It mostly depends on where you go and what you're doing at any particular moment.

The far Right and various nationalist/racist parties have been on the rise recently in Europe (and the US too), but for the most part that growth has been counteracted or curtailed by the equivalent growth of far left parties.

This sorta' thing always happens any time there's a great deal of economic uncertainty or collective anxiety about the future. In the case of Western Europe - there's a large proportion of the population that still clearly remembers what happened the last time somebody up and started blaming minorities for everybody's problems.

Most of the race hatred in the EU also, from what I've read, is primarily limited to African and Muslim immigrants who tend to be less well educated and generally working class - and almost every society in history has had growing pains and reactionary feelings towards working class immigrants (think the Irish in US history).

been working at a major tech company for about 7 years- A lot of the movement to contract workers at least in my company seemed to occur primarily after the crash and continued from there. It's anecdotal but I haven't seen any acceleration to contractors since anything regarding obamacare. Recently there is actually a big push to hire RCG's (recent college graduates) rather than contractors (even though they are doing some layoffs at the same time....fun). Economic uncertainty seems to be the primary driver for hiring contractors...if the economy takes a turn it's much easier to let them go.

I'm not a fan of obamacare because it doesn't address the true problem. A major issue is that health care costs do not need to be advertised, they do not need to publish rates for operations, they basically can charge whomever whatever they want with impunity. One hospital will charge you $50,000 for an operation that another hospital will charge $4,000 for, for the same quality! You don't know what it will be until you get the bill. In any other business this would land you in jail, but some very convenient laws and exceptions have been put into place by friends of the industry. It's absolute madness and it's clear nothing will be done to actually address it, too many big players are benefiting from the current system. The fact that a business can arbitrarily put you under a lifetime of debt at their discretion with no checks and balances is just unbelievable, but yet it exists.

jesus bloodsire affect, affects, affected

Another chance for us Southerns to secede from them damn Yankees!

secede

There ya go ;) I can't help but point that out - you have no idea how many papers on the civil war I've graded :(

God, I'm so embarrassed. :[ I ain't ever was one for spellin' n such.

Nearly all the Fortune 500 companies already have their salaried employees on group healthcare plans. If their employees are already insured, they do not need to heed most of the provisions of the ACA. My company, for example, probably won't have to pay a wooden nickel because all the employees are already insured.

I would expect IBM to be in a similar situation. If they're laying of thousands of people and converting them to contractors, that's probably because it's been the trend since the recession. In fact, the trend of outsourcing IT work hasn't abated since 2000 as far as I know. Obamacare is, as someone else already pointed out, simply a convenient excuse. My dad works at IBM now so I can call him to confirm if you desire, but I'm pretty sure he has healthcare through IBM and thus IBM wouldn't need to change or pay any more because of Obamacare.

As far as workers being affected, I think the next year's worth of jobs data will be a decent guide to how the implementation actually affects employment. That is, if spending cuts don't force a ton of government employees into unemployment.

And as far as the tax for not participating, as with all progressive programs, the ACA offers refund or waivers (I forget which) on that tax for the lowest-income workers. Frankly, if you're unemployed, underemployed or working minimum wage, the ACA really can't hurt you. The only thing it can do is give employers further excuses to keep cutting your hours and replacing you with cheaper labor, but they've been doing that for decades.

As much as I enjoy the lessons in spelling and grammar, I'd rather post pictures of cute animals:

http://images2.fanpop.com/image/photos/13700000/cute-puppy-puppies-13789224-1024-768.jpg

green is the new blue.
Fuck american politics, still waiting for the proletariat to take over.

It won't happen any time soon here :( Our left parties are pretty laughable.

"We do not discuss the chairman's situation" - some guy at an RCP book store when I inquired as to why their "chairman" was in "exile" in France for burning a flag in Texas in the 1980's lol.

I was involved in the mass exodus of the Indiana state section from the CPUSA as well :D So if anything I've helped break things.

Oh, and I was courted by the ALP until they heard my views on Stalin and Hoxha - now they won't even say hi to me :(

cool country you guys have

This perhaps sounds like a loaded question, but have any of you seriously considered moving due to the unbelievable shit that goes down in your country on a near weekly basis?

From where I'm sitting, I'm looking at the US, and then I'm seeing the UK going the same way. If Scotland doesn't get Independence next year, I certainly don't see myself still living here 10 years from now.

The government has "shut down" several times since the 1990s. It means things like national parks close down, and some government employees don't get paid for a while, but all essential spending continues. It's not really that unbelievable.

The only reason I'd have to move away is if I legitimately feared for my life, or way of life. If we start hearing news stories about people in brown shirts running around vandalizing store fronts and such, I'll book a ticket. Until then, there's nothing to worry about.

Even though I subscribe to a political philosophy that has seen likeminded fellows of mine historically persecuted (and there are still laws on the books that prevent me from legally doing certain things) I wouldn't leave unless I had some exceptional job offer elsewhere lol.

+ I kinda like Indiana because corn fields make me happy.

I hope America gets shut down permanently.

my job cut me to 10 hours this week @___@

Time for the illumanati takeover

tried scotland for 4 years, too windy for me.

this is effectively the same as a theorycraft thread except literally everyone has no idea what theyre talking about instead of just everyone in open

how long can businesses keep this up? will everyone be working 2-3 part time jobs instead of a full time job or something, doesnt seem feasible.

https://www.healthcare.gov/exemptions/

cool im exempt in like 4 different ways

i don't think it will be that dramatic everywhere. my job only cut hours down to 24 at the very least. i can't see that many jobs (on a larger scale) cutting lower than 20 hours.

I mean, I studied economics, follow the debate about the ACA, and know my company's health policy and how it's unaffected by the ACA. It's a huge law with lots of moving parts, so I won't pretend to comprehensively understand it. I just take issue with the phrase "no idea."

Nope, turns out we just hadn't received our shutdown orders yet. Got to work 8 hours today but can't go back until congress get's their shit together.

So no hijacking the TV channel to stream TF2? Darn...

www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/CHRG-104hhrg23275/pdf/CHRG-104hhrg23275.pdf
So the last government shutdown in '95 cost billions of dollars and was generally regarded as a bad move.
Because the first year (roughly) of the ACA was already funded, this government shutdown literally cannot address that problem unless they stay shut down for 9+ months (doubtful).
Marxist and Sal both made good points about the act and why it's really not so bad, but even if it was, this isn't the way to deal with it. After burning millions of dollars trying to repeal it, it has become increasingly obvious that budget concerns are not the issue here.

The 2 parts to this issue that I would like to call attention to:
-800 thousand government employees are now furloughed until further notice. On top of this, the 1.4 million military personnel (many of whom are overseas right now) are working without pay.
-Congress is continuing to receive pay and benefits during the government shutdown (and ironically enough, all members of congress receive free government healthcare. Even Republicans).

So regardless of your political stance, we can all agree that it is complete bullshit that Congress gets paid to do literally nothing while my friends are overseas getting blown up without getting paid. Fuck that.

although i agree with your post, all military personnel are being paid. congress passed that yesterday.

I am more dumb than you could even begin to imagine.
My best friend is overseas and we were talking about it yesterday. Should have checked to see if it passed.

Iceland seems like a p cool place.

Maybe I'll move there

I just can't take being constantly reminded by debacles like this that I exist in the same galaxy as Tea Party Republicans.

I think they did pass a bill last night that exempted Military pay from discretionary spending.