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Friday, April 8, 2011
When government shuts down
It will be a nightmare. And it is totally unfair to those who work for the US government in some capacity. See here for a discussion of what to expect. Government is just another institutional form through which to produce goods and services. Ideology is getting in the way of reality.
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I completely agree with you. How is this going to help us when the cons of a shut down heavily outweigh the pros? I like the part in the article about forced volunteerism and how unfair that is to those individuals working for free in fear that they'll be punished when the government is "back in force." They also stated that many people will lose their jobs when the government shuts down so I was thinking, how long do you think the government will shut down for and what pros do you see (if any) about this shut down?
ReplyDeleteWow, I have been never really known that the government could be shut down like this. I mean, I have heard of it, but I guess I thought it was kind of insignificant.
ReplyDeleteThis should be banned in the Constitution.
This situation reminds me A LOT of the NFL labor negotiations between the Players Union and the Owners. In both situations, there is excessive finger pointing, and neither side wants to make a real concession before the other does. Ironically, the NFL is "shut down" right now, as the Owners have locked players out of the facilities, and the players are pursuing Antitrust litigation. As far as I can tell, the crux of this potential government shut down is an ideological difference that results in different fundamental beliefs about the funding for Planned Parenthood and other Women's Health issues. It appears as if there has been some agreement on all of the other issues in the budget, hopefully there will be an agreement in place before midnight, so that 800,000 workers can avoid being furloughed.
ReplyDeleteWe were talking in class on Tuesday about free markets and the existence of perfect information. I think we came to the overall conclusion that complete, perfect information wasn't necessarily available. However, throughout this threat of possible shutdown, most citizens are not utilizing the information that they do have. There are sources like these provided by Hannah that offer a lot of reliable information to citizens and consumers. The fact that people don't check their facts and are making all sorts of erroneous claims about what the government shutdown will actually entail speaks to how consumers might use market information as well. Often consumers buy goods and services, especially on the financial market, without fully understanding what they are buying. While prefect information may not be a complete possibility, there are vast amounts of information about each market circulating and too often we forget to make use of that information.
ReplyDeleteIt is my understanding that we have gotten to this point of reaching the debt ceiling and facing government shutdown several times in the past and each time Congress has approved an increase in allowable debt. Why is this time more serious? Is it just higher levels of stubbornness?
ReplyDeleteThe good news is that at least most of the vitals seem like they will continue to function, buying us time to come to some agreement.
This shut down is a completely inefficient way of dealing with things. Luckily (as i just found out) the government choose to pass a short-term solution. However, officials will have to work hard to make sure their long-term solution appeases as many problems as possible. Otherwise they will be looking at this same situation in the near future.
ReplyDeleteI'm glad that the government found a short term solution to avoid complete government shut down. Even though we avoided a shut down this time, this just goes to show how much of a crisis we truly are in...Hopefully we can avoid this again in the future. What I find interesting is that government officials are so easy to cut massive amounts of spending (knowing that it won't affect their paycheck), but when government is threated to be shut down these officials somehow find anyway possible to keep from losing their job (even if the shut down is temporary). Maybe this close scare will force these government officials to start looking at some of their proposed spending cuts in a new perspective.
ReplyDeleteI'm in astonishment with Dane on this issue. I never really knew that the government could shut down like its being threatened. Its truly a scary situation.
ReplyDelete