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U.S. Healthcare Expansion, Full Employment at Odds

- "The prevalence of permanent layoffs and sustained cost cuts clearly sets the present and recent labor market downturns apart from those of earlier decades. If firms can sustain their higher output and profit levels without hiring back costly workers, they won’t hire them back."
- "For workers permanently displaced from their previous vocations, net improvements in employment will require job creation in new businesses or new business activities within existing companies. This takes far more time than quick snapbacks of the past when employees were simply furloughed."
- "The variety of small business tax, depreciation savings, and loan initiatives appear particularly well targeted to stoking employment gains where they actually occur. However, like "cash for clunkers" and the “first-time homebuyers credit,” most of these steps expire at the end of this year."
- "By contrast, costs would rise with new healthcare mandates going forward aggravating cost and competitive issues in the years ahead."
- "National business costs are complex and range far beyond wages. But for the $4,950 that private U.S. employers paid on average for an employee’s health insurance policy in 2009, a global employer could pay the annual wages of roughly four workers in Brazil, China or India."
Citigroup Portfolio Economics 20100722

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