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Yesterday I blogged about how Obamacare will reduce the workforce by 2.5 million people over the next 10 years. This analysis focused on the employer side. That is, when it becomes more expensive for an employer to employ someone due to increased health care costs, the company will cut full time workers to part time, and eliminate positions.

But there is also a supply side issue. If people are now able to get subsidized/free health care, they will have less incentives to toil. For many, it makes more sense to not work, as the additional hours would disqualify them for free healthcare. Avik Roy has a post explaining this perverse incentive of Obamacare.

the law’s $2 trillion in subsidies for low-income individuals, which will discourage many from remaining in the labor force.

Let’s focus on that last point, because it’s the one that has been the least-discussed in the media. In the past twelve months, a spate of research from academic economists has concluded that the health law, by offering economic benefits to low-income individuals, will disincentivize some of these individuals from continuing to work. Casey Mulligan of the University of Chicago has been particularly persuasive on this front, publishing two paperswith the National Bureau of Economic Research.

Several economists, like Harvard’s Kate Baicker, MIT’s Amy Finkelstein, Texas A&M’s Laura Dague, and Northwestern’s Craig Garthwaite have found that rising unemployment is associated with an expansion of Medicaid. “Taking that research into account, CBO estimates that expanded Medicaid eligibility under the ACA will, on balance, reduce incentives to work.”

More significantly, as Casey Mulligan has warned, the new subsidized insurance exchanges will allow low-income workers to work less while maintaining the same effective income: what economists call theincome effect. In addition, because the subsidies decline on a sliding scale as you make more money, that sliding scale means that as workers work more, they make less per hour worked: what economists call the substitution effect.

For some people, it is now counterproductive to work. Working more hours will actually result in a net decrease in effective income. Perversely, for some, it is *rational* not to work.

Jay Carney attempted to spin this news positively–that people shouldn’t have to work!

Over the longer run, CBO finds that because of this law, individuals will be empowered to make choices about their own lives and livelihoods, like retiring on time rather than working into their elderly years or choosing to spend more time with their families. At the beginning of this year, we noted that as part of this new day in health care, Americans would no longer be trapped in a job just to provide coverage for their families, and would have the opportunity to pursue their dreams.

Think about this for a moment. The government is actually saying that it is good for people not to work, and they should be content to rely on government benefits. Or, as Avik puts it is a ” good thing for fewer Americans to be economically self-sufficient.” And who, Mr. Carney, will be paying for these lives of leisure?

This is insidious. Not only will jobs be eliminated because the cost of providing health care becomes cost-prohibitive, but many at the bottom end of the economic ladder may decide to give up, and not work, so they can receive *free* health care, calculating that they will be better off. The deleterious impacts of Obamacare’s expansion on the employment market, and relatedly, the American work ethic, is only now coming into focus.

And as more people join the rolls, this problem becomes more acute. This philosophy will invariably skew the electoral base, as many will soon depend on those in Washington who can maintain (in the short term at least) this leisurely lifestyle? Doesn’t this ethos just prove Mitt Romney’s 47% comment? In a later post, I will address how this demographic shift impacts the long-term viability of the libertarian movement, and future commitment to limited government.

In a post on January 30, 2014, Eugene Volokh writes about Ron Collins’s review of  A Conspiracy Against Obamacare: The Volokh Conspiracy and the Health Care Case, co-authored by Randy Barnett, Jonathan Adler, David Bernstein, Orin Kerr, David Kopel, and Ilya Somin, and edited by Trevor Burris.

He closed the post, noting:

 Most of the posts collected in the book are, as readers might recall, skeptical of the act’s constitutionality, but some take the opposite view.

Did anyone else notice that though the book has Volokh’s name in the title, he did not contribute to it. That would make sense, in light of the fact that Eugene barely wrote about Obamacare at all.  In fact, by my count, I don’t think Eugene has blogged about Obamacare since late 2009. As I discuss in Unprecedented, Eugene appeared opposite to Randy Barnett at an event at the Heritage Foundation. Eugene took the position that the Affordable Care Act was constitutional, and that Randy’s arguments were without merit.

At the senator’s request, Gaziano invited Hatch to speak at a De- cember 9, 2012, public event at Heritage’s Capitol Hill auditorium. At the time, Gaziano noted that Hatch would “laud the paper in a floor speech he is set to make” later that day. The report would be released on that date, and Barnett would debate prominent UCLA law professor Eugene Volokh. Volokh, who holds mostly conser- vative and libertarian views, had been critical of the challenges to the ACA. Gaziano wanted Volokh because “he was a skeptic” and debating him would “get academic play.” During the event, Volokh would disagree with Barnett’s positions and argue that the mandate was constitutional under existing law.

Eugene wrote one post after the Heritage event. He began:

I much enjoyed Randy’s and my exchange at Heritage today. I’m afraid I don’t have a write-up of my views, and probably won’t;

At some point when writing the book I went through every single Volokh, Balkin, etc. blog post on Obamacare, and I remember making a note on Volokh’s lack of writing. I may have missed one or two, but I’m pretty sure I got them all. I think he may have been the only regular conspirator not to write about NFIB.

Ron Collins made a similar point in his review of the Conspirator’s book.

To add to the constitutional story, Professor Barnett also noted: “And then I had a debate about [the ACA]. I argued that it was unconstitutional. And who did the Heritage Foundation dig up to argue that the law was constitutional? It was none other than Eugene Volokh . . . . I always thought that one of the reasons that we never heard from Eugene during the course of the debate, one way or another, is because he was already on record in this debate in arguing that it was constitutional.”

During her recent conversation at Yale Law School, Justice Sotomayor addressed her decision to use the phrase “undocumented immigrant” rather than the phrase used in the statute, “illegal alien.”

Sotomayor also addressed her use of the term “undocumented immigrants” rather than the term “illegal alien,” characterizing the immigration issue as a regulatory issue.

“To dub every immigrant a criminal because they are undocumented, to call them illegal aliens seemed and has seemed insulting to me,” said Sotomayor. “I think people then paint those individuals as less than worthy human beings and it changes the conversation.”

Justice Sotomayor first used the term “undocumented immigrant” in Mohawk Industries v. Carpenter in December 2009, her first opinion on the bench.

The following term, in Chamber of Commerce v. Whiting, the question presented used the statutory term, “unauthorized aliens.” During oral argument, Justice Sotomayor used the term “illegal alien,” but quickly corrected herself and said “undocumented aliens.”

JUSTICE SOTOMAYOR: — just — just focus the question? Because we keep talking about whether the APA-type definition of licensing is what Congress intended or not, but you don’t disagree that Congress at least intended that if someone violated the Federal law and hired illegal aliens of Hispanic — undocumented aliens and was found to have violated it, that the State can revoke their license, correct, to do business?

Justices Scalia and Alito had no problem, and used the phrase “illegal alien.”

In 2012, in Arizona v. United States, Justice Sotomayor used the phrase “illegal alien.”

JUSTICE SOTOMAYOR: What happens if — this is the following call — the call to the — to the Federal Government. Yes, he’s an illegal alien. No, we don’t want to detain him. What does the law say, the Arizona law say, with respect to releasing that individual?

In 2013, in Moncrieffe v. Holder, Justice Sotomayor consistently uses the term “noncitizen.” Nowhere in her opinion does the word “alien” appear. Justice Alito takes exception to this, and adds in a footnote:

1 “Alien” is the term used in the relevant provisions of the Immigration and Nationality Act, and this term does not encompass all noncitizens. Compare 8 U. S. C. §1101(a)(3) (defining “alien” to include “any person not a citizen or national of the United States”) with §1101(a)(22) (defining “national of the United States”). See also Miller v. Albright, 523 U. S. 420, 467, n. 2 (1998) (GINSBURG, J., dissenting).

In a few short years, Justice Sotomayor has gone from “undocumented immigrant” to “undocumented alien” to “noncitizen.”

As I sit in the newly-spawned DeBlasio’s New York, I read that the recently-elected Mayor has decided not to participate in the St. Patrick’s Day parade due to their position on gay and lesbian groups. The Times reports:

Mr. de Blasio will be the first New York mayor in 20 years not to take part in the event, a world-famous procession down Fifth Avenue, which is a highlight of the calendar for many Irish-American groups but also a deeply fraught event for politicians wary of its prohibition on public expressions of gay pride.

“I simply disagree with the organizers of that parade in their exclusion of some individuals in this city,” he said in a news conference at City Hall.

The mayor said he planned to participate in several other events on St. Patrick’s Day, which is March 17, “to honor the Irish heritage of this city and the contributions of Irish-Americans.”

Mr. de Blasio, who previously served on the City Council and as public advocate, said he had never marched in the parade as an elected official.

That’s fine. He is well within his discretion to voice his disapproval of the parade’s policies. But more interesting is the suggestion of some in government that city employees not be able to march in uniform:

A coalition of liberal activists and city officials — including the public advocate, Letitia James — this week urged Mr. de Blasio to restrict public workers, such as firefighters and police officers, from marching in the parade while wearing formal city uniforms.

An open letter to the Mayor signed by numerous groups, and city officials, makes this point explicitly:

The organizers of the St. Patrick’s Day Parade have established a constitutional right to their exclusionary religious procession, but the participation of police and firefighters is a clear violation of the City’s Human Rights Law, appended below.

The presence of uniformed police and firefighters in such a procession sends a clear signal to LGBTQ New Yorkers that these personnel, who are charged with serving and protecting all New Yorkers, do not respect the lives or safety of LGBT people. It confirms the practice of the NYPD and FDNY at times of targeting certain communities for discrimination. What’s more, it betrays the current work of high level government agencies and human rights advocates working internationally against the current wave of extreme anti-LGBTQ legislation and discriminatory practices occurring in countries such as Nigeria, Uganda, and Russia.

…

We are asking you to direct all City departments not to organize marchers for or allow personnel to participate in this anti-LGBTQ procession either in uniform or with any banner that identifies them with the City.

The Mayor (for now at least) has rejected these requests.

The mayor firmly dismissed that idea on Tuesday. “Uniformed city workers have a right to participate if they choose to, and I respect that right,” he said.

This would present an interesting issue of free speech for government employees. But,more particularly speak to a rising sentiment that any group that has sentiments concerning gay marriage, or even gay pride, must be bigoted. That is, there are no legitimate or rational reasons for a group–even one affiliated with religion in a private parade–to not openly accommodate all groups. Keep an eye on this issue.

The outcome of the Elaine photography case is about much more than same-sex marriage.

The New York City Bar has a post about Justice Kagan’s “Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg Distinguished Lecture on Women and the Law,” given in honor of, well Justice Ginsburg. Kagan fetes Ginsburg for her role as a litigator, and a jurist. But one of the coolest parts of the lecture is all of the pop-culture references Lady Kaga squeezes in–from the Greenbag Bobblehead to Buzzfeed to the Notorious RBG tumblr.

“As a litigator, and then as a judge, she changed the face of American anti-discrimation law,” Justice Kagan said of Justice Ginsburg. “More than any other person, she can take credit for making the laws of this country work. And in doing so, she made possible my own career, and later on the careers of today’s devotees of the Notorious RBG Tumblr and the Ruth Bader GinsBlog.”

Those were references to the lighter side of the evening, in which Justice Kagan described Justice Ginsburg’s remarkable influence on the wider culture: the “Notorious RBG rap video” (of which Justice Ginsburg is reportedly a great fan), the opera and thecomic book she inspired, the Buzzfeed ‘listicle’ on “19 Reasons Ruth Bader Ginsburg is Your Favorite Supreme Court Justice,” and the Ruth Bader Ginsburg bobblehead that Justice Kagan displayed on the dais.

Awesome. This may be a first–a Justice using the word “listicle.” Someone should ask Justice Scalia what “listicle” means (but he should prepare to get smacked).

H/T How Appealing