My expectation is that the 800,000 nonessential Federal employees at risk is approximately 33% of the Federal employees.

In the real world, when a company has no work(money coming in) many companies shut down for a week... Sometimes a couple times a year. It wouldn't hurt my feelings to see this sort of thing happen in the Government....

All this shut down is, is to see who has their heels dug in the most... Purely political....

I have worked piece work my whole life(mechanic) and when there is no work(money walking through the door) I don't get payed... I have been doing this work for over 20 years, and get 2 weeks payed vacation a year and that is it... I don't feel sorry one bit for these Federal employees who are nothing more than working welfare recipients....

Keep paying our Military... NO WAY should they ever go without pay for the bad spending policies of our irresponsible Government...

Parks? Shut them down... Museums??? Close the doors... Social Security, Medicare, passport division, EPA, ALL need revamped and streamlined... Federal courts obviously need to be funded through all of this...

Public employee unions... WTF???? Ever heard of poor working conditions or unfair wages in a government position? NOPE!!!!! There are more takers in the Government than there are people in producing jobs in the private sector... See anything wrong there????

for a glimpse of your not so distant future filmed in the past, rent the movie: Rollover.

don't say you were not warned.


🌫

I take it a step further, Elkhunter. The Government should ONLY cut checks for services and products tendered. So if you fight for this country or build its roads, etc., you get paid for the work rendered & nothing more. No pensions. No nothing else. You want a pension, you do it yourself on your own. Only exceptions I would make are for the homeless and physically/mentally unfit who have little or no means and no family for support. It's been my experience that most churches are usually worthless when it comes to helping the infirm and homeless.

Having said that, there should be health coverage for all- none of this crap that we have now where only the rich can afford good coverage. I don't care if it's nationally subsidized or a more competitive, inter- state bidding system with premiums a microcosm of what they are now. Social Security should also be means tested. That means that a multimillionare shouldn't rape the system further if he doesn't need it. Nothing rubs me the wrong way than a #@$%^&$#@ who uses his SS booty (thanks, TW) for walking around golfing money while someone else who's worked hard all his life as a ditch digger and now has arthritis has to resort to cat food. Too bad, but if we don't have it, we don't have it. The rich should be the first to sacrifice not the middle class nor the poor.

Whoa, guess 12 years of Bush and Obama have finally pushed me into class warfare. lol

Thanks, bro. I'm going to check it out even if it has Jane Fonda. lol

I agree mostly...

What I disagree on is, I don't think the Government has any business providing health care... Just govern.....We don't need a nanny...

As far as the wealthy needing to be punished for being wealthy? Nope!!! Everybody has the potential to get rich... Most are content with the life they lead, while others are too lazy to do what it takes to get there...

Keep in mind that there is no real definition of "rich".

The true rich will leave for Monoco, the Cayman Islands, or some other nice place. Then you have to declare war on the "upper class" or "upper middle class".


Somebody has to get pitchforked.

Bingo.

My wife is going nuts. She works for the DOJ as a warden's secretary in a federal pen. She is nonessential and will be furloughed starting tonight.

I am sorry to hear it brother... I am sure all will feel the effects, and maybe get a scary glimpse of how involved the Government is in our lives...

I mentioned either a Government subsidized health care that we can individually supplement OR a private system which allows the payer to competitively seek out health care care coverages OUTSIDE of his state. Right now we have monopolies running the show. These result in folks like me paying 3x more for a $5,000 deductible than what I used to pay for a $250 deductible a few years ago...

Secondly, my father was a successful physician. My father-in-law on the other hand was a skilled tradesman (built homes, worked with concrete, etc.). Both were hard working. One alternates between two homes & receives 3x what the other, who lives in a modest retirement home, makes in SS monthly income. I'm sorry, but at a time of teetering national bankruptcy, we have to discard social, pie in the sky shibboleths, and trim the excess fat. Our ponzi scheme can no longer afford to pay the already very comfortable so that they can walk around with more cash and buy more lattes. Someone has to bite the shiite sandwich.



Yes, HD, I agree with you. Lines can blur. Ultimately, I see a socialist system with an equal yet lower standard of living for most. The rich will always know who they are, and be rich. The rest of us just want to survive and feed/shelter our loved ones. Frills are not necessary in dire times.

This whole thing could have been avoided by just raising taxes.

Can't we just storm DC and tar and feather them all?

Like the old days?

I bust my ass and beleive in what I do. I honestly beleive I am helping to improve the quality of health care recieved in this country. It may sound strange but I will miss working and over the long haul not having this work done will not be a good thing. But I am biased..

On a posative note I have both sides of the family comming to town in May for my son's graduation. That week I am expected to be in Baltimore working on reviewing proposals (some of what I do is outsourcing work away from feds to private sector). I would be away all week and come home late the night prior to graduation (They want me to work through the weekend and miss his graduaiton). If anything good comes from this maybe everything will be delayed and I will not need to miss my family.

And blood if you really beleive 400,000 out of 800,000 individuals are lazy and worthless then you are dilusional. Admittedly there are many. I have more private sector experience than public. I do take issue that non performers are not culled out as well in the public sector. It does cause a burden on those who bust their ass. Workload is one issue but the worst is the perception some have and apply to all. Even on the surface to categorize 400,000 people out of 800,000 doesn't pass the laugh test. It is just not reality.

Now as for the jobs.... I can understand that. If you think the task itself should not exist or at least not be a government function thats cool with me. I agree in many many cases. I beleive in small government, and had no intention on doing what I do in this setting. I was recruited because of my outside experience, education, and reputation.

If the task or job is not required eliminate the job. There should be no more gaurentee than anyone else. The job is to do a task, function or create a product. If the need is gone so too should be the job.

But don't broadly paint the individuals involved because of political philosophy. The group of ten individuals that I work most closely with are without a doubt the most intelligent (and strangest) group of people I have ever worked with. That includes my experience in for profit major corporations, small not for profit orgs and large not for profits. I would hire 7 or 8 of the ten as a core group to begin my own company and be comfortable as hell. My experience is not what I expected when I arrived (I planned on staying a couple years and jumping back out).

I just spent some time on the phone with state workers. The third person could help me.

The first two were "nonessential"!!!!!!

LOL

Well that's absolutly true at the State level.

1/2 paycheck on the 15th. Don't know if I'm getting paid on the 1st. As mentioned above, we will get paid for our services once a budget is finally agreed upon, but what are we supposed to do until then. When I say "us" I am referring to the essential employees that will still have to report to work/duty. Rent is still do. We still have to feed our families. We still have to buy gas to get to work. We have just dropped a snowball down the side of a very steep mountain. Where will it stop, and what will the destruction be?

You may be right, Tim. It just seems as though it's a majority after hundreds of thousands of conversations/interactions...
Much work is probably duplicated however because one hand doesn't know what the other's doing, people are busy covering their asses by following ridiculous sop's, and since accountability is not stringently enforced, the worker tends to stretch out a workload to fill the workday- instead of trying to squeeze in as much work as possible into a workday.

Some of the above applies to the private sector as well. The difference being, a competitive market only allows for the survival of the fittest. There's no safety net.

Government spending in the USA is now almost 40% of the entire GDP. 40% of the entire economy.

People wonder where the factories went......they were tore down to create government office buildings!