The Congressional Budget Office  released an updated report on the future consequences of the Affordable Care Act, AKA  Obamacare. There is no doubt that the most controversial of its conjectures is that future employment will be hindered in much larger ways than its proponents want to admit.
In a previous column, I wrote of the way people of all stripes will take bad news and “spin” it to where it sounds like good news.
The truth from the doctor might be that you have only three months to live, but let a “spinmeister” get a hold of the news and he might say, “Well, look on the bright side; you were about to run out of money anyway.”
Spinning the news that a major program of the government will wreak havoc on the American economy is no problem for the government spokesman. The American people are not going to be adversely affected by the decrease in work. They will finally be “liberated” from those awful jobs; free to save the world.
I was born too soon. If I were a young one now, I could be liberated from all the farm work of my youth. It might go something like this.
“Boys (my brother and me),” my daddy would call, “it’s time to get up. There are hogs to feed and rows of cotton to chop. Plus, in our spare time, I thought we would fix the fence down in the creek field. It’s getting a little ragged.”
My brother and I had talked the night before.
We had heard the news on the Philco radio (a little exaggeration) that the government was setting us free from all those jobs that we didn’t want to do. There would be no more job lock.
Job lock is where one is trapped in a nowhere job. Day after day the hours just poke by in the salt mine of boring jobs like feeding the hogs or pulling up the weeds in the peanut patch.
At breakfast we break the news to daddy about job lock.
“Daddy, we want to be free,” we both said in unison. “Uncle Sam is going to take care of us.
He is going to house us, feed us and, when we get our boo-boo’s he’s going to pay the doctor. We are free to lolly-gag around, if you know what we mean.”
Daddy did not look up. Instead he said, “Hurry up. We don’t have all day.”
Keith and I stuttered, “Uh, daddy, the government loves us more than you and is setting us free.”
Daddy answered. “Well, the hogs don’t feed themselves and the weeds don’t die all of a sudden. Who is going to do the work that you boys do? The government? Who is that?”
We thought. “We the people are the government.” I was proud we thought so quickly and so well.
“Okay,” daddy said. “Until the government gets down here and starts doing all this work, I’m gonna need you two to do it. When they get here, then I’ll set you free.”
Seemed logical, so we finished our breakfast and headed on out to the corncrib to feed the hogs. As they say, don’t hold your breath.