Slashdot Mirror
Shutdown Cost the US Economy $24 Billion
Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes "Time Magazine reports that according to an estimate from Standard & Poor's, the government shutdown, which ended with a deal late Wednesday night after 16 days, took $24 billion out of the U.S. economy and reduced projected fourth-quarter GDP growth from 3 percent to 2.4 percent. The breakdown includes about $3.1 billion in lost government services, $152 million per day in lost travel spending, $76 million per day lost because of National Parks being shut down, and $217 million per day in lost federal and contractor wages in the Washington D.C. metropolitan area alone. Hundreds of thousands of federal workers bore the economic brunt of the shutdown but small businesses also suffered from frozen government contracts and stalled business loans. With the deal only guaranteeing government funding through January 15, the situation could grow worse. 'This is a real corrosion on the economy,' says Mark Zandi, chief economist for Moody's Analytics. 'If we have to go down a similar road in the near future, the costs are going to continue to add up.'"
How much does ObamaCare cost the economy?
Because doubling spending will fix the ecomony.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Let me guess, all politicians all blame the "other side" and will let us know how much the "other side" cost us within the week.
How did all that money just leave the economy? Did someone give it away to another country?
How much will the Slashdot outage cost the economy?
Hundreds of thousands of federal workers bore the economic brunt of the shutdown
This should read, 100's of thousands of federal workers, got an extra 16 day paid vacation this year.
Hardly what I would call "bearing the economic brunt" of anything.
It cost 24 billion dollars? Based on.. any number of imaginary things they want to show it cost them right? We must keep spending money we don't have, and we must keep increasing the amount of debt we have or we are all going to die right?
I mean to say, we have to spend this for the Children, and the children just lost 24Billion dollars! If you deny their right to spend, you are a "conspiracy theorist" to boot, so shaddup!
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
I missed that. Good to see it up again.
Wow. Just wow.
It's not a vacation when you don't plan for it, dont know when you're going to get paid and still have to meet all your financial responsibilities in the mean time. Sign me up... :/
salaries provided by a government that is bankrupt and borrowing money to make payroll should not be included in economy stats
The government doesn't produce anything and some portion is an artificial market created by government activities. Real wealth comes from serving real markets and people's needs. The other huge problem is the amount of debt accumulation is way faster than at any time in history. If this isn't slowed the economy will come to a crashing halt.
...and they haven't been paying anything for the past two weeks. And as I said above, the government has lost those two weeks of productivity.
The real problem is not that there should not have been a shutdown. The problem is that the shutdown should not have cost so much. The government is too deeply entrenched in the economy.
Granted, shutdowns of regulatory bodies is expected to cost money, since that is expected to block business activity. Anything else just seems like a washington money spigot got closed that should not have been there in the first place.
...that it cost 24 billion to put up a bunch of paper signs, orange cones, and flimsy barricades.
dont know when you're going to get paid
Are you saying, federal workers cant look at the past history of shutdowns, see that for every single one of them, everyone got paid, and figure out that they will get paid ?
Are you saying, federal workers cant look at the history of shutdowns, and determine how long they lasted on average, and figure out when they will get paid ?
meet all your financial responsibilities
Federal workers are doing just fine. They are getting paid, same as they always have, or are you saying, they all ran out and financed new cars and had heart attacks because they thought the government they helped run was finally going under ?
If you want to cry rivers, cry them for all the private sector businesses, that have been practically bankrupted. Not only did their revenues drop to 0 because Obama shut down parks that didn't need to be shut down, they still have to pay for Obamacare, and for all those federal workers extra vacation.
... because that's what jeebus wanted.
Hundreds of thousands of federal workers bore the economic brunt of the shutdown
This should read, 100's of thousands of federal workers, got an extra 16 day paid vacation this year.
Hardly what I would call "bearing the economic brunt" of anything.
Or, ya know, "hundreds of thousands of federal workers had to choose between predatory payday loans or defaulting on their mortgages while waiting to get paid and sitting at home every day waiting to find out if they can go back to work". Not quite the same thing as a vacation when you a.) didn't get your last paycheck, and b.) don't know when you have to go back to work.
The Democrats decided what was and was not essential. They are the ones who decided to shut down small businesses that had anything to do with national parks, even if they were self sustaining.
If two weeks of shutdown can cause that much economic damage, then it's pretty obvious government is way too large and lots of things need to be pushed back to the states - which were already starting to fund national parks, for example.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Yes it is, same goes for being put on 'paid leave' if you are a cop, teacher or other official who is under investigation.
So... because those people are unwilling to put aside a small buffer to allow themselves some wiggle room in case of a minor disruption in their pay... we should be horrified for them? God help them if they get a check every two weeks and their car breaks down... preventing them from going to the bank to deposit it! How will they pay their bills? For that matter... how will they fix their car?!?!
Except for debts to the mob... failure to pay on time once rarely results in catastrophic results. More often than not something can be worked out. Heck, I've credit cards who won't bump my interest or report me as tardy to the reporting agencies unless I've missed 3 subsequent payments (a benefit I've never taken advantage of).
Help Brendan pay off his student loans
Let me guess...you're one of the "it's all bullshit...they're all criminals....parties are sold out to same big biz..."
and on it goes ad infinitum
the parties are VERY different
your position is one of naivety & willful ignorance
Thank you Dave Raggett
All this just to keep a Boner?
I think this wrong and misleading.
Consider. Say we tax someone $100. That money originally would have paid say someone's salary, and they would have worked and created wealth. We would have had $110 at the end of the day.
But - we taxed them. So now we, the Government, hold $100. That $10 of wealth creation has been forestalled. What do we now do with this $100? we spend it - but not on something which creates wealth. We spend it on providing possibly unnecessary and certainly inefficient Government services, like the patent office.
According to S&P, that money by not being spent in the shutdown has been lost from the economy - the wages of those in the patent office were not paid.
Well now - it looks to me like we did better, not worse, by what happened. S&P's report is wrong and misleading, because it seems not to understand the difference between spending money and creating wealth and taxing, then spending, and not creating wealth.
Just because $24B wasn't spent somewhere, doesn't mean it's gone. It's still in the hands of whoever didn't spend it. It's a zero sum game.
Furthermore - $3.1B in "lost government services" sounds like the government saved $3.1B. Wonderful - I expect they'll lower taxes right away.
How much did it cost to keep free open air parks closed and keep people out?
Wait, when did this happen? I haven't heard anything about it.
Land of the free. Home of the brave. ... but you guys aren't much smart, are you?
rs
Wow. Just wow.
It's not a vacation when you don't plan for it, dont know when you're going to get paid and still have to meet all your financial responsibilities in the mean time. Sign me up... :/
Sign me up. Seriously. I don't need to plan. I can spend 16 days cleaning the house, working in the yard, taking the kids to the local playground, and other stuff, all on a moments notice. That's a vacation I'd love. If they forced you to take it out of your vacation time or make it up by working 16 Saturdays, that would be a different matter, but as far as I know, that's not what's happening.
As for the financial aspect, it shouldn't have caused anyone hardship to have their paychecks delayed a bit. You should have at least a few months saved up to pay bills. Any bills that arrived during this time should have already been planned for. The only financial hardship would be for those who aren't financially responsible, and in that case, it's the irresponsibility that is causing the hardship.
Don't blame the workers for not being able to do their jobs. Instead blame the politicians who refused to do their jobs and still got paid.
I think you meant that it saved $24 billion.
It takes far longer than 2 weeks to "default on their mortgages."
Stop fabricating issues when they don't exist, it just makes you look foolish.
How much does ObamaCare cost the economy?
Let's also include all the folks who go to the ER for "free" health care; which is ultimately passed on to insured patients.
Let's also consider the folks who have "pre-existing" conditions who can't get health care. They don't go off and just die. They get medical care - for free (there are quite a few docs who have a very BIG hearts and help folks who are TRULY in need as well as non-profit hospitals who must give SOME free care) .
Al those costs must be made up. So what do they do? Hire creative cost accountants who will bury it in other costs and bills. Perfectly compliant with FASB and IRS rules concerning non-profits and charities.
tl:dr: regardless of what you think or hear, we all pay one way or another for sick people - lost productivity, higher fees at the doc's office or hospital's, higher insurance fees, etc....
All "Obama Care" does is put more of it in our faces - and yes, hides some by taxing employers.
Whatever. I'm not going to argue this - and if you ask a 100 doctors, you'll get 60% of the opinions on either side (it's the joke).
We have to ask ourselves, do we want to be a culture of "Alpha Humans" and be stressed out about life's necessities or do we want to be "Beta Humans" and work together so that all of us have a decent life.
I'm all for letting the folks who nothing better to live for than striving to accumulate wealth for the sake of accumulating money, but let's not let their personality disorder affect us all.
From all the qualified economists on Slashdot!
The shutdown was for nothing more than 'branding' of their party.
That's not governance in any way shape or form...
Any GOP congressman who voted for the shutdown should be arrested.
Thank you Dave Raggett
Okay, let's look at this with some Reason.
$3.1 billion in lost government services - what did this include? the numerous websites that were taken down deliberately without need? the fact that crab fisherman couldn't receive their quotas? these are failings of being wholly too reliant on government, worse and poorly run government. There is no reason fisherman should of had to stop working. Seriously, there should of been a plan that simply outlined the contingency of the catch.
$152 million per day in lost travel spending - remember, most of the shut down travel areas were shut down merely for spite, not as a result of the government shutdown. These actions were never taken during the prior 17 shut-downs.
$217 million per day in lost federal and contractor wages - which are all now being paid, in fact most contractors were still working because their projects are funded by pre-allocated fixed price contracts.
Now, the real question you have to ask yourself is why the hell the Federal government has to approve every single new beer recipe, label and what not. If there is anything this government shut down has shown, it is just how pervasive, invasive, and hideous our government institution is at present.
But relax all, we still got to golf, right?
***
If our economy takes that huge of GDP drop from such a meager shutdown, than we have far far more problems economically.
I know very well how a goverment not spending money that does not have can have a cost to the economy - every left-wing clown keeps telling us that here in Greece...
This is rubbish,
$3.1 billion in lost government services - Because they still paid the employees even though they were home, they could have kept them working and nothing would have been lost.
$152 million per day in lost travel spending (what dose this even mean? Lost travel so trips government that they would have taken and had to be delayed?)
$76 million per day lost because of National Parks being shut down, own fault employees were still paid yet services were closed.
$217 million per day in lost federal and contractor wages same as above.
The government didn't shut down only 17% of employees were considered non-essential, the 17% were even still paid for staying at home, everything was still running and how much was spent in putting up all those barricades for (closed) monuments/parks
The real corrosion on the economy is simply the fact that the fiat currency which is the US dollar is so diluted that the interest from the debt owed by the US government can't be paid with the current spending model. This should have been dealt with in 2006 - 2007 now its just worse.
The real cost of the economy is the non-fiscally responsible politicians.
Read: Don't Believe The Debt Ceiling Hype: The Federal Government Can Survive Without An Increase -Forbes-
http://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffreydorfman/2013/10/03/dont-believe-the-debt-ceiling-hype-the-federal-government-can-survive-without-an-increase/
As for the financial aspect, it shouldn't have caused anyone hardship to have their paychecks delayed a bit. You should have at least a few months saved up to pay bills. Any bills that arrived during this time should have already been planned for. The only financial hardship would be for those who aren't financially responsible, and in that case, it's the irresponsibility that is causing the hardship.
I just want to note that while this example is rolled out all the time to chide people for not doing enough economic planning, the government at the core of this dispute doesn't operate that way at all or even come close. This is evidenced by the fact that the other part of this debate dealt with the government being allowed to borrow more money to pay it bills and pay the interest on its past bills.
What the parent said!
Teapartierss read this, please.
I'm a centrist.
I'm sympathetic to cutting spending. But really, give a realistic solution. The biggest expenditures for the US are untouchable - military, Medicare, Interest on current debt - I mean, why are you fighting?
Or, ya know, "hundreds of thousands of federal workers had to choose between predatory payday loans
So you are saying it wasn't their fault that they didn't plan ahead by saving for an emergency?
defaulting on their mortgages while waiting to get paid
Huh? Every bank I know has mortgages due on the 1st of the month. This didn't cross a 1st of the month boundary, so it shouldn't have affected anyone. Also, every bank I know accepts payments up to the 15th of the month without charging late fees or reporting negatively on your credit.
I'm having a hard time imagining a financial hardship that wasn't self-inflicted by poor money management.
and sitting at home every day waiting to find out if they can go back to work". Not quite the same thing as a vacation when you a.) didn't get your last paycheck, and b.) don't know when you have to go back to work.
You don't have anything you can do around the home? Clean up? Fix a few things using the hardware (nails, screws) you already have sitting around the house? Spend time with the family? Do some exercises to get yourself in better shape? Catch up on sleep you've been depriving yourself of? Make some extra homemade meals instead of getting fast food like you usually do (this would actually save you money)?
... political theaters like this were normal parts of people's lives. Welcome to your new future, USA! Middle-aged eastern block comrades migrated to the USA 10-20 years ago can tell you exactly what to expect over the next 70 years. Brace yourselves!
It doesn't, however, to incur a late fee on a mortgage payment.
Plus, once again this ignores the contractors who are just S.O.L. for lost wages.
It takes far longer than 2 weeks to "default on their mortgages."
Yes and no.
To go from paid and in good standing to foreclosure, it absolutely takes a lot longer than a couple weeks.
But if you are already courting default due to previous circumstances, it can be the final straw.
It won't be most people but there's going to be people out there who were already into past-due, final-notice territory, who were scrambling to get back on track who probably just had the rug yanked out from under them.
Wasn't the reason for the shutdown to SAVE money?
Clearly BOTH the republicans AND democrats lied to us.
Or perhaps had they been smart enough to not spend their hard earned(I use that term loosely with the feds) money on iduds and new cars every few years they would have had enough cash on hand to pay ALL of their bills for at least 3 months rather than go belly up from not working for only 2 weeks.
We ALL always have a choice. The idea that someone only has the choice between getting a paycheck from the federal government and going and getting another loan to pay for the first loan that they can't pay because they were piss poor planners is not only disingenuous, but morally bankrupt. In this country we all have not only the choice, but the opportunity to better ourselves and then some.
Another good question is WHY IN THE FLYING MONKEY POO do we need 800,000 Federal workers? And before anyone goes there, yes, I've lost my job before and was at one time out of work for more than 3 months. In the end, it all comes down to responsibility. Responsibility of both idiot political stooge parties for creating this mess and responsibility of the individual collecting a paycheck to care and provide for their families.
When you see how these dollars were lost it just proves more and more how much waste and unnecessary costs are involved with this federal govt. I commented on the breakdown portion of the main article statement above. I still think we should run the govt using the 80/20 assumption--20% of the people do 80% of the work just as in the private sector quite often. We could probably shrink this govt down 80% or more and still everything would run, the country would prosper without govt intrusions into everything, and the economy would grow again AND basic services would continue to run in the govt. Sure, maybe some workers might have to put on multiple hats but SO WHAT! We have to do that all the time in the private sector AND we aren't guaranteed job security as these feds seem to be. Not sure what it takes to fire anyone in this govt but you can do just about anything short of murder and get away with it...it's a travesty!! [COMMENTS TO ABOVE ARTICLE STATEMENT] The breakdown includes about $3.1 billion in lost government services [QUESTIONABLE VALUE HERE], $152 million per day in lost travel spending [TRAVEL FOR WHOM? GOVT PERSONNEL--SOUNDS LIKE WE SAVED MONEY], $76 million per day lost because of National Parks being shut down [WOULDN'T HAVE COST ANYTHING IF OBAMA HADN'T FORCED CLOSURES OF STRUCTURES AND LAND THAT HAD NO REASON BEING CLOSED], and $217 million per day in lost federal and contractor wages in the Washington D.C. metropolitan area alone. Hundreds of thousands of federal workers bore the economic brunt of the shutdown [NO THEY DIDN'T SINCE THEY WILL BE PAID BACK-PAY--AT MOST IT WAS AN INCONVENIENCE]but small businesses also suffered from frozen government contracts and stalled business loans. [THIS I AGREE WITH IN THAT CONTRACTORS AND OTHERS WON'T GET BACK PAY AND WORKERS HAD TO USE LEAVE OR GET NO PAYCHECKS BUT THEN IT GOES BACK TO WHETHER THE AGENCIES AND SERVICES WHERE THEY WORK ARE TRULY NECESSARY]
$17 trillion in debt....
Nothing else, even a shutdown or default is undermining the dollar worse than running $1+ trillion deficits.
And if we don't stop, the government shutdown will eventually become PERMANENT. How much will that cost the economy folks.
Oh, and might I add, that the Democrats are punks because all they do is kick the bucket down past the next election.
But there are tons of folks who don't get their paychecks delayed 16 days, they didn't get them at all. The people who rely on government workers to patronize on a daily basis, like restaurants and gas stations, will never get that time or money back.
I've got some friends who work for the Fed and they loved the shutdown because they a) didn't have to go to work, b) weren't using up vacation days and c) were guaranteed backpay for the days the gov't was shutdown.
Nothing like a paid vacation.
I used to get FREE healthcare. I got a pre-existing conditoni. I get medical care, stiff the provider and walk away.
Now,. I gots to buy health insurance.,
What's up with dat?!
While I agree, we are already paying those costs at hospitals.
The issue, is those costs won't go down. They're go to profit holding companies. And so we will continue to pay $20 for a single Tylenol, and now pay $9K for health insurance I used to pay $3K a year for.
This is just stupid. Being 16 days late on a mortgage payment doesn't cause automatic foreclosure. You need to be late by months and years for that to happen.
Given that all of that spending except national parks is getting sucked out of commerce through taxes, this is not a bad thing, in any way.
The people who had "the rug yanked out from under them" are NOT the federal employees. They ARE all the private sector businesses and employees who ARE NOT RECEIVING back pay.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/federal-eye/wp/2013/04/09/despite-salary-rate-freeze-average-federal-salary-rises/
The figure commonly cited as the “average” federal employee salary now stands at nearly $78,500,
The median salary — the point at which half are above and half are below — is now $74,714, up from $69,550 in 2010.
Most of our members are in the GS-5 to GS-9 range and earn anywhere from about $31,000 to $68,000, depending on what part of the country they work in.”
All the federal workers, are getting paid, shutdown or no shutdown.
http://finance.townhall.com/columnists/politicalcalculations/2013/07/29/total-compensation-us-government-employees-vs-the-private-sector-n1651097/page/full
Average private sector salary at $59,804. --- These people are NOT GETTING COMPENSATED for the shutdown.
Now, you tell me, which group is "bearing the economic brunt" of the shutdown ....
1) The federal worker, who on average, earns more money, and receives more benefits, and is getting paid for the shutdown or
2) The private sector worker, affected by the shutdown, who on average, earns less money, and receives less benefits, and IS NOT GETTING PAID for the shutdown ?
Wow. Just wow.
It's not a vacation when you don't plan for it, dont know when you're going to get paid and still have to meet all your financial responsibilities in the mean time. Sign me up... :/
You watch. They will get paid. Obama already said so.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
Nope. That doesn't seem to be the aim. There are large billboards nearby where I live saying that five states (TX, OK, LA, "MI") (I think MI means Mississippi, not Michigan) and secession.
Secession seems to be the goal. Not "saving taxes" or "paying debts". They seem to want to destroy the US as a country, and are coming closer to doing so than England, Nazi Germany, the Soviets, the WWII Japanese, Al Qaeda, North Korea, Iran, and many others have tried to.
It is a simple and effective tactic. Have the nation default, which causes conditions to be worse for Americans, and then push an agenda to break apart the states.
Food for thought: First, with SCOTUS allowing foreign nationals to contribute to US elections, it is a lot easier to sway a campaign with a few million here and there than it is to muster a force that can beat the US in the battlefield. The cost of a Manchurian Candidate is a lot cheaper than the cost of winning a major war.
Second, Congress is exempt from the insider trading laws. Sometimes it gets me wondering about their tactics, and the fact that almost anyone would use the knowledge to short or buy stocks because of their effects on the economy.
Hundreds of thousands of federal workers bore the economic brunt of the shutdown
This should read, 100's of thousands of federal workers, got an extra 16 day paid vacation this year.
Hardly what I would call "bearing the economic brunt" of anything.
Note that alongside the hundreds of thousands of federal workers were even more contractors who were also furloughed and will *not* be paid for their time off. If you focus only on the federal workers you'll miss the bigger picture. The contractors and subcontractors are the ones who took the real economic hit.
(Full disclosure, I'm a contractor and I'm not getting paid for the past three weeks. My client, who is a federal worker, will be given back pay.)
Genocide Man -- Life is funny. Death is funnier. Mass murder can be hilarious.
This would be fixed if we didn't pay government workers not to come to work!
YES....
Sure, the government can raise taxes, draw more wealth, but did you EVER PLAY SIMCITY????
The result is, that wealth declines. Sure the Fed could print quadrillion dollars and give them away on the city streets. But that doesn't equate to wealth, just cash. There is a difference. If I double the amount of cash in the world, I do not change the wealth. I merely have done a stock split. And unlike a stock split, whenever we do this crap. We don't get the other half of the split. We're told we should be happy. We still have our hundred shares, why are we complaining. But our hundred shares have actually been devalued in half.
Oh, and eventually you hit a point where your debt becomes unsustainable, and you can't borrow, raise your paycheck, etc. And default...or you keep your checkbook balanced.
No, I do not want to pay a $85 for a friggin happy meal for my grandkids.
Let's consider that....
Okay, let's call it "delayed pay leave". It was 16 days. No one who is balancing their check book will be hurt by that. Pretty much every bill has a 30 day grace period before it can be reported.
Vacation, so they didn't have money to travel, and pretty much had to stay home and spend time with their family or Xbox. But darn, how many of us would love if our employer's told us they were giving us 2 weeks leave to stay at home and get stuff done. We just couldn't pick up our check until after the leave.
I bet 95% of slashdotters here would jump on that.
Pretty much every bill has to be at least 30 days before it is reported to the credit reporting agencies. So 16 days, even with no pay, pretty much does nothing to affect.
Perhaps there are a few late fees. The real issue is those who use auto payments without over-draft protection. And then get hit with bounced check fees.
But other than that....zero impact.
Or perhaps had they been smart enough to not spend their hard earned(I use that term loosely with the feds) money on iduds and new cars every few years they would have had enough cash on hand to pay ALL of their bills for at least 3 months rather than go belly up from not working for only 2 weeks.
We ALL always have a choice. The idea that someone only has the choice between getting a paycheck from the federal government and going and getting another loan to pay for the first loan that they can't pay because they were piss poor planners is not only disingenuous, but morally bankrupt. In this country we all have not only the choice, but the opportunity to better ourselves and then some.
Another good question is WHY IN THE FLYING MONKEY POO do we need 800,000 Federal workers? And before anyone goes there, yes, I've lost my job before and was at one time out of work for more than 3 months. In the end, it all comes down to responsibility. Responsibility of both idiot political stooge parties for creating this mess and responsibility of the individual collecting a paycheck to care and provide for their families.
It never occurred to you that you can have more than one emergency at a time? For instance, having to pay for expensive chemo treatment drained your savings 3 months ago, but at least you've got a nice stable federal job! Oh wait... Also, remember these workers also had to deal with a 10% pay cut this year due to sequester furloughs, so their savings were already a bit light.
this month. And the next month. And the month after that. They will continue to print until all our problems are solved.
How does that saying go? : "May you live in interesting times".
The fact that the government chose to spend more money while it was shutdown than when it was open points to someone trying to send a political message. There is no good reason why a shutting down a company should result in *more* spending than when it's open when said company spends most of its money on labour. So I call bullshit.
You do realize most of the Tea Party wants the F-35 cut and the U.S. imperialistic military machine ended. Right?
You think it didn't work. But it did....
It further divided us, further pushed us on a path to civil war. Because on one side, is those deriding the Republicans for holding the government hostage. And on the other side are those who are like WTF was this shut down everything, barriers, etc. Sometimes illegally even. All to be spiteful. (Never done before btw)
The truth is, it worked very well. This incident pushed both sides about 5 degrees further arpart.
... and made the US a laughing stock throughout the civilized world and after Bush Jr. I really didn't think it was possible to make things worse (I stand corrected). If this keeps up even Italian politicians will start to look responsible by comparison.
So this money has all been lost? Completely? Someone burnt it?
If not, then surely it is all still available, and has been/will be spent on other things.
Sounds like an accountancy disappearing trick to me.
Sad to see you were in a mess for a few days there, glad you fixed it in time, sorry to see that we will be having the same lame production in early 2014. It's really tough for you (living it) but it's also tough for us in Europe (watching it). We admire, respect and follow what you get up to over there, but we can also see too many historical parallels in our own continent (Germany in 1933) in your current political conduct. You have a Conservative heartland that naturally dislikes change (and may have racially motivated objections to anything your African-American President does) coupled with an ultra-hard-right faction who apparently merely wants to topple, or at least severely disable, the government. Wake up America, it is 2013. It is not the middle ages or even 1773. If you are "exceptional", demonstrate to the rest of the world that that is true - try to show us that rational, civilized debate is the best democratic policy. The OFs in the GOP don't seem to get that times have changed. The aptly-named "Tea Party" doesn't care - all they want is power - over the People, not for them.
I hope those affected by the shutdown will file a class action suit against ALL members of Congress.
Note: 24 billion / (435 reps + 100 senators) = they're each personally responsible for $44,859,813 worth of damage to the US.
Sue those fuckers and take away all of their wealth, and then vote them all out on their asses next term.
All that printing! Inflation must be skyrocketing!
Right?
The number is smoke and mirrors in the first place and pure rubbish.
While I agree, a delayed paycheck shouldn't cripple these people, some of them will get screwed because they were probably already living tight, paycheck to paycheck.
Lots of people with mortgages due on the 1st are already paying it on the 15th (when there might be little or no penalty to them), because they can't afford to pay it out of the "right" check, and when they get hit with a 16-day delay in pay, suddenly they're a month late.
These people didn't know when the next paycheck was going to come. They knew they'd get it, but they didn't know if it'd be `1 day, 10 days or 100 days. Some of them likely had to make decisions about how to pay mortgages, car payments, buy groceries, etc. as soon as they missed a single paycheck.
On the question of whether the debt harms the economy more than ACA or a shutdown, the markets strongly disagree with you. It's possible, granted, that your understanding of economics is better than that of the markets, but that seems unlikely. Here's another question : how does that $17 trillion compare to GDP? Someone not knowing the answer to that question would be forgiven for assuming that the swivel-eyed hysteria indicates the debt must be multiples of GDP. The truth is, it's a fraction, and the key to dealing with it is the same as it ever was : economic growth. Growth that can never be acheived through austerity.
I would garnish the wages of everyone who works in congress until that is repaid.
Preventative care doesn't do much because in your example all it does is prevent you from dying earlier... eh... duh?
What next, learning to swim doesn't help because it only prevents you from drowning and dying earlier?
Big news flash! We are all going to die, the idea is to do it as late as possible in as good health as possible.
Preventative care doesn't work because it only keeps you alive longer.
Please tell me you are unable to vote.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
So you don't even keep a 1-paycheck buffer in your account? And you are a liar. No bank forecloses on a single payment less than 30 days late. It's not even legal.
Learn to love Alaska
Companies that built themselves on 90%+ overpriced government contracts that didn't get paid for a few weeks deserve to lose a portion of that stated money in the article. Airlines obviously don't fit that bill and the parks system has nothing to do with it but big contractors that lost billions definitely had it coming. It's such a stupid, fragile business model that it deserves to crash and burn in this kind of economic system. For example, if a company makes 99% of its money selling ballistic helmets to the FBI and just lost money because they shut down for a bit, they deserve it for propping up their entire company on one customer. I'm pretty sure the FBI was still fully funded but you get what I mean.
And in previous shutdowns, the banks waived the fees. Why lie to make it look worse, it's already bad enough, and the lies to make it look worse, make those of us who talk about how bad it is look bad by association.
Learn to love Alaska
election rolls around and vote accordingly.
More importantly, I hope the people who really elect presidents and congressmen- the big corporations and wealthy private donors- learn from this and stop supporting morons.
Isn't itt time to face facts and start charging some people with treason?
If you choose to deliberately attack your countries economy, it HAS to be treason.
Certainly a lot worse than leaking some information about 3 letter agencies breaking laws and eroding your freedom!
Wake the hell up.
The Tea Party are far worse than anything that the most extreme McCarthyism ever dreamed that communists could do to your country.
Maurice W. Hilarius Voice: (778) 347-9907
Or, ya know, "hundreds of thousands of federal workers had to choose between predatory payday loans or defaulting on their mortgages while waiting to get paid and sitting at home every day waiting to find out if they can go back to work"
That's the moral hazard of Federal jobs. Unlike normal people, you end up budgeting as if future paychecks for future work are absolutely guaranteed.
The Tea Party is a bunch of crazy people that cause nothing but trouble in America. Thank goodness moderate Republicans like John McCain, Lindsey Graham, and Peter King are willing to stand up to those radicals, and put America on the right track. They stand up for important American allies, like Georgia, Vietnam, and Saudi Arabia.
How much more is lost with the government open? We've lost $7 TRILLION with the government open in the last five years. Losing $24 Billion over two weeks is a great thing compared to that.
Wow! The quality of the comments in Slashdot have really gone down over the years.
Ought to be able to send a bill to the Tea Party.
US, low wage/kinda average for area.
Currently 20% of take home is needed to cover my insurance which sucks. ;)
Under Obamacare the insurance is a little less sucky and comes in at 15% probably about 10% with the subsidy.
Bonus..you only tear out half your hair trying to figure out the differences between plans now
"...$76 million per day lost because of National Parks being shut down." Wait..how much!? The National Parks make $76 million dollars a DAY!? Umm...how much of that goes back into the parks? And what is being done with the rest? And as has been mentioned earlier...why were they even closed? $76 million a DAY!? Wow.
Then why did they hold the country hostage in exchange for defunding Obamacare instead of the F-35 and the "Military Industrial Complex"?
Shhhh. You're messing with his used fifteen million times tea bagger joke which he can't keep from giggling about.
It's so much more fun to make the Tea Party people into crackpots as a starting point of any discussion, than it is to understand what they are looking for.
If you need a cancer drug, you don't have much choice.
The problem is probably not that he's unable to vote.
Nihil in publicum sputa.
They are printing 80 billion dollars a month. I say they stay shut diwn.
Damn the reopening!
This is a nice short austerity experiment. One more time we see it kills the economy, like it did in Latin America, Africa and Asia. Perhaps we could stop this nonsense in Europe, now?
The shopkeeper has NO money! The customers have money, the shopkeeper does not. The shopkeeper can only spend the money the customers earn.
Stupid isn't it? Now you know how you look and why I'm pissed off with such a "guvmunt faked 9/11" shithead making all engineers look bad.
I find it amusing how dollar large amounts are thrown around to describe how bad this shut down was. This is small change compared to the disaster the health insurance industry is about to have. Honestly, some of the government services that were shutdown probably cost tax payers more to close than to keep it running - such as federal parks (not including amenities) & government run websites. This was just a power play between a bunch of cry babies who can not compromise and come up with creative solutions.
This illustrates how divided the American Legislative branch has become. On one side, we have a president, who used to be a congressman and still tries to play one, doesn't know basic economics (yes, insurance costs are going up, no matter how you do the math), and has a congressional posse who won't legislate without him telling them what to do - a complete disregard of separation of duties if you ask me. And on the other side, a bunch of old farts who can not agree with a bunch of tea baggers to organize and work for a common goal to our problems, with each one of them pulling in different directions because they are all bought be lobbyists, banks, and other corrupt organizations.
I don't care which political way any voter leans, but come next election, I urge everyone to vote ALL incumbents out of office. This crap has to stop! It should be an honor to serve our nations citizens, not a career with lavish benefits, money being thrown at you, and no accountability. Hold them accountable - END THEIR CAREERS!
One needs to do nothing to make teabaggers look like crackpots, they do such a good job theselves.
The Republicans will say look, "Obama has done nothing to help the economy, we are losing money and not gaining anything", And of course this report will get buried and ignored by the idiots in the mainstream press/media as to the reasons the economy has gone nowhere. And the Democrats will not bother to use this study as a political cry for why the Republicans are destroying the country, and why the country has gone nowhere.
I do not get the right sides laughable beliefs that they're trying to save the country and are listening to the American people, and yet as usual they're getting bought off by companies, and promoting there own companies stocks by fixing or bending the rules/law/regulations so they become millionaires by the time the either get voted out or retire.
And it both sides playing this game even tho I picked on the Republicans. SO none of them are in touch with the "working people" or in touch with reality..
No bank will foreclose after 1 missed payment, especially when they can see the reason for it. Charge a fee, add it to the principle, they just made more profit of you for free.
Yea its not a planned vacation where you can go travelling and make extended plans, but I'm sure as hell its better than working. Spending time with the family, read a book, watch a movie, relax
It's important not to interfere with the $1,000,000,000,000+ annual budget deficit.
Otherwise, America might not go bankrupt.
So why werent they asking for that instead of defunding obamacare?
Utah State Parks break attendance records amid shutdown.
http://www.ksl.com/?sid=27283841&nid=148&title=utah-state-parks-break-attendance-records-amid-shutdown&fm=home_page&s_cid=queue-5
So... the people who would have spent money in national parks didn't just wail in anguish and burn their money, they spent it elsewhere? How odd!
But why do I want big business in my life telling me where to spend my own money.
Business should give me the cash and if I want to walk to work and spend the money elsewhere, that should be my choice.
You know, if we have to borrow money just to pay the interest we are already beyond screwed. If you can't see that, then you, sir, are an idiot.
If government buys productivity the way they buy everything else, then we only lost a couple of hours of real productivity.
[Citation needed]
Can you show some figures about exactly how much the "fed" is "printing" each month?
"A week in the lab saves an hour in the library"
Those $24 billion need to be weighted against the trillions that Obama's costly and unnecessary new debt, regulations, restrictions, crony capitalism, bailouts, and opportunity costs are costing the economy.
The same ones who some years ago used to say "Yeeeeep, go invest your money in Greece!!! It's an amazingly solid country to bet on!!!"????
Are we REALLY still listening to Standard & Poor's???
Wow. Just wow.
It's not a vacation when you don't plan for it, dont know when you're going to get paid and still have to meet all your financial responsibilities in the mean time. Sign me up... :/
Sign me up. Seriously. I don't need to plan. I can spend 16 days cleaning the house, working in the yard, taking the kids to the local playground, and other stuff, all on a moments notice.
Uh huh.
Hi, I'm your mortgage company, and your payment is due; not tomorrow, not 16 days from now when the government opens back up - right fucking now. Got the money? No? Then we're foreclosing on your shit.
Enjoy your "vacation." Good luck feeding your family or driving anywhere without any income.
1) Mortgage payments are due on the first of the month. This shutdown didn't span a month boundary, so should not have affected any mortgage payments.
2) Pretty much all mortgage companies offer you until the 15th of the month to pay without penalty. In fact, due to the way interest is calculated on almost all mortgages, it doesn't even cost you a penny of extra interest to delay the payment.
3) Even if both of the above weren't true....ok, mr mortgage company. Let me get you that payment from the money I already had set aside for an emergency. I built up this fund by not buying a new car every few years, not buying a bigger house than I could afford, not getting cable TV with every channel available, not getting a high end cell phone plan, not going out to eat more than once a week, not buying every gimmick that some TV commercial tells me I need, not buying ridiculously priced high end products, not throwing away money by carrying a balance on my credit cards, not spending $20 per outfit so that my 3 month old can look oh-so-stylish-and-cute while she pukes on it, not buying a daily coffee that costs 25x what my coffee maker costs to make....should I go on? Oh, and mr mortgage company...should I happen to still be not working next month, don't worry...I've got that payment already set aside for you, too.
Yes, it took a little sacrifice to make #3 come true, but it wasn't even a hardship. It was just being responsible. I've got several thousand dollars in the bank. Most people would look at that and say "cool, we've got enough money to go to disneyland or the bahamas". I look at it and say "we've only got about $400 set aside for vacation...we can either wait a few more months and take a small vacation somewhere nearby, or wait until next year and MAYBE go someplace further away for longer.
Enjoy your "vacation." Good luck feeding your family or driving anywhere without any income.
Did you even read what I wrote about things to do without leaving your home? And did you not even see the discussion about how you really can't go anywhere because you don't know when you will be called back?
Not according to the Tea Party representatives themselves.
So this is being setup as the new excuse for the poor economic performance resulting from the Obama Administration's economic policies.
Betcha the "fix" is another massive barrel of pork and bribes, usually called a "stimulus" Of course the only thing actually stimulated are the party favorites.
So rather than actually implement any meaningful policy, the entire focus of our government is who to blame, PATHETIC EPIC FAIL
Murphy was an optimist
The Tea Party is a libertarian movement that mostly advocates the reduction of spending and debt lest we bankrupt our nation for our children. They were the Republican element that opposed the Patriot Act. They were the element that was more likely to say, let's focus on the fiscal matters and liberty than social/moral issues. They really didn't care about race, but about your politics. And they expressed concern both about the ongoing wars, imperialism and the foolishness of the war on drugs.
Where as the moderate Republicans distract with social causes, and join with the Democrat aisle to spend this nation in oblivion while pampering their pockets.
I know, you've got a picture in your head of the racist narrowminded bigoted Tea Party. I mean, you saw that guy in the NBC news cast with an AR15 rifle slung to his back protesting at a rally outside a townhouse meeting with Obama. It was clearly racist, right? That's what NBC said repeatedly, they pointed out how this was so seemingly racist. Of course the never panned out to show the man was a black Tea Partier.
Funny, cause the Tea Partiers and fiscal conservatives in the GOP were doing that. Though they didn't have enough strength to, they got the spare engine program defunded.
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-20032313-503544.html
Funny, cause the Tea Partiers and fiscal conservatives in the GOP were doing that. Though they didn't have enough strength to, they got the spare engine program defunded.
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-20032313-503544.html [cbsnews.com]
The issue is that we often are spending exhorbitant amounts of $$$ not to save a life, but to prolong its existence in a cold sterile hospital room when we know the end outcome is death. That is not a judicious use of $$$. I am all for spending $$$ to save a life, I am not for spending $$$ to merely push death a few weeks or a few months back.
We need to be a bit more honest...
(and I'm not the only one saying this, so are many doctors and nurses)
"Isn't there anything you can do. Anything you can try?" - Patient's loved ones
"Well, yes....but it's unlikely to help." - Doctor
"Do it...."
$150,000 later, life was extended an extra week.
Your attempt to counter my observation that your grasp of economics is rudimentary serves only reinforce the point.
"Hundreds of thousands of federal workers bore the economic brunt of the shutdown"
What kind of biased story is this.... we all know that the federal workers will get paid for all that time they were sitting on their lazy butts just like the last shutdown.
FragHARD or don't frag at all
Cases like this is where you need death panels (aka common sense).
If its the families own money and there happy to piss it away, fine.
But government money or insurance money? No that would have been much better spent on 1,500 $100 tests that could prevent it happening to the next (1500) person(s). Or just save the money and keep premiums down for everyone.
There will be third party and maybe 4th and 5th party majorities before the Republicans ever come close to a majority again. The pool of old angry white guys is getting smaller by the hour. Most people will either learn to love it or at worst tolerate it until they realise its good for them. Americans attention span is too short for anyone to remain angry about this long enough. (Except teabaggers, but that's the very reason the republicans are becoming less and less popular).
I've lived in a few different countries, working there and getting local care, in the last 30 years. They've all got problems: They're all squeezing "maximum efficiency" out of their doctors, treating patients as cogs in the health care machine, until you get something really rare that some researcher will get a scientific paper from. (I've been that researcher: they loved us far more than their doctors because we paid attention and asked questions about the same problem, and bent over backwards, sometimes literally, to help us learn real science. Bless them! The older subjects are dying off, but we learned and published incredible lessons in neurophysiology, impossible to learn with healthy humans.)
Anyway: there are some real efficiencies to be had in fostering pre-natal care, early testing for cancer, education and proper medicaiton for diabetics, and getting people with chronic breathing problems medication or preventive care. What worries me is that there will be 50 states and 500 cities, all negotiating distinct standards of *paperwork* and procedures for the most common treatments. A bureaucrat in Washington writing "guidelines" can create paperwork enforced practices that are lethal in practice due to factors the local staff are well aware of, but the bureaucrat is not. And i'm afraid they'll create more layers of paperwork to handle exceptions, then more to analyze the result of the exceptions, then more to assess the increases in paperwork, etc., etc., etc.
Expect a lot of bureaucracy, and *amazing* turf wars for medical care in the next 20 years.
I don't have an opinion on whether it's justified or not, as it is none of my business, but why is it that nearly every American geek, at least on the internet, hates this president more than any other in living memory? What specifically, did he do to piss off the geeks?
Quoting Time magazine is the last refuge of the uninformed........ I mean if it was a proper magazine like the Economist, but Time magazine. Who the fuck thinks Time is credible with anything.