The Associated Press is the latest to explain why so many got the latest Congressional Budget Office report so wrong.
WASHINGTON (AP) -- New estimates that President Barack Obama's health care law will encourage millions of Americans to leave the workforce or reduce their work hours have touched off an I-told-you-so chorus from Republicans, who've claimed all along that the law will kill jobs. But some aren't telling it straight.[...]http://finance.yahoo.com/...The study estimates that the workforce will be reduced by the equivalent of 2.3 million full-time workers by 2021 as people choose to leave it. More would take early retirement, work fewer hours or otherwise rearrange their work-home balance to take advantage of new subsidies for health insurance and new markets for individual policies that don't depend on having a job.
In a key point overlooked in the GOP response, the report says: "The estimated reduction stems almost entirely from a net decline in the amount of labor that workers choose to supply, rather than from a net drop in businesses' demand for labor."
In other words, workers aren't being laid off. They are taking themselves out of the workforce, in many cases opening job opportunities for others.
To people who don't listen to explanations, explaining things to them is always a losing proposition.
For those who honestly do want to understand the truth in the midst of competing claims, the AP summarizes the Obamacare section of the CBO report in this short and sweet paragraph:
The predicted withdrawal from the labor market is no more a killer of jobs than today's surge of retirements by baby boomers entering old age. If anything, it could open job opportunities for people who can't get in the workforce now.http://finance.yahoo.com/...