Obamacare

Since the beginning of this month, the government has been partially shut down due to the intransigence of the Republican Party which controls the House of Representatives.  This appears to be specifically aimed at forcing the abolishment of the Available Care Act which provides health care to a large fraction of the uninsured in the USA.

In another week, an additional impasse will become an acute problem: The debt ceiling will have to be raised in order to for the government to keep borrowing money and serve its financial obligations, and the GOP will probably prevent it, essentially forcing the US economy to declare bankruptcy.

Excellent analyses on this state of affairs are published—I read some in the liberal press—so I won't duplicate any of this.  One should point out, however, that two aspects are not enough emphasized:
(i) the actions of the right-wing section of the GOP, i.e. the Tea Party members, appear to be motivated by racism because President Obama is black—that's enough to be against healthcare ... ;
(ii) the Tea Party (and many others in the GOP) lack a basic understanding of the way the economy works, deriving their financial and economic programs from the requirements a standard household has to comply with, that is, the expenses cannot exceed the amount of money that comes in on a monthly basis by way of a paycheck—here they overlook fact that obtaining money by going into debt the economy and the government create more value than the debt amounts to.

On the second point one can say that the factual statement is correct: One cannot spend more money than one has.  The problem is that there are situations when this statement does not apply.  

Well, on the last day before the deadline a compromise appears to be emerging.  There is a small concession on eligibility testing with Obamacare by requiring income verification (this was probably an oversight in the first place), and now the government shutdown is nearing its end ... and the debt ceiling will be raised, at least until early next year.

Here is another look at the deficient reasoning encountered with the conservative mindset which I found from a facebook contribution. The article is by Thomas Sowell, senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and discusses the reason why the government got shut down.  The factual statements are all correct.  The problem is that they don't apply to the current situation, in this case also because the value of Obamacare, or the ACA, for the general population as well as the fact that a majority of the (voting) population wants it lifts the discussion onto a different niveau on which those simple facts become irrelevant and different goals and ways to achieve them need to be considered.