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ADULT KIDS LIVING AT HOME ON THE RISE: GOOD OR BAD FOR ECONOMY?
John Layfield: It can be good for the economy. It's definitely bad for your love life, but as far as the economy is concerned, the reason people are having to move back home is because of the high joblessness out there right now, which is not good, but when you look at parents that don't have children, especially when they both work, they have a lot of disposable income. When people are able to live at home they have more disposable income. That part is good for the economy. When I got cut from the National Football League, I had nowhere to go. I moved in with my parents until I got on my feet again. Thank goodness I had a family that I could do this with and thank goodness a lot of people out there have family because otherwise these people end up being supported by the government in one way or another. That's what family is all about. That part is good, not only for the economy, but for America.
Jonathan Hoenig: It effects the economy Cheryl. In fact, it's terrible for the economy. I totally disagree with John. You know, The Economist did a study. The number one variable for sovereign credit risk, essentially determining whether or not a country is going to default, is the percentage of young men who live with their parents. In fact look at this graph. All the way up there in the right-hand corner, that's Greece. Sixty percent of the young men there live with their parents. In Portugal and Spain it's 50 percent. So listen, John to your point, I know there are always circumstantial and culture reasons why kids might live with their parents, but my God, a 30-year-old is a fully actualized adult. They should be out on their own and in fact, the stats show if they're living with their folks, the economy's going to suffer.
Julian Epstein: John Layfield is right. Jonathan Hoenig is mostly right until he made that last point about the healthcare plan at age 26, but look there's lots of good reasons as John said. The fact that families are supportive of people, that's good. The fact that intergenerational living and housing can be very, very helpful in terms of grandchildren spending time with grandparents, but Hoenig is right in that it's a primary indicator that the labor market is unhealthy and even when we had a growing economy between 2000 and 2008 when the economy was growing about three percent, labor and wages were stagnant during that time. That's the central problem that's facing this country. That's the central problem that faces everything we talk about. Whether it's the housing market, whether it's anything else that we talk about, when Obama came into office, yeah, we were losing 800 thousand jobs a month. Then this problem was really, really bad. Now we're gaining leverage; two-hundred thousand jobs a month. Hopefully it's getting better, but the central problem we face is the fact that wages have been stagnant now for the last 13 years.
Wayne Rogers: I think it's a sign of the economy. These things shift from time to time. You know if you have an economic contraction or an economic expansion they follow that and it's a lagging indicator if you will. That will change in time. I wouldn't worry about it.
Tracy Byrnes: Twice, three times, maybe four since graduation. Yes. I've moved home a multitude of times for a multitude of reasons. Some of them good, some of them bad and I am fortunate enough to have family, as John mentioned, and I hope I can do the same thing for my kids. I get the economic side of it. That means kids are not buying first-time homes so it's hurting the housing market. Thirteen point five percent of kids between the ages of 20 and 24 are unemployed. That's not a good thing. That means people don't have their own electric bills, their own food bills. All of that hurts the economy at the end of the day. Can you say you moved back in because you're building a brand new home? Sure you can say that too and that helps in the end. So there are two sides to this story, but unfortunately we've got a large wave of kids moving home right now.
NEW HEALTH CARE LAW ALREADY KILLING JOBS?
Wayne Rogers: Well this is a disaster. I mean, this is a typical situation where the administration, for political reasons the president in conjunction with Nancy Pelosi; they decided they had to have a health care bill regardless and in their zealotry to do it they created 2,800 pages of garbage and there's no way that anybody can comply with it. And here is a case where they're putting a tax on medical devices that is destroying jobs, in this case fifteen hundred jobs, and whole new facilities. Things that they were doing that they had no idea they were doing when you've got bureaucrats that serve up regulatory things and earlier Julian you remembered that there's not much regulation during this administration. You couldn't be more wrong. Factually they have created 106 regulations in the three years they've been there costing over $100 million each versus 28 total during the Bush administration. So you've got to go back and look at your facts my friend.
Julian Epstein: We can have another debate about how the regulatory burdens have been lifted, but we don't have enough time in this segment. You can't kind of utter that screed about the healthcare law without understanding the larger context. First of all, 97 percent of all businesses in America are exempt from having to provide coverage. Of the three percent that are not, 93 percent of those already provide coverage. The CBO has estimated that premiums will come down for businesses, anywhere between four and 11 percent because of the health care law. Businesses are getting 35 to 50 percent of their healthcare costs reimbursed through tax credits. One hundred billion dollars in rebates are going out and businesses are getting many of them. The issue here is a small excise tax that is being paid by the manufacturers of medical devices. The fact of the matter is that 90 percent of the revenues from medical devices come from about 10 companies. Yes it's a small tax, but you look at all the benefits that are coming because of the law, the deficit's going down 100 billion dollars because of this.
Jonathan Hoenig: And add CKE restaurants, that's the parent company of Hardees's. They're not a medical device maker, but they're being hit. They employee 21 thousand people. Their CEO said that the new healthcare law, which I know many seem to point out all the supposed benefits, he says it's going to cost them 18 million dollars. Okay, so there's not new employees, new restaurants, new production and even on a small level, businesses that don't have as many employees will simply go out of business. What's so distressing I think, to Wayne's point, is that the president doesn't even seem to understand this. When asked about it, that small businesses are having problems with the law, he seems almost oblivious, but of course it was doomed from the start. Wealth is not produced by a gun and in ObamaCare, that's exactly what it is. It's force on the free market and that's why it's doomed to fail.
Tracy Byrnes: Right! Because once he hits 50 employees he gets banged. Banged by a law with unintended consequences; filled with them Cheryl and that's the problem. The medical device industry is getting crushed. This is just one of many examples because they didn't think this thing through. To Wayne's point earlier, they pushed this bill through because they wanted 800 some-odd pages of nonsense just to say they have something under their belt and no one, as we know, even read it.
John Layfield: I think he (Wayne) gives it too much credit. I think it would be better as garbage. Where does the white house get these numbers? The sports page? Are you kidding me? President Obama's administration says give us a trillion dollars we'll never go above eight percent unemployment. Now they're saying this saves money. This was not health care reform. We should have had healthcare reform. This was insurance reform. All you did was add 30 to 50 million people to a broken system. When you do that, all you do is exacerbate the fractures in that system and it costs more money and now because it was done in such a non-partisan way this will never get furthered along, which needs to be done. This is an absolute disaster just like Wayne says.
NEW CONCERNS REGULATIONS WILL CAUSE ELECTRIC BILLS TO SPIKE
Tracy Byrnes: Look, the government is single-handedly killing the coal industry; to begin with you can add that to the medical device industry as well, I know Julian's thrilled about that. But, all this means at the end of the day is that my electric bill is going to go up. Oil, natural gas, coal-these are affordable forms of energy. Why are we killing them when we don't have a viable replacement? We saw them do this with ethanol. We've seen them do this with renewable credits. It's not working. Think it through before you cut us off at the knees because all we're going to do is see higher electric bills at the end of the day.
Wayne Rogers: I think all these coal powered energies will eventually go to natural gas. Natural gas is cheaper, we've got an abundance of it, sooner or later we'll come to that and it's just a question of time.
Julian Epstein: Well, it depends on the climate, but I think Wayne is right. The reason you're seeing less generation in coal is because natural gas prices have come down and we are moving in that direction. As for the regulations, they were challenged under the D.C. circuit. The chief judge of the circuit, David Santell, who was a big Clinton critic, one of the guys who was involved in the impeachment, not only said that the laws were valid, but that they were acquired by the law that they were scientifically valid and that we needed to get with it in terms of updating our technology so that we could comply with carbon emission standards and get with the rest of the world in combating climate change.
Jonathan Hoenig: The bills are going to go up as long as the green movement is in charge of setting those regulations. Everyone is talking about how cheap natural gas is, why is natural gas so cheap? Because of fracking technology, which the green movement has opposed from the get-go. They're opposed to any viable use of the earth. Man has to use the earth in order to live and you know what, the more we've used the better our lives have become. Pre the coal industry in this country, man's life was substantially shorter.
John Layfield: The problem is we don't have a national energy plan. I say this every single week. We have cellulosic ethanol that hasn't been used from the Bush administration that people are being fined for. It doesn't exist from the Bush administration and now the Obama administration is shutting down coal plants. There is no other alternative, because they have no plan. Thank goodness nat gas is taking the place of it.
WHAT DO I NEED TO KNOW FOR NEXT WEEK?
John Layfield: Phelps' gold medals help you get golden returns with (KTF)
Tracy Byrnes: Nanny state invading maternity wards with "Latch On" Plan
Wayne Rogers: Profit with low interest rates with (AGNC)
Jonathan Hoenig: Your bottom line will shine as platinum falls with (PDT)
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