42 Responses to “Dispatches From the Front”

1. 1 1 Eliezer
   October 1, 2013 at 1:52 pm

   Reminds me of the old riddle, if a tree falls in a forest and nobody is around to hear it…

2. 2 2 bluto
   October 1, 2013 at 2:17 pm

   Much shorter lines for lunch in DC and a quiet commute. Let’s keep the shut down running for a little while.

3. 3 3 wintercow20
   October 1, 2013 at 2:32 pm

   Well, this is sort of “tragic” for folks looking for old statistical abstracts of the US: http://outage.census.gov/closed.html

   And then I found this: http://statab.conquestsystems.com/sa/index.html?id=285c0964-062c-462d-9bf8-61430d7fef2d

4. 4 4 RPLong
   October 1, 2013 at 3:04 pm

   Someone on Facebook had commented, “I’m going to miss muh roads.”

   That pretty much sums it up for me. Remember when the sequester was supposed to cause pain and destruction everywhere? Government is far less necessary than any American imagines.

5. 5 5 Daniel
   October 1, 2013 at 7:08 pm

   @Steve, RPLong, etc,

   The really critical parts of the government are still functioning. All of the agencies with longer term goals are shutdown. Why do you feel you’d notice a difference the first day? Also, if this went on for long enough, how do you think government workers surviving pay-check to pay-check would pay their bills? Think it’s good for the economy to take away over 800k employees paychecks all at once?

6. 6 6 Daniel
   October 1, 2013 at 7:18 pm

   Also, think it’s a good idea to do stuff like this? Because what low-wage single mothers really need is to leave their 3-year old home alone, while they go work, right?

   http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/government-shutdown-leaves-19000-children-without-head-start-services/2013/10/01/c39c4f92-2aa4-11e3-8ade-a1f23cda135e_story.html

   Also, are you proud of your congressman for stopping no part of Obamacare and having no tangible plan to stop Obamacare and just inflicting general pain on the economy?

   “As a highly successful Professor at a highly ranked University, I haven’t seen any consequences to shutting down the government in the first day.”

7. 7 7 Ken B
   October 2, 2013 at 8:29 am

   Sure, easy to be flippant about it, but you just wait until some unidentifed member of the canidae family comes by.

8. 8 8 iceman
   October 2, 2013 at 11:26 am

   #6 – everyone always holds up a child…if all we were talking about were those types of programs we’d never have a peep of conflict over budgets & deficits. Tragically our inability to check the bloating brings us to this (at least for the theatrics).

   (BTW my understanding is the research on Headstart is not too encouraging in terms of its impact on learning…but maybe you’re just endorsing free daycare so people can get work skills…question is is that more valuable than having them home with their kids?)

9. 9 9 Alan Wexelblat
   October 2, 2013 at 11:54 am

   Congratulations, you’re not a house-bound senior who depends on Meals on Wheels for his one hot meal per day. You’re not a poor child who will go hungry because her school will not be able to feed her. You’re not a single parent who suddenly lost their only childcare and will get fired if she misses too many days.

   Sometimes the rich white male privilege bit sticks a little too hard in my craw.

10. 10 10 Daniel
    October 2, 2013 at 12:20 pm

    @iceman #8,
    My point was that Steve lives in a world isolated from the daily benefits of government, so why would anyone expect him to notice a change in the first few minutes. Your point about headstart is a common misnomer. There’s mixed evidence. There seems to be a fade out in test scores after the first few years (a reversion to the mean), but during those years after leaving headstart they require less attention and less extra help, thus lowering the costs to later programs.

    Also you might find Raj Chetty’s take on early childhood interesting. His argument is that most of the payout doesn’t come in the form of better standardized test scores but rather actual concrete outcomes later on (lower crime incidence, higher income, less unemployment spells, etc.)

11. 11 11 Daniel
    October 2, 2013 at 12:23 pm

    @ iceman #8,

    On your point about the kids being better off with their mothers home. How exactly to you suggest to a single mother she should stay home? Remember welfare-to-work, that pretty much screwed any chance they at being able to give their children the attention they need at home.

12. 12 12 RPLong
    October 2, 2013 at 12:28 pm

    @ Daniel –

    It’s day 2. Are you feeling the effects yet? I’m not…

13. 13 13 Daniel
    October 2, 2013 at 12:35 pm

    @ RPLong,

    What difference does it make. I know lot’s of people who are being affected. Should I care solely about whether I’m being affected by the shutdown? Right lets care only about ourselves and not pay attention to anything that’s happening around us. And your right it’s day 2, why should that at all speak to what will happen in the long run? It’s like saying it’s cold today, therefore global warming is fake, or it’s really hot today, therefore it is real. Do you know how stupid that makes you look?

14. 14 14 Daniel
    October 2, 2013 at 12:37 pm

    Here’s the preeminent authority on the economics of early childhood education on Headstart by the way:

    http://www.heckmanequation.org/content/getting-our-heads-around-head-start

15. 15 15 Daniel
    October 2, 2013 at 12:39 pm

    The funny thing is that Steve was probably half-joking about this and a few of you actually took him seriously.

16. 16 16 Steve Landsburg
    October 2, 2013 at 1:11 pm

    Alan Wexelblat (#9):

    All other issues aside, I do not think the word “privilege” means what you think it means.

    Hint: When Party A pays for Party B’s hot meals, or when Party A pays for Party B’s childcare, it is Party B, not Party A, who has received a privilege.

17. 17 17 Daniel
    October 2, 2013 at 1:22 pm

    @Landsburg 16,

    I think he meant by privilege, that you had the opportunity to grow up in a double parent highly educated household, with parents that could sacrifice their work time to give you the attention that you needed growing up? Maybe this assumption was incorrect, but given the probability of selecting a white male professor at the University of Rochester that did not come from a high socioeconomic background, I’d say his assumptions were more likely to be correct than incorrect.

    Hint: Not everyone has this privilege, and choosing to ignore those that by chance don’t succeed given their lack of luck, will only hurt everyone in the long run. Sometimes giving hot meals to Party B now, means that we won’t have to give hot meals to Party B’s child later.

18. 18 18 Daniel
    October 2, 2013 at 1:26 pm

    Just as an observation, have the poverty rates gotten better these last 20 years since we vastly scaled down welfare? Hmm, what could possibly be the matter. Why aren’t these people pulling themselves up by their bootstraps? Maybe we haven’t taken enough away from them yet? Let’s take away their food stamps, and medical care. Maybe they’ll find a job if they are hungry and disabled as well as homeless.

19. 19 19 RPLong
    October 2, 2013 at 1:50 pm

    Daniel,

    I am puzzled by your question. You “should” care about whomever you are inclined to care about. You do seem to admit that the shutdown has not had much of an impact on your own life.

    I propose that we engage in the same kind of calculus here as we typically do in welfare economics. That is, if the effects of the shutdown are far less severe than we imagined they might be, we have strong evidence for a significant reduction to the size and scope of whatever public services shut down without causing much pain.

    I think this was the gist of Prof. Landsburg’s blog post, i.e. that it is possible to completely shutter many parts of the federal government without significantly impacting the lives of anyone other than government employees. As to those employees, I reject the suggestion that they be employed merely for the sake of employing people who need jobs, and I think most modern economists would agree with me.

20. 20 20 Daniel
    October 2, 2013 at 1:58 pm

    @RPLong,

    Right, so since it’s really cold today global warming doesn’t exist, great calculus.

    Also, I know people affected, who aren’t government employees. BLS might not produce estimates this month because of the shutdown. The shutdown has actual consequences, they just aren’t immediately noticeable by everyone everywhere. The only point I was making about government workers is that if we want to scale back government we should do it slowly, but than I tend to think that laying people off has unintended macroeconomic consequences in a liquidity trap, while most people here believe that Sayes law is absolute, so I won’t win any points there.

21. 21 21 RPLong
    October 2, 2013 at 2:06 pm

    Daniel,

    So where does that leave us? Would you prefer I said, “Okay, Daniel, whatever you say,” or would you prefer to work toward some common ground here? Are we to believe that every government office currently in existence is a vital necessity, or does a government shutdown actually stand a chance of demonstrating that some of these offices are unessential to the point of being superfluous?

    Or, are you just upset that we’re only two days into it and “people are already drawing the wrong conclusions?” Give me some indication of where our conversation can lead.

22. 22 22 Daniel
    October 2, 2013 at 2:06 pm

    @ RPLong,

    The main point of contention between us seems to be time scale. How long should we wait to see if there are any consequences? My point is that the people working on short-term and critical projects are still working. Just because their work is critical and short-term doesn’t mean that their work is more valuable than people doing long-term projects. It’s like a Pharma company shuttering down R&D but keeping their factories open.

23. 23 23 Al V.
    October 2, 2013 at 2:16 pm

    Here in NYC, the largest impact has been to tourists who can’t visit Liberty Island or Federal Hall, etc. I’m sure many people would say that is negligible impact, but then why don’t we permanently close the National Parks, National Monuments, and the Smithsonian? What benefit do they provide?

    Similarly, NASA’s MAVEN mission is scheduled to launch to Mars on Nov. 18. If the shutdown lasts more than a couple of more days, they will miss the launch window, and launch will either be delayed 26 months, or cancelled. Of course, if you don’t believe in scientific research, no problem, eh?

24. 24 24 Al V.
    October 2, 2013 at 2:20 pm

    Oh, yeah. Steve, how much federal money does the University of Rochester receive as research grants? I tried to look on the GAO website, but it is shut down.

25. 25 25 RPLong
    October 2, 2013 at 2:43 pm

    Daniel,

    I don’t necessarily dispute anything you’re saying. My point is primarily that there is potential value in demonstrating to the average American Joe or Jane that closing a large number of government offices may not really be catastrophic, after all. If it’s not, then maybe we as a nation might consider shrinking the size and scope of government more generally.

    I don’t think you’d dispute me there, right?

26. 26 26 prior probability
    October 2, 2013 at 2:46 pm

    Too bad it’s just a “partial” shutdown … a real shutdown would have been welcome news, since that would have put an end to domestic surveillance, the “war on drugs,” and other such nonsense

27. 27 27 Daniel
    October 2, 2013 at 2:58 pm

    @RPLong,

    I thing that conversation was already well underway, thanks to the sequester cuts. I’m suggesting shuttering down parts of the government based on their immediate usefulness isn’t the best way to go about implementing these changes.

    @prior probability 26,

    A “real” shutdown would have produced mass panic when seniors weren’t receiving SS checks, doctors weren’t receiving Medicare payments, and the armed forces stopped protecting our embassies, and our borders were no longer being protected.

    I honestly don’t know what world some of you’re living in.

28. 28 28 iceman
    October 2, 2013 at 4:24 pm

    I believe Meals on Wheels is a private organization? Great plug for smaller govt – the charity state isn’t subject to shutdowns!

29. 29 29 nobody.really
    October 2, 2013 at 4:54 pm

    Congratulations, you’re not a house-bound senior who depends on Meals on Wheels for his one hot meal per day. You’re not a poor child who will go hungry because her school will not be able to feed her. You’re not a single parent who suddenly lost their only childcare and will get fired if she misses too many days.

    Sometimes the rich white male privilege bit sticks a little too hard in my craw.

    All other issues aside, I do not think the word “privilege” means what you think it means.

    Hint: When Party A pays for Party B’s hot meals, or when Party A pays for Party B’s childcare, it is Party B, not Party A, who has received a privilege.

    Always surprising to see how isolated people’s thinking can be. Even educated people. Perhaps especially educated people.

    Among the definitions listed at Merriam-Webster.com are the following:

    – Noun: the advantage that wealthy and powerful people have over other people in a society. E.g., “He had a life of wealth and privilege.”
    – Verb, transitive: to give an advantage that others do not have to (someone or something)

    Thus, Landsburg may in fact be using privilege in the manner used by Merriam-Webster if he means to refer to Party A paying for Party B’s hot meal when Party A lacks access to hot meals. But I’m not sure how this analogy applies to public assistance programs. Rather, it appears Landsburg is using privilege in the same manner the Wall Street Journal used the term “Lucky Duckies” to describe people who lacked sufficient income to trigger the need to pay federal income taxes.

    I try not to make a fetish of word usage; different people will use words differently. But the fact that Landsburg seems unacquainted with this usage of privilege suggests that he’s unacquainted with the body of work using the term in the manner described by Merriam-Webster. This may be unremarkable for an economist laboring away in some narrow, technocratic field, but it’s a more regrettable circumstance for someone propounding social theory more broadly.

    More specifically, this concept of privilege is central to many critiques of libertarianism. It’s one thing to espouse libertarianism because you find its critics unpersuasive; it’s another thing to espouse libertarianism because you’re simply unacquainted with its critics.

30. 30 30 RJ
    October 2, 2013 at 5:03 pm

    I believe Meals on Wheels is a private organization? Great plug for smaller govt – the charity state isn’t subject to shutdowns!

    yeeeeaaaah, right. Private charity isn’t near as efficacious as combining it with support from government.

31. 31 31 Mike H
    October 2, 2013 at 10:56 pm

    Can we consider the shutdown to be a little experiment in Libertarian economic theory? Of course, 2 days doesn’t prove much, but in principle, is this correct?

    If so, let’s see how it plays out.

32. 32 32 RJ
    October 3, 2013 at 2:55 am

    Can we consider the shutdown to be a little experiment in Libertarian economic theory? Of course, 2 days doesn’t prove much, but in principle, is this correct?

    No, not even close. An ideological libertarian minarchist society would almost be bare-bones governing, limited to acting as a final arbitrator in contractual disputes, providing common defense, and providing some services that the private market can’t effectively provide. From experience in discussions, it’s usually just police, fire departments, prisons, and basic infrastructure. I’ve yet to see any libertarian recommend an EPA, public schooling, healthcare, etc.

33. 33 33 nobody.really
    October 3, 2013 at 7:05 am

    “Can we consider the shutdown to be a little experiment in Libertarian economic theory?

    We can build on my standard assumption: Everything I’m ignorant about is unimportant. Then, by evaluating the depth of our ignorance about the consequences of the shutdown, we can evaluate how important those government services were. Wally, I’d like to prepare a report on the matter for our next staff meeting.”

    “I’m on it,” Wally chirped, pretending to take notes while never looking up from his coffee mug. Dilbert and Alice exchanged pained glances. Which flavor-of-the-month management book had the Boss gotten now?

34. 34 34 iceman
    October 3, 2013 at 2:59 pm

    #30 – Thx for the link, to me it makes the point that having public funds suddenly yanked away is disruptive. At least with MOW people have the option of increasing their donations (by 5% = “way more efficacious”?)
    The fear with private charity is it will miss people who need help (which is why nearly everyone supports a safety net that doesn’t breed dependency). Bureaucrats tend to design solutions bigger than the problem. Wasting resources that could have been better used to help people does not promote efficacy.

    #31 – not a good experiment b/c again reliance on existing public ‘infrastructure’ ensures going cold turkey will be problematic (this seems analogous to the basic objections to this post). Also people will likely differ on what is “essential”.

    #32 – I think libertarians widely acknowledge that environmental externalities can fall under public goods. Charles Murray is a pretty prominent example who has said he supports an EPA.

35. 35 35 Ken Arromdee
    October 3, 2013 at 4:29 pm

    People are still being required to pay taxes. A true government shutdown would have the government not only not functioning, but also not collecting taxes to pay for the functioning that it’s no longer doing.

36. 36 36 alex
    October 3, 2013 at 4:30 pm

    i dont understand some of these comments. regardless of whether its a good idea or not, people are being affected right now. you may not see it…aside from all my stocks going down 1%, i dont reall…but lets remind ourselves of basiat’s ‘unseen’.

    people have mentioned concrete examples. there are others, people who have planned for hearings and now theyre cancelled. those are real costs.

    then there are the 800,000 out of a job.

    we can argue about the merits of who deserves what from whom, but no one can seriously say that this isnt having any effects.

37. 37 37 nobody.really
    October 3, 2013 at 9:12 pm

    How the federal shutdown is going to play out:

    1. We wait until 10/17.

    2. Boehner won’t be able to do a deal; the US defaults.

    3. Except Obama then announces that he directed that a $ 1 trillion platinum coin be minted and deliverd to the Treasury, thereby extending the debt limit by $ 1 trillion or whatever. Obama acknowledges that this was a goofy manuver, but argues that default would have been goofier.

    4. The Tea Party goes apeshit and riots. Moreover, various Tea Partiers will sue, arguing that Obama has breached the law, acted like a tyrant, whatever. Everyone will see that these people, whatever their conceptual arguments, are bent on pure destruction. Because a court cannot engage in political negotiations, prevailing in the lawsuit could achieve no political ends; it would merely trash the US’s credit rating.

    5. Eventually, 24 big business Republicans will band together and nominate one of their members as the new Speaker of the House – and he’ll win with the support of all the Democrats. The new Speaker will then put the continuing resolution up for a vote, and it’ll pass overwhelmingly. Shutdown over.

    6. This will lead to a rupture in the Republican Party – and also in the Democratic Party. The new Speaker will attract the support of pro-business politicians of varying stripes. Populists will then rally to the Democratic Party, driving it leftward. Paranoid religious conservatives will retreat back into the swamp. And we’ll end up with a pro-business/crony capitalist/establishment party, and a social safety net/hippy-yippie party, and a lot of people uneducated and unaffiliated – not an unfamiliar arrangement.

    (Ok, I don’t know much about House procedural rules. Can a new majority unseat the current Speaker in the middle of his term? How would you get the vote initiated without the Speaker’s approval? Is this one of thoes “point of privilege” votes or something?)

38. 38 38 Harold
    October 4, 2013 at 5:25 am

    Well, the new Republican party will walk around almost aimlessly during daylight hours constantly biting and scratching at the irritation if you ask me.

39. 39 39 Daniel
    October 4, 2013 at 6:52 am

    @Nobody.really,

    A motion to vacate jumps to the top of the legislative line. The speaker must bring it to the floor within two days and it bypasses the rules committee. Boehner would be powerless to stop the vote.

40. 40 40 Daniel
    October 4, 2013 at 6:56 am

    http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2013/10/how-john-boehner-could-lose-his-speakership

41. 41 41 Matthew
    October 4, 2013 at 10:13 am

    You must not have a need to register an aircraft, deregister an aircraft, or file a lien with the FAA.

42. 42 42 Val
    October 5, 2013 at 12:16 am

    800k Feds. Plus a bunch more private sector contractors, some of whom will lose their jobs entirely if this goes long enough. Plus of course the service sector workers and nearby businesses.

    I live in DC; this affects the majority of people I know in one way or another.