Shutdown Cost the US Economy $24 Billion 767
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.'"
Really? (Score:2, Insightful)
How much does ObamaCare cost the economy?
Let me guess (Score:5, Insightful)
Where did that money go? (Score:5, Insightful)
Meh. Do people think before they write this junk. (Score:2, Insightful)
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.
Oh how I love this game! (Score:2, Insightful)
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!
Re:Really? (Score:5, Insightful)
How much does ObamaCare cost the economy?
Way less than the last few wars.
Re:Really? (Score:5, Insightful)
How much does having your citizens not being able to afford medical care cost the economy?
Re:Really? (Score:3, Insightful)
The same amount if the government hadn't shut down.
Re:The govenment should just double spending. (Score:4, Insightful)
Clearly the preparers of this report believe in the parable of the broken window [wikipedia.org] and think it's a great way to dig yourself out of a hole and into prosperity.
I'd be happy to help... only I seem to have misplaced my slingshot...
Re: Meh. Do people think before they write this ju (Score:2, Insightful)
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... :/
government doesn't produce anything! (Score:2, Insightful)
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.
Re:The govenment should just double spending. (Score:5, Insightful)
If shutting down the government for a few days hurts GDP noticeably, then that's your problem right there. BUt of course we knew this: government spending is almost 40% of GDP. That number is just so insane I have trouble accepting it (though most of that spending is checks mailed to old people who then spend it normally, and none of that was affected by the shutdown).
Re:Oh how I love this game! (Score:4, Insightful)
I haven't heard anyone arguing that figure. You think a government shutdown is free? Workers sitting at home are still giong to be paid for work they didn't do. Add to that this stupid stunt adds fuel the Chinese argument to move to an international (i.e. non-U.S.) financial base for the world economy that doesn't rely on our currency or bonds.
Re:Where did that money go? (Score:5, Insightful)
More like the government lost two weeks of productivity from its employees. And then there were the smaller businesses (coffee shops, dry cleaners, etc.) that didn't get their regular business since government employees were furloughed. When you have 800,000 people out of work and some other numbe rnot getting paid, people cut back on their spending. Will it pick up once government employees are paid for their time off? Probably, but it won't immediately show up (some may use it to pay back bills or penalties, some may save it in case this happens again in 3 months). Contractors that were furloughed are probably screwed out of the time they were off.
Re:The govenment should just double spending. (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, let's ignore history and pretend that there are no boom and bust cycles, and lets also ignore legitimate economics and pretend there can be no effect on those by governments.
It's a little late to solve this particular economic rut by stimulus, as we're finally making our way out of it, and it will soon be time for sane austerity. But thanks for dogmatically screwing it up before.
Re:Oh how I love this game! (Score:5, Insightful)
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!
How is it difficult to believe this number? Considering that we have to pay 800,000 people for time they didn't (couldn't) work, yet we lost 17 days of productivity from each one of them, that comes to $1764 in lost productivity per employee, not counting all kinds of other non-personnel costs. I find that number entirely reasonable, if not a bit low.
Re:Really? (Score:1, Insightful)
Bicker partisan issues all you want, it will justify neither one.
Re:Really? (Score:5, Insightful)
It helps the economy. Walmart and other businesses were forcing their under paid workers to go on public assistance to get medical. Now private companies won't have to pay.
Obama care( the 80/20) rule has forced insurance companies to give back 2 Billon dollars to the consumers in California. I received money back as well as some firends. who are self-insured.
Obamacare law has passed. Attempting now to defund a passed law was a failed exercise by the right-wing tea party. Moderate Republicans also called the tea party,"loony", "crazy".
The Tea Party almost undermined the US dollar and any idiot who thinks that is a good idea needs to jump in front of a train.
Re:Meh. Do people think before they write this jun (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Let me guess (Score:5, Insightful)
No, that's not fair. The democrats weren't the rape victim in this analogy. That'd be the rest of us. They're the frat brother calmly trying to talk the other one out of raping us while they do it.
Re:Really? (Score:2, Insightful)
Um, no... the ACA created an environment which the insurance companies and doctors responded to... ditto goes for UPS dropping spouses from coverage due to the ACA: http://www.businessinsider.com/ups-dropping-spouses-health-coverage-2013-8 [businessinsider.com] (to name just one of many such outcomes).
Sure, by yelling 'Fire!' in a crowded theater you are not directly killing people... but the obvious results of such an action are still on you, don't blame herd mentality (in the case of fire) or rational thought (in response to the ACA) for unfortunate but entirely predictable outcomes.
Which is the same reason we are seeing rather expensive plans on the exchanges (and elsewhere)... assuming you can sign up and browse.
Hold on there, my dear sir. (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re: Really? (Score:5, Insightful)
In my country, 20% of my income goes to health care, and everyone finds it normal.
It's the Americans that are weird.
They did it for "branding purposes" (Score:5, Insightful)
The shutdown was for nothing more than 'branding' of their party [crooksandliars.com].
That's not governance in any way shape or form...
Any GOP congressman who voted for the shutdown should be arrested.
Re:Democrats directly responsible for most losses (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually you can blame Joe Boehner for following the "Hastert Rule" and not allowing the budget bill to come up for a vote even though there was enough support for it to pass in the first place.
Partisan politics aside, you can't rule your house in an undemocratic manner and expect people to take you seriously when you blame the other party for all the trouble.
Re: Really? (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually they have been paying way more than us, well at least the people who where paying their insurance/hospitalbills.
Re:Really? (Score:5, Insightful)
It's bullshit that this is a -1. This is a legitimate question. When people with no healthcare wait until they need emergency services and then can't pay it that cost is picked up by all of us. If those people can get healthcare before it gets so bad for expensive ER visits it saves EVERYONE money.
Re:Let me guess (Score:5, Insightful)
Considering that the shutdown was part of the GOPs stated strategy months ago, I wonder why they might get the blame?
No really, you can't pin the whole blame on me for robbing the liquor store! if that asshole hadn't opened a liquor store, I never would have robbed him! Send HIM to jail!
Re:Really? (Score:5, Insightful)
If the American position is truly "let them die and get it over with", then America as a society is pretty much fucked and deserves what they get.
But don't go around the world pretending like you're the defenders of human rights and liberties. The rest of the world doesn't buy into your myths about yourselves.
Re:Really? (Score:5, Insightful)
Free market health care is NOT the most economically efficient.
A free market only functions when both parties have approximately equal negotiating power, are fully informed and not under threat.
By its nature, healthcare decisions are almost always made under threat of a cost to ones health or life, and since the alternative is to die, the victim...patient has no negotiating power.
Re:Really? (Score:5, Insightful)
Only the emergency part, no ongoing care. Nothing preventative ... just enough to say you occasionally provide some medical care.
Or, you know, you invest in preventative medicine so it doesn't come down to "sorry, you're terminal, we don't care". So instead of waiting to force people to go for meager emergency care, actually work to have a healthy population like the rest of the civilized world tries to do. Because then those people might actually be working and contributing to your economy instead of waiting to die.
No, this is why I'm glad I don't live in America, where if you're rich you can have anything you want, and if you're poor you're 'surplus population'.
The rest of the world looks at the US stance on this and shakes their heads. But, hey, if America wants to be known as heartless bastards where life is cheap, that's your choice.
Re:Really? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Really? (Score:5, Insightful)
How much does ObamaCare cost the economy?
An extra $24B now, thanks to those incompetent assholes in Washington.
Re: Really? (Score:1, Insightful)
So that's sending $600 million dollars of jobs and infrastructure straight out of the US economy because
Re:Oh how I love this game! (Score:5, Insightful)
Lost productivity? Those are non essential people, there was no productivity lost in reality. Are you going to make up something about how they were spinning gold or some such to claim that "no really they are very productive people"? Don't get me wrong, I'm sure every one of those people do the best they can at their jobs, so I don't mean that as a personal insult to them. My claim is that those people are non essential people. They are not required for defending our borders from a massive invasion, they are not required to judge legal matters, they are not required to mitigate our laughable trade imbalance, and they are not required for other members of society to perform their daily activities.
There is of course a red herring where you could claim that a service industry that relies on that many Government workers suffered. It's a false argument of course, because if we took away those non-essential jobs and returned the tax money to those of us that pay, that service industry would make the same amount of money.
Now to the other point you made in "Considering that we have to pay 800,000 people for time they didn't (couldn't) work", this is another line of crap from politicians. We don't "have" to pay them! This was a politician's decision to GIVE them money. Many of them are going to get Unemployment in addition to getting PTO. We didn't have to give them anything, but a politician chose to give them YOUR TAX MONEY! Makes you feel good don't it?
I don't think you understand the difference between non-essential and non-productive. For instance, the FDA was considered non-essential because the country could still function for a while without food inspection (or so they thought, a few thousand people who recently got salmonella might disagree if they could get away from the toilet long enough to post). Systems might need to be upgraded -- anyone working on improvements to existing infrastructure would be considered non-essential. As for the "paid time off" argument.. Well, they didn't exactly ask for this time off, did they? If you were working at a private employer and they said "we can't pay you, and you can go home, but we promise to pay you back at some indeterminate time in the future", would you consider that a paid vacation? I wouldn't. I would consider that time to look for a better employer. I was a federal employee for 3 years, but I left 6 months ago for the private sector because the benefits, pay, and stability of a federal job were terrible. I'll say that again, the benefits, pay, and stability of a federal job is significantly worse than in the private sector.
Complain all you want about government employees, but at the end of the day most of them bust their ass for people like yourself who demand that they all be fired.
Re:Really? (Score:5, Insightful)
You have a very odd definition of "minor". Caring for injured veterans for the rest of their lives will cost most of a trillion dollars.
FY2003 Supplemental: Operation Iraqi Freedom: Passed April 2003; Total $78.5 billion, $54.4 billion Iraq War
FY2004 Supplemental: Iraq and Afghanistan Ongoing Operations/Reconstruction: Passed November 2003; Total $87.5 billion, $70.6 billion Iraq War
FY2004 DoD Budget Amendment: $25 billion Emergency Reserve Fund (Iraq Freedom Fund): Passed July 2004, Total $25 billion, $21.5 billion (estimated) Iraq War
FY2005 Emergency Supplemental: Operations in the War on Terror; Activities in Afghanistan; Tsunami Relief: Passed April 2005, Total $82 billion, $58 billion (estimated) Iraq War
FY2006 Emergency Supplemental: Operations Global War on Terror; Activities in Iraq & Afghanistan: Passed February 2006, Total $72.4 billion, $60 billion (estimated) Iraq War
FY2007 Emergency Supplemental (proposed) $100 billion
FY2008 Bush administration has proposed around $190 billion for the Iraq War and Afghanistan[6]
FY2009 Obama administration has proposed around $130 billion in additional funding for the Iraq War and Afghanistan.[7]
FY2010 Obama administration proposes around $159.3 billion for the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.[8]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financial_cost_of_the_Iraq_War
Re: Really? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: Really? (Score:5, Insightful)
A great and historic statement and still true, in your mom's basement or your SoCal estate, you don't live on your own.
Evidence from countries with a functioning public health care shows that compared to the present US system costs can be dramatically reduced.
Re:Really? (Score:5, Insightful)
UPS dropping spouses from coverage due to the ACA: http://www.businessinsider.com/ups-dropping-spouses-health-coverage-2013-8 [businessinsider.com] [businessinsider.com] (to name just one of many such outcomes).
"UPS has decided, as a result of increased costs and provisions of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), to stop covering employee's spouses who can get coverage from their own employer..."
Why do you see that as a problem? It only makes to me that they would want to quit carrying burdens that other employers should be shouldering.
Re:Really? (Score:5, Insightful)
Raising and educating people costs a lot of money. It's a loss to the economy and country as a whole if someone drops dead at age 50 from a preventable illness. That's at least 15 years of lost tax revenue and use of the education, not to mention possible passing on of that expertise to future generations.
IMHO Life Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness is a lot harder without healthcare. The well-being of citizens should be one of the primary goals of governance, and as such shouldn't be profited upon by corporations.
Re: Really? (Score:4, Insightful)
A couple of thousand years.
Re: Really? (Score:5, Insightful)
Somehow Americans have been led to believe that they're the caretakers of world and that they represent democracy and all that is just worldwide, but the truth is, everywhere their army goes, it's rejected and is doing more harm than anything else, because people do fine on their own with their own way of living.
All the world has been asking is for the US to leave the rest of the world on its own.
Re: Really? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: Really? (Score:5, Insightful)
funny I was making $33k a year and health care was costing me $6k annually. with a pretty much guaranteed 10% increase annually.
I don't know why anti ACA (Obamcare branding is a product of the conservative media) people think the health care industry is okay when they boost rate 10% annually and have done so for at least 15 years. (the lowest increase I have received was 7%, the highest was 15%)
And that was crappy health insurance with a $2000 deductible before it would cover ANYTHING.
50 million people in the USA couldn't afford any healthcare period. how is the "greatest nation" fail to take care of it's own.
I don't even like the ACA. I personally think most employers should get out of the health care and retirement system altogether. My boss doesn't have to sponsor my Auto insurance. Why do they have to sponsor my health insurance?
Re: Really? (Score:3, Insightful)
Socialism doesn't work well in a society which publicly refers to their poorest citizens as trash, or differentiates between worthwhile citizens and said trash.
Then again, neither does a democracy or a republic.
Re: Really? (Score:5, Insightful)
The fact that you have the opportunity to succeed beyond your wildest dreams or crash and burn because you can't compete.
You're so right. There are no entrepreneurs in Canada, Britain, Germany, Japan or France. Heck, look at Korea - Samsung, Daewoo and LG are definitely run by socialist pussies.
Re: Really? (Score:5, Insightful)
Because they have a vested interest in you staying healthy. That is not infecting other workers and being as productive as possible. It makes financial sense to sponsor better and faster access to health care because losses from having worker not have health care of have access to health care gated by long queues would cause more losses.
Many EU countries have similar system, where you have a state system, and employer can sponsor their workers to get into private clinic that specializes in work place related sickness only as opposed to general practitioner who handles everything (including everything else for said worker).
Re:Really? (Score:4, Insightful)
Obama has been elected twice by using the Affordable Care Act as a major part of his platform. America has spoken, twice. Apparently they'll need to speak at least a third time for you to listen.
Re: Really? (Score:2, Insightful)
Dude, some bearded guys managed to bring down 2 of yours skyscrapers and you needed the rest of the world to help you attacking countries that weren't even responsible for that.
Re: Really? (Score:2, Insightful)
Because the single payer VA system has done such a poor job taking care of our war fighters?
Or maybe it's because Social Security is nothing but a ponzi scheme that's slated to be insolvent in a dozen years?
But no, I'm sure you have a ton of valid reasons why the government has done a spectacularly poor job with their existing "single payer" healthcare system and retirement system.
Why take a system where you're paying for your own retirement and attempt to filter it through the leviathan of the federal government? Let me guess, you don't have a 401k.
Why would you take a system that a vast majority of the population is satisfied with, massively increase the cost for the sake of a tiny minority who should already be covered by the existing Medicare system? Unless... you're only interested in having the government envelope more and more of the private economy, and you really have no interest in providing "cheaper" or "better" health care.
I think at this point we can agree that government run health care is more expensive and worse quality. If you ask for proof I give you the VA.
Re: Really? (Score:5, Insightful)
Those people you call parasitic thrash are trying to do the best they can do in their situation. The same YOU would be doing if you were ever to wind up in their situation.
The problem is not the fairly small amount of economic refugees taking bits off of the bottom of the economy, it's the established upper 1% that are milking the sheeple for all they have that are the problem. They're the parasites; the economic refugees usually take on the jobs you probably feel above doing.
Looks like they've done a good job convincing you that the problem is caused by the 'parasitic thrash'. You would have been a great asset to the NSDAP some 70 years ago. Now pick up that can citizen, get in line and show me your papers.