Federal Reserve came out with an open ended QE, the sequence number does not matter (it's officially 3, but really it's much more than that, Federal Reserve has been buying up bonds and generally creating fake money and propping up the financial sector for a very long time now).

Of-course the economy is as always the victim of this type of behaviour, the savers are further punished, anybody living off of fixed income is further punished, everybody living pay check to pay check is further punished, because all new money that the government creates either prevents deflation (which is a normal situation for a productive market) or it even forces the prices to increase (which is what the majority of people think of when they think about inflation).

Of-course rising prices are not a meaningful measure of economy at all, actually falling prices is a better measure, because it means there is more competition, there are more efficiencies, better technology, more automation, all of which allows the businesses (corporation and other types of businesses) to lower their prices to compete for the customer base. That was a normal course of events for USA before the Federal Reserve was set up, almost 100 years ago. Prices were falling and the money was growing in value.

The increase in prices in the markets will be blamed by the politicians upon the speculators, but of-course speculators are not to blame for the increase of prices, as far as the market is concerned, the speculators have really under-appreciated real assets. The prices of commodities and equities are being held down relative to the promise of open-ended Federal Reserve action. When somebody says: gold is too expensive at 1700 per ounce, they don't realise that they are measuring the value of gold is a currency that has no value at all given the promise of the Federal Reserve and all other central banks in the world to buy up debt with fake money. This is monetisation of debt, this is the reason for the equity prices going up as well as commodity prices.

Equity prices are prices of companies in the market and since the Fed promises to wipe out debt with inflation, the companies also 'gain' from this action, because they are holders of debt as well. However the real rise in equity prices is simply a function of the open-ended fiat currency supply in the market.

This action does show that the Federal Reserve chairman, Ben Bernanke is voting for Obama in these coming elections. Obviously Bernanke doesn't want to go back to a teaching position some place nowhere in Princeton, he wants to stay in power, he enjoys it, and thus he is helping the sitting president (as every Fed chairman has done before) to get re-elected by providing a short term fix to the long term problem and thus making the long term problem much graver, the consequences of an open-ended monetary expansion is inflation and potential hyper inflation and destruction of the currency. For obvious reason a destroyed currency does not help the economy.

Most of the so called 'economists' that are really government mouth pieces, are calling for more of this type of action, some are even saying that the Fed is doing today what it should have done back in the thirties 'to prevent depression'. Of-course these are witch doctors, in the late twenties and all the way through the thirties (except a short period of time) and through the forties and so on, the Federal reserve has been in the market, propping up bond prices, forcing interest rates lower.

The politicians and 'economists' and various pundits are talking about the coming 'Fiscal Cliff' as if that is the actual problem that the USA economy is facing. It's not a problem, it's part of a solution, which will be avoided. They are all very conveniently forgetting that this so called 'Fiscal Cliff' situation was a response by the government promising to cut spending, a response to a rating agency promising not to lower the rating of the USA sovereign debt.

The real problem for USA is not cutting spending it's the opposite. The real problem for the US (and other countries) economy is to continue spending, to continue government programs that cannot be paid for, to continue printing currencies, to continue expanding government powers, to continue destroying savings, to continue trying to push interest rates down.

Of-course the bond market today has responded in a logical manner, surprisingly enough, given how it responded previously. The prices for bonds are falling, so the interest rates on bonds are going up. Eventually this process will become unstoppable, just like the resolve of the Fed and US government (and all other governments and central banks in the world) to destroy the value of their money.

The solution for the people is not to follow their governments off this real cliff, the fake money cliff, which ends up being the economic cliff. The solution is to avoid fiat currencies of the world altogether. In fact anything except for currencies and various debt instruments is a valid way to avoid inflation, some things are better than others (precious metals, other commodities, farming), some are not as good (various non-farming and non-mining and non-financial equities, properties), but these are completely the wrong way to go: currencies, government bonds, financial equities.

Obama is going to be re-elected, so people like this are going to continue setting the policies and for those who don't have much in terms of savings it is going to become a serious problem. Maybe investing in a small piece of farming land is not such a bad idea, for those who can't do it on their own, maybe it makes sense to stock up on various non-perishable goods. The prices are going up and will go up further, again, not because of any speculation or even bad weather and droughts, it's very specifically tied to the inflation that all the governments are involved in at this point.

Comments that are moderated positively on /. are not worth making.

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The SCOTUS passed its ruling on the ACA and a large number of people are confused about parts of it, what is really in it substantively one way or another?

Is the ACA mandate really Constitutional? Well, 5 out of 4 justices said that it is, of-course it would be a bad outcome if such a close call was made upon a case deciding whether it is Constitutional for the government to execute people without a trial on a hunch of a president, but that can never happen, or ?

There are many interesting questions raised about ACA, but one is particularly intriguing, how is the mandate to buy insurance from a private company or face a penalty (tax under the SCOTUS ruling) Constitutional?

Also how is ACA Constitutional at all, given that this is a Senate bill and it did not originate in Congress as all bills are supposed to? Well, let's just leave that for later.

So let's examine the interesting points of the ruling:

1. The majority opinion is that the mandate is only Constitutional as a tax. The reason for this is that as a fine, this is unconstitutional, because it is an admission of an attempt to legislate by punitive taxation. The other reason is that the opinion also states that the government cannot use the commerce clause to force people to buy something that they are not buying otherwise. Now, there is a legal precedent for an opposite ruling actually, AFAIC regardless of what SCOTUS said in Wickard v. Filburn, that ruling was wrong and allowing the government to force a farmer to buy wheat when he is not interested in buying it is unconstitutional. But then again, so many people are excited about the ruling of 4 to 5 justices this way, though it clearly could have gone the opposite direction. The question of-course is: should there be so much room given to the SCOTUS justices to maneuver that they could rule one way or another basically on a whim and also because of public pressure? Does this really defend the Constitution or does it actually do something completely opposite?

2. The majority opinion is that this tax is only Constitutional because it is a small tax and ACA does not give authority to the IRS to enforce it by force (garnishing wages or imprisonment). The reason for this is that if the tax was punitive, then the SCOTUS would have to declare it unconstitutional, because it would mean that the government is trying to legislate by taxation what it cannot legislate directly, and this cannot be done. There are plenty of precedents as to why this is illegal, a simple example is prohibition that required an amendment to be passed to the Constitution. Passing an amendment is much more difficult than raising a tax, but still to stop people from consuming alcohol the government could not simply pass a 1,000,000 dollar tax upon sale of a bottle of booze, because this would clearly be a way to prevent people from drinking, which is a legislative move, but to do it with taxes. Taxing is not supposed to be replacement for legislation, and that is why it is very important to understand, that Roberts wrote that the mandate stands as is because the tax (fine) is very low and doesn't actually force anybody to buy insurance.

This means that in principle if the tax (fine) is raised from its current level (and it will have to be raised, otherwise ACA is completely unworkable, everybody who has to pay for insurance under the ACA will cancel insurance and only 'buy' it when they absolutely need to and then cancel again, once done with the bills) so if the tax is raised, the mandate becomes immediately unconstitutional and ACA has to go back to the supreme court!

Of-course in practice it's not going to happen, the lower courts will misinterpret what this is and will rule that raising the tax is constitutional and the SCOTUS will deny hearing it again, so in practice this doesn't matter anymore, they found a loophole to pass ACA and now they won't bother with what they have to do technically to keep it legal, just like how they implemented the income tax (which is still illegal today, it is only legal as a tax on corporate profits, not an 'income' tax and not a personal tax).

3. Majority opinion stated that the mandate tax (fine) is not a direct tax based on a completely faulty notion that it only applies to a small number of people who are currently uninsured and will not buy insurance in the future. This is wrong on many points. First, direct tax means a tax that is forced upon a person directly and that person pays directly to the government. The direct tax must be apportioned to be legal though, that's why Roberts said that this tax is not direct, which makes it something else - excise tax or a duty or import. It's not a duty or import, so it's an excise. But how can this tax be an excise, like a sales tax, if the person who is forced to pay it, is only forced because he is not participating in commerce, he is not buying something (insurance)?

There is a contradiction in the ruling that is glaring, it is amazing people are not seeing it: the SCOTUS found that the commerce clause doesn't apply to make mandate legal, but simultaneously the majority opinion stated that the mandate tax (fine) is not a direct tax, while stating that the commerce clause doesn't apply. Either the commerce clause applies, and thus the excise tax can apply or the commerce clause does not apply, but that means that no excise tax can be levied.

Either it's commerce or it is not commerce, and if it is not commerce, then commerce tax cannot apply, and excise is a commerce tax - tax on the act of buying (well, in this case not buying) something.

--

It is likely that there will be a situation at some point, when a person will not buy insurance and will be fined under the ACA and will take this to court. Assuming that the lower court would understand what is written in the SCOTUS decision, and assuming that the lower court would care, would want to go after the truth of the matter, this can in principle end up back before SCOTUS (if SCOTUS decides to hear it again, which is probably unlikely).

But if this happens, then the defence must bring forward this argument as well:

The mandate tax (fine) is unconstitutional because it is not a direct apportioned tax, it is not a uniform excise tax and it is not an income tax (an income tax, which is by the way only Constitutional as an unapportioned excise tax on corporate profits, you can read further for the explanation of that.)

These are taxes that can be levied by the US federal government legally:

1. Direct apportioned taxes, capitation and other direct apportioned taxes tax (a tax that applies to a person directly but is apportioned to the States). This means that if the federal government wants to raise taxes, it has to say by how much and it has to then use census data and depending on the populations of different States, apportion them their share. So if California has 12% of population, it would be responsible for 12% of this tax increase. Direct apportioned taxes were introduced by the founders this way in order to try and prevent 2 things:
    a. Fraud in census data, that's because a State could overstate its population to send more Congressmen, Senators to the Washington.
    b. US founders did not like direct taxes, they added that direct taxes had to be apportioned specifically so that poorer States would not always vote for tax increases. If the direct tax is not apportioned, then poorer States would always vote to increse taxes upon richer States, creating wealth redistribution and incentives to increase taxes on the rich (exactly the rhetoric by the government nowadays, that is so much supported by the poorer people). Apportioning direct taxes prevents this problem, because then direct taxes would have to be paid by poorer and wealthier states only depending on the size of their population.

2. Uniform excise taxes. These are indirect, so they can be collected from a person not directly, but through a merchant for example, such as sales taxes. Uniformity requirement means that there should not be special dealings when introducing them, people shouldn't be forced to pay different sales tax depending on their location or religion or race or whatever.

3. The 16th amendment allows for an income tax. This is a special situation, probably 99.9999% of people misunderstand what this is.

Initially the tax was introduced as an indirect tax, but SCOTUS saw through that argument and did not buy it. That's because the government made this argument: this is not a direct tax on people, it is a tax on people's income! In case of rental income, putting a tax on it is equivalent to putting a tax on property, so taxing rent is taxing its source - land and then it's a direct tax on the land owner.

In 1913 the new legislation appeared that stated that any income from any source can be taxed without apportionment. The 1916 Brushaber v. Union Pacific Railroad, 240 U.S. 1 (1916) court case stated that income can be taxed without apportionment. BUT this case does NOT state that income can be taxed directly, so from that case, the income tax is an unapportioned indirect excise tax.

In Brushaber the SCOTUS stated that in order to tax income, the income must be separated from its source, because it cannot be a direct tax, because it is unapportioned. So a rent income is not under this decision, because rent is tied to land and to the owner of the land.

Later SCOTUS decisions explained that separating income from source can be done with a corporate balance sheet, which means that the 16th amendment income tax is in reality a corporate profit tax. There is no legal, Constitutional personal income tax, people do not have profit, only corporations do. Profits are all expenses subtracted from all incomes, that's what can be taxed.

This actually is interesting from another perspective, so many people are upset about so called 'loopholes' that corporations have in order to lower their income taxes, but of-course all these so called 'loopholes' have to do with the fact that corporation has so many expenses, and government tries to reclassify various expenses in a way that would prevent them from being subtracted from incomes for the purposes of tax accounting. There is the entire notion of 'capital depreciation' (and the entire false 'scandal' about the 'corporate jets', which depreciate in 5 years instead of 7 years for commercial airliners). But this is total nonsense, as corporation has to buy the equipment and pay for it right away, but it is prevented from subtracting its expense from its income the year it bought the equipment, which often turns the situation into an impossible one, where a company with no profits is forced to take loans to pay income taxes!

So again, the income tax is not an income tax, it is only Constitutional as an excise tax on corporate profits. But this means that the current practice that IRS is involved in - collecting DIRECT UNAPPORTIONED taxes upon PEOPLE'S INCOME is completely unconstitutional, it is precisely the opposite in every way of what was declared as Constitutional by the Supreme Court of USA.

Given this history of behaviour of US government, it is very obvious that since ACA passed with a very narrow definition of how it is Constitutional, in the future of-course it will be enforced in a completely unconstitutional manner.

The tax (fine) will be raised, because people who do pay for their insurance today will stop paying, because this tax (fine) is so low today compared to the insurance plan payments. There will be some people who will be subsidised under the plan and will not have to pay for insurance, so they will 'buy' their plans with the subsidies. Also the people who actually need insurance to pay them right now, because they are sick, they will obviously 'buy' into insurance, since they cannot be denied due to the pre-existing conditions.

But this means that huge number of people will drop out of insurance, and the only people in it will be a minority of those who didn't have it until now and those who need insurance to pay for their treatment.

Under this scenario, the insurance companies will cease to operate. But of-course what is likely to happen is that the government will bail out the insurance companies with tax (and borrowed and printed) money. In the short term the government may even have an influx of cash because taxes (fines) will be collected from people who had private insurance prior to ACA but would cancel it now and just pay the tax (fine). But in the long run this means that insurance will become extremely expensive because of lack of payers and the government will be bailing out insurance with tax money at the new expensive rates.

So in conclusion, as always is the case, the name of the bill that came out of the government should be fully reversed by 180 degrees in order to understand the real consequences of this legislation.

This is not an 'Affordable Care Act', this is the exact opposite: the Unaffordable Care Act, because if people thought their premiums were going up quickly before ACA, they will be surprised just how good they used to have it.

---
PS:
note that Robert's decision that the mandate tax (fine) is indirect based on the idea that only a small part of the population will pay it faulty in another manner.

For a direct tax to be direct it is unnecessary that 100% of population pays it! People can be exempt from taxes and this means that no tax is paid by 100% of population (this never happens anyway), and thus the logic that the mandate is not a direct tax is faulty, but it can be understood why Roberts declared that, because if he had to admit that the tax is direct, it would immediately be unconstitutional, because it is unapportioned!

---
PPS:
It should be noticed that ACA has various implications to the economy that are not fully appreciated by the businesses yet.

There will be a strong pressure upon the businesses to downsize the workforce, to make sure they do not have over 50 employees. Of-course companies will be dropping insurance coverage, so this is good news if taken out of the context of ACA, because it will provide some boost to people's incomes, as they will have a little more money in their pocket temporarily, that's because as employers will drop coverage, they will have to increase the salaries of their employees by some amount (also this depends if there are any penalties associated with not covering employees under the new ACA plan, because before ACA there were penalties to the employer).

But eventually as companies downsize there will be more unemployment and at the same time the insurance companies will be under pressure because they will lose so many current clients as people and companies cancel their insurance plans plans (it's a 'free ride' with no pre-existing conditions).

Eventually this will lead to a serious problem just because of ACA alone. The large firms that cannot downsize under 50 people quickly will be hit with extremely high insurance premiums all of a sudden, that so many people will cancel insurance and the rates will have to skyrocket.

The large companies will be in a pickle, this WILL mean more outsourcing and more firing and no hiring by large companies at all (and by companies that are at the 50 people threshold).
---

Supreme Court: Affordable Care Act Is Constitutional - insurance is no longer insurance, stop paying for it, suckers, it'll save you money to cancel and get it when you need it - no pre-existing conditions now.

Are Patent Wars Worth the Price Tag? - patents and drug research

Bill Gates Says Tablets Aren't Much Help In Education - on businesses contributing to society

High-Frequency Traders Are the Ultimate Hackers, Says Mark Cuban - free markets, some silly notions of 'gaming the system'.

Silicon Valley Values Shift To Customersploitation - FB IPO

Pirate Bay Founder Fined For 'Continued Involvement' - fuck the copyright and patent laws.

Senator Pushes For Tougher H-1B Enforcement There is no such thing as a 'wage slave'. Everybody is free to attempt their own business or live on charity.

It's going to be harder for Keynesians to use Sweden as an example of a country that is a socialist utopia, now that it is more austere than most and more free market oriented than many. Of-course Scandinavia has been moving in the free market, private enterprise direction for about 20 years now, so the arguments were wrong for 20 years at least, which didn't stop some from making them, but now there is even a better way to shut them up.

"It is often that stories appear on /. about the various machinations of various government agencies and special interests that revolve around them to buy them, we are always on the receiving end of these collusions, be it ACTA, CISPA, the Patriot Act, NDAA, anything really.

If you ever wondered what it may look like when a non-special interest person makes it to one of the Congressional hearings in order to present the other side of the story, in order to give perspective of the tax payers, of a general member of public, then here is an example of what it looks like.

Peter Schiff was invited to this Congressional hearing (this is his second, his first one was a last year). He went to the hearing as a private individual, a person who has predicted the stock market crash of the late nineties, the housing bubble crash of 2008 and now is explaining why the USA is on a path towards the biggest bubble crash â" US dollar and bond crash, and the predictions are made simply by observing the fact that the government always ends up catering to the special interests, including political interests, which can never take the real corrective approach to the economy, which would require ditching the policy of controlling the interest rates on money, counterfeiting money (credit) by the Federal reserve, regulating the industries in a way that helps special interests in the first place.

In the room with him in this Congressional hearing were some of the people, to whom he gave speeches in 2005 and 2006 about the coming housing bubble collapse â" representatives of the mortgage bankers association.

You will notice that during the Congressional hearing, these special interests are treated as if they are impartial witnesses, while Schiff is mostly disregarded, of-course he does not represent a special interest in that room except that of a tax payer, so it is obvious he has no government solution to offer to the Congress.

Regardless of your point of view on the matter of FHA, it is an interesting review of what it looks like when special interests and the government get together and decide how to spend your tax money.

Interview starts at 1:01:00 - a small time bee keeper figures out that the real reason why his bees are dying is Monsanto's 'Roundup' and gov't destroys the research and a possibly immune bee queen without any court order or any reason rather than probably the most nefarious one.

Ok, so it is not a news story, it is not a new story either, but it is something to consider given all of the claims that USPS is so efficient and provides the cheapest service that free market cannot provide.

USPS did have that challenge and USPS failed in it and it turned to government in order to drive the challenger out of the market with lawsuits and pro-government monopoly laws. The challenge came in a form of an Anarchist, Lysander Spooner, who started his own post mailing business back in January 11, 1844. The name of the business was Lysander Spooner's American Letter Mail Company.

The USPS in fact engaged in behaviour, that many anti-free marketers assign to private businesses.

What is interesting is that the USPS postage prices were set by the Congress, not by market forces, and so it took Congress to cut USPS prices in near half, from 25 cents for a single sheet of paper as one of the responses to Lysander Spooner entering that market and providing the same service at lower prices. By cutting the USPS prices in half, Congress forced Spooner out of the business.

As a consequence of lower prices, USPS business rose significantly and rates were reduced again in 1851, which shows by the way, that an economy of scale makes more profit from higher volume even if this volume increase comes as a consequence of lowering prices.

This is another example of how it is the government, that creates monopolies and private sector that produces better products at cheaper rates. Of-course the government monopolies eventually fail as the entire underlying system becomes corrupt and can no longer sustain the costs associated with running subsidised monopolies.

US Unhappy With Australians Storing Data On Australian Shores - a reply to 'soulless Randian' nonsense.

Russian City Ever Watchful Against Being Sucked Into Earth - profits drive economy, 'public assets' must be sold off.

US Unhappy With Australians Storing Data On Australian Shores - running a real business in USA is now nearly impossible, thanks 'Patriot Act' and all that.

Maryland Bans Employers From Asking For Facebook Passwords - reply to nonsense on employer / employee relationship and gov't meddling.

U.S. Government Hires Company To Hack Into Video Game Consoles - income taxes, stock prices, gov't meddling (long comment)

Innocent Or Not, the NSA Is Watching You - NDAA, NSA

FBI Says American Universities Infiltrated by Spies - divide and conquer recipe by FBI

Amazon Pays No UK Income Tax, Under Investigation - response to idiotic notion that 'taxes buy civilisation'.

UK Bill Again Demands Web Pornography Ban - 'think of the children' gov't power grab.

MIT Institute's Gloomy Prediction: 'Global Economic Collapse' By 2030 - idiotic propaganda story on global economic collapse because of 'exhaustion of resources'.

Healthcare Reform Act Prediction Market - predictions on Obama's health insurance bill. Comment there explains the tax situation.

http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2759021&cid=39538985 - the thread is a good example of the quality of arguments that are now taking place on /. and the quality of moderation as well, since the arguments that are moderated highly are the ones that are using nothing more than personal attacks.

It's quite a sight.

Libertarianism ... long thread in "The Fall of Data Haven Sealand"

People are not a drain on the system.... long thread in "Hoover Dams For Lilliput: Does Small Hydroelectric Power Have a Future?"

Foxconn Factory First Class, finds 'Fair Labour Association'

Is the gov't scaring businesses out of US?

FOIA Request Shows Which Printer Companies Cooperated With US Gov't

Arizona Ponders FCC Decency Standards For the Classroom

Murderous Marxist Monster thread

I believe I found a perfect metaphor for what is happening in Greece. They are being hanged, the noose on their necks is their government. The chair under their legs is the debt.

Eventually the government will tighten on their necks completely and the chair of debt will be kicked from under them.

This is the position Greeks are in today and yet just 2 years ago nobody even spoke of Greece. How deep is this rat hole? Well, it's very deep for Greece. But that's a rat hole with the light shining into it. What are the other rat holes where the light is not shine yet? USA is a much deeper rat hole and the light that will shine into it can be a beam of light that Iran is preparing to light up on the 20th of March 2012, when it supposedly will announce that it will no longer be pricing oil in US dollars but instead will price it in whatever other currency, and maybe even gold, because Iran has been in talks with India, talking about exchanging oil for gold, thus gold becoming de-facto money on national level again.

That is why the is all this sable rattling going around Iran - the US is trying to keep the beam of light off.

As to Greeks - they really needed to kick their government as a bad habit, default on their debts and stay in the Euro zone. Force all the bond holders accept total bankruptcy (I used to think they should have just trimmed the hair by 60-70%, but it looks like they have nothing at all, not even that right now unless they start selling off their lands). Greece does have 100 metric tons of gold in custody of Germany, well, I wonder if they can even get that money back, not if they default completely they won't, but they need to do this.

They need to kick their government, over 98% of government officials will lose their jobs and that should be done. All government payments stop because government is bankrupt, it cannot pay. Instead of doing that, the Greeks have allowed their government to accept a deal where Greeks are forced to repay back some amount of their debt, maybe 30%, but they have no money, so this is going to be a long time for the Greeks to work and pay that off.

Anyway, the people of Greece are hurting now, but this is absolutely necessary. If they don't hurt now, the only thing that will happen is that the chair of debt will be made taller and the government noose on the neck of the nation will become tighter.

Kick the noose of the neck and jump off the chair.

Geithner responding to the question: "is it fair that 3% that are top income earners pay 97% of all income taxes, while the government says: rich people do not pay their 'fair share'?"

Of-course Geithner says:

- so this is the real theft going on, government stealing money from very few top earners to pay off the majority of the voting population and then everybody is 'surprised' as to where are the jobs?

BTW., income taxes are unconstitutional and collected illegally.

Obama government now decided that destroying the housing market is not good enough, there needs to be more government initiated and mandated destruction, this time related to the contraceptives.

The idea is that women must be able to get "free" contraceptives as part of their health insurance package provided by their employer or insurance company, and this must be specifically done without co-pay, so the entire cost must be absorbed by the provider or employer.

Well, just like the Affordable Housing Act that helped to initiate and mandate the eventual housing bubble and collapse, this will also cause something similar though it will be expressed in a different manner.

1. Mandating that insurance provides a specific product regardless of the wishes of the customers is unconstitutional. A sterile woman or a woman who is perfectly happy to buy her own contraception would still have to receive an 'insurance' package from the employer or insurance company that would include this particular product.

2. There is nothing free about government mandates, somebody always ends up paying. So the real payment will be deducted from the wage, fewer women will also be hired, as there will be more potential for lawsuits based on wage inequality, after all, if women are going to be paid less dollars and be paid in condoms instead, this of-course would also violate other government mandates. Otherwise everybody's wages will have to come down, are you ready to be paid in condoms?

3. Why would men buy contraceptives at all (unless gay or dating somebody who is unemployed and uninsured)? So almost all contraceptives will be paid for this way, of-course usage will go up dramatically, as everybody will be asking for more and more of condoms and other contraceptives. Why not? If it's part of pay, just get boxes of them. Use them for anything. Need gloves? Party balloons? How about reselling them to other countries on a side? Great way to subsidise your income by reselling supposedly 'free' condoms' and OTHER contraceptives.

4. Whatever is subsidised ends up used more. Women who didn't take the pills before, now they can do so for free, so why not? Some women moderate their cycles this way, never mind birth control. Again, more artificial demand.

5. The manufacturers will not be competing on price anymore, they can come up with new versions of contraceptives and raise the prices and employers and insurance will have to cover it anyway, so it's going to be not a competition for the pocket of the direct client, but now competition for a subsidy, this is exactly why health care and education and other government subsidised things are so much more expensive than what happens in the normal free market. Prices for condoms and other contraceptives will skyrocket, NOBODY WILL BE ABLE TO AFFORD THEM OUT OF POCKET, especially not the young, and not those without jobs.

6. With prices skyrocketing there will be more incidents of unwanted pregnancies and more incidents of STDs.

7. Part of employee wage now will be paid in condoms - so this is not going to be taxed, so even less income taxes will be collected from the employees, so this is another reason for employees to gang up and vote against employers and those who actually do pay income taxes, so income taxes of higher paid individuals will have to be pushed up again. Oh well, it's not a 'class war', is it? Of-course this will just lead to more deficit spending and counterfeiting.

8. Of-course this distorts what insurance is about - insurance is about unexpected expensive problems, not about expected everyday purchases. Insurance is not a managed health account, and doing it this way will cause higher prices for everybody.

9. Everybody will be getting the most expensive contraceptive they can find for free, why not? People will be using multiple contraceptives at the same time, why not? Not that there is anything wrong with using multiple contraceptives, but that's when you do it on your own terms, not because it's free all of a sudden, but of-course it's not free. Manufacturers will have no reason to compete on price at all.

10. Even if there will be some sort of limit on the number of contraceptives one will get for 'free' in a month, everything still applies, but now it's even worse - it's a person asking PERMISSION from GOVERNMENT to fuck for 'free' and then any extra times will have to be paid for out of pocket anyway, and with obviously higher prices for those contraceptives and with less salary.

11. The slippery slope argument can also be applied - why shouldn't insurance company and employer be forced to provide free food? Free clothing? Free shelter? Nothing is free of-course, but it's an interesting way for government to push people into something of a barter economy instead of using money as pay, and reduce people's choices as to how they are paid and how they can spend their money.

In any case, one thing is obvious, nobody in government takes economics seriously as long as they can use politics of it to buy cheap votes of the majority, who are employees, who don't understand economics at all, but do like to get 'free' stuff. Those are the same people that will be complaining later on that there is 'income inequality'.

Well of-course there is more and more income inequality, and it's all created with ideas like this.