I work for the government, and was told yesterday to call first on monday to find out if we should come in or not. This has happened before around here, but not since I have been here. I think mostly in the 90s. The longest it has lasted in the past was a week. While I have gotten used to the government not having any money, it is weird that we might actually shut down. I hope not.
I think it's great. I am not saying that to be incendiary. I believe that the budget and debt situation in this country is its greatest problem right now and it obviously has not gotten enough attention. I know this because unlike terminal cancer this is correctable, but not enough people are working toward it. More attention is needed. It also helps show the overall incompetence of the federal government. My hope is that the general population, which is continually frustrated (proved by their seesaw back and forth away from incumbents so constantly), will come to the understanding I have come to that both of the major parties are injurious to the political process. They are beholden to lobbyists and not representative of the people as much as they should be.
I'm not so sure it's incompetence, as much as an ideological stalemate, with both sides unwilling to make any further compromises. And not to be too cynical, but it's been quite some time since the government actually represented and served its citizens. Unless you count corporations.
Why is it that we don't have some sort of built-in penalty for elected officials for when they fail to do their jobs. For example, how about we eliminate vacations and days off until they reach a budget compromise. Maybe we should stop their pay as well. Of course that will never happen because congress would have to make it happen -- not likely. One of the odd things about a government shutdown is that it actually costs the country money. We don't save money by having a short term shutdown. In practice we pay extra for it. Tom
i agree with all of the above, but i doubt a shutdown will solve/change anything. i'm resisigned to a major catastrophe in the sometime distant future when china decides it wants to cash in it's chips.
At that point we probably will devalue our current money to zero and issue new money. It will be interesting. I hope I'm gone before it happens. Tom
China can't afford not to be paid, yet the US can't afford to pay. Defaulting would be a murder-suicide of nations. Yet another of those nagging little problems the government should be addressing, instead of bickering over which social programs to cut. Not to move this thread straight into the political realm, but is the military budget such a sacred cow that the extra cash couldn't be found within that massive expenditure?
Gov't disbursement is of two types: true expenditure & transfer. All entitlement programs are transfer: Joe's taxes pay Mary's FICA, Medicare, etc. True expenditure on the other hand is revenue to corporate bottom lines. Most of Pentagon expenditure makes quarterly earnings reports around the country look good, and buys the majority stockholders and senior management new golf carts, yachts, etc. When the gov't is run by the corporations, where do you think they'll make cuts? Exactly. The more transfer they eliminate the more that's available for true expenditure (recouping what they've paid in taxes), and taxes can be lowered while losing less of their remaining tax contribution to transfers. It isn't that the Pentagon is a sacred cow, so to speak, it's just so damn huge a watermain to bottom lines the last thing the guys that have the levers of power actually in their hands will do is turn down that tap.
I thought this topic was interesting enough that I already started one there, thinking that's where it belonged. No surprise as to which has evolved into the more civil and intelligent discussion.
I will get paid one way or another, so it doesn't affect me much other than just not knowing if I am working on monday or not. In the past, employees were paid whether they worked or not. Not sure if they will do that this time or not. I have been told to use sick or vacation. Alot of the stuff we do is very time sensitive. We cannot be shut down long, if at all. They have not told my group if we would be affected by a shutdown or not. Time will tell.
I thought this was funny... BlackBerry confusion surrounds looming shutdown - Yahoo! Finance There are also stories like this... http://news.cnet.com/8301-31921_3-20051868-281.html?tag=topTechContentWrap;editorPicks http://www.pcworld.com/businesscent...ns_darkness_for_most_government_websites.html Weird.
The problem is we can no longer make the payment for the loan so we will print more dollars, bringing on inflation and devaluation of the dollar. Compounded with this is the fact the dollar is about to lose the world reserve currency status. This means we will be paying a lot more for anything we trade for including gas. Politicians rarely care about the nation. They're out there to protect their own agenda. They could care less about the citizens.
Much smaller than the largest annual budget increase. The government is completely incapable of dealing with the deficit. It's going to lead this country toward much greater pain in the near or semi-near future, as we're seeing with other European nations already.
As long as we continually allow government and congress to be controlled by corporations, its all a joke, the current congress has spent a great deal of time passing religious laws instead of working on real problems, even the current "government shutdown" event was caused by RELIGIOUS beliefs, not real problems. We've allowed corporations to become citizens, the military to become a sacred cow, and a massive transfer of wealth to happen, ignoring reality, and our supposed representatives to become lobbyist controlled, its all the people's fault.
