Off-Topic

realize that 99% of the highly paid employees on wall street can be fired at any moment, work way harder and longer hours than the average government worker and have much high expectations from them. We don't get pensions or much paid vacation. Your firm can go under in a matter of days. I'm on call 24/7. I've been at UMD board meetings and had my boss email me at 8pm to go back and crank numbers until midnight.

I actually think both wall street and government work is good, and the line to work both are usually long. It's also very hard to quantify whether someone is "worth" X dollars and someone isn't. You're worth what someone is willing to pay you.

I know some people heading to the beach next week. Just connecting the dots

if you don't like it, find some other line of work.

Is there a good website that provides up to date news on how likely the shutdown will occur? My wife works for the gov't, but she is hoping it shuts down so that she can stay home with the baby, :). However, that is not good to lose a few weeks of paychecks!

Now we're talking

plenty of good workers get fired or take pay cuts in the private sector. All we're asking is for employees compensation and benefits be matched with that of the finances/success of their employer. If the government is not taking in revenues to keep it afloat then you have to make cuts.

Gary?!?

Stop that and go get me Shaq Cleare!

It really annoys me the way G$ generalizes his opinion of federal employees. My wife has a very specialized degree, makes less money than she could in the private sector and is on-call 24/7 for something far more critical to everyone's lives than Wall Street. To get to that job, she spent most of her 20s working 14-hour days for literally no money on the Hill. Her benefits are more costly than mine and I believe she needs 20 years of service for this magical pension. Until then, she's totally on her own for retirement contributions (no employee match.) Her bonus structure is very minimal.

Personally, I can't wait for her to leave the government and cash out, but she's committed to serving her country. So save the lazy rhetoric bullshit. There are just as many lazy, awful employees slogging their way through corporate America.

G$ has a point, but he carries it too far (private sector bias just like the public workers here have fed bias). I am all aboard with cutting the fed by 20% across all sectors though (including DoD) over a 5-10 year scale. I've spent enough time within the government system to see just how wasteful and redundant lots of things are. 20% wouldn't cause a ripple if people practiced some decent accounting/efficiency

Once you and I pioneer the Libertarian presidential ticket in 15 years Neal, we'll just cut all their benefits by executive order. They'll be too old to stage any kind of decent march on the Mall anyway.

Because the dirty little secret is that very little actually comes to a halt during a shutdown.

No site that I'm aware of. Unfortunately OMB isn't really putting out any clear guidelines on what to do in the shutdown, since that would be them admitting there is going to be a shutdown. Each agency is pretty much tasked with figuring out how they are going to handle it, most seem to be going off of what they did back in the mid-90s. As far as contracts a lot depends on how they're structured and funded. A lot will continue to go on and be paid, but there are some that will be shutdown and then its up to how that company is going to handle it, I know of some that will be in the same boat as the government employees and not get paid during the shutdown. The last go round the government employees ended up getting retroactively paid for the time during the shutdown, I'd be very surprised with the current economical conditions if that was done this go round. Those government employees that are required to work during the shutdown will get paid, but not until the shutdown is ended. So its really not a 'shutdown' if a lot of the government continues to operate. If they really wanted to make a point they really should shut down the government and stop all services. All this does is lead people to believe that they really don't need the government, if they 'shutdown' and they're still able to go about their daily activities.