budget

If there is a government shutdown then I will have dodged a bullet with the new job. Reading here and there if they can't make a compromise next week then stuff shuts down on the 4th, which was the day I originally gave as my last. I later agreed to stay on until the 8th, which will be moot, if they tell me not to come to work on those days. It would suit me, but I would rather not put everyone else at The Bureau through that for a couple of days off. Although apparently regular workers eventually get back pay, whereas contractors (such as myself) do not. Yet another in a long series of reasons why being a contractor sucks ass, and a good reason to be starting a job where I am not a contractor.

Some commentators are pointing out how Republicans lost this argument rather badly back in 1995, and the many Republican newbies in the House may not entirely appreciate that episode today. I think public opinion could go either way. I think the Republicans lost the PR war in 1995 in part because Newt shot himself in the foot. It is hard to say which side voters or the media will take in the weeks following if there is a shutdown. Right now at least some senior Democrats are talking about a shutdown and at least some Republicans are talking about a compromise. Without taking a side, I don't think it will be good for party X (where X is either Democrat or Republican) if they are perceived to be the ones forcing the shutdown. A week is a long time in politics, though so it matters more what the perception is in the weeks that follow.

I think the lack of historical memory on the part of the newbie House members is a good point though. I was listening to Planet Money the other day and they were reading a diary written by someone living through the great depression, and the Planet Money reporters were continuously surprised about how the observations were relevant to today's crisis. I'm not really surprised though, I see the Great Depression being exceptional primarily in its size and scope.

When I was in Australia I remember Alan Kohler showing a graph on the (Australian) ABC news once, depicting various depressions and recessions as a function of time over the past 100 years or so. I can't precisely remember how this was measured, or what the units were, so maybe it was all made up, but you could easily see that something bad to terrible happened about once a generation. Kohler's point was that once the last disaster fades from the collective memory we become susceptible to creating the next one. Anyone who had a grandparent who lived through the Depression should be able to understand this. Kohler always had interesting graphs and observations to make.

hawaii