at 6% of the budget at present you are at 93% of spending and if blended rates rise by just 2% the entire rest of the budget -- every other program from education to health and human services to the EPA on down the line -- is instantly wiped out.  If rates rise more then the government is immediately insolvent as well at today's unsustainable level of borrowing! 

In short if you accept that the participation rate change is a secular change that is driven by demographics and it is going to continue for a good while then you must be banging the drum hard and long for immediate and permanent actual reductions in Pension, Health Care, Defense and Welfare spending right here and right now because if we don't the Federal Government is going to blow up as a matter of absolute mathematical certainty.