Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy
Michael Hiltzik has been on a roll lately. I may post two of his Los Angeles Times columns today, because he keeps hitting on points that seem to get very little coverage elsewhere, except as you can see above, on "All In with Chris Hayes":
Obamacare also provides a convenient scapegoat to blame for all sorts of economic ills that either pre-existed or have nothing to do with the health care law. Thanks to a new jobs report today delayed by the government shutdown, tonight we have facts. And one bit of data in particular that might put one of its most insidious lies out of its misery: That Obamacare is a job killer.
...Luckily, we don't have to rely on politicians, pundits and anecdotes to tell us what's going on in the economy, we also have data. Today we learned that full-time employment is up. And the number of people working part-time involuntarily is down since June, and down even more since last year when Obamacare wasn't a factor.
In other words, the trend is moving in the opposite direction of the talking points. And when you zoom out a couple of years since the start of the financial crisis, you see the rise in part-time work starts after the crash and has since gone down. in part, while Obamacare has been the law of the land.
The report's most notable nugget is the change in part-time work. Over the last month the number of workers in part-time jobs for economic reasons--slack demand, cutbacks in hours--has remained stable. Over the last year, however, it has fallen by 681,000. ...
That puts the lie to the popular conservative meme that Obamacare has transformed America's workforce into part-timers. ...The shorthand about this provided by Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), that one-stop shop for Obamacare disinformation, was "single parents who have been forced into part-time work."
Previous employment reports have shown no evidence for that, and the new report undermines the myth further. Moreover, the monthly report defines "part-time" more loosely than the Affordable Care Act -- 35 hours a week or less, compared to the ACA's 30 hours--which means there's even less evidence for the Obamacare/part-time meme.
More at the link.
The GOP can continue to deceive us, but facts are facts, and they only make themselves look dishonest and downright stupid. They repeat their lies often enough to make some of the less informed and more gullible believe they are facts, but eventually it comes down to the same 30-or-so percent who blindly follow anything they put out there.
The rest of us are wising up, as you can see by the latest poll numbers.
The post GOP myth-information debunked... again: #Obamacare and part-time jobs appeared first on The Political Carnival.