The Government Shutdown
As of January 2019, Donald Trump and the US Congress have at least for now ended the US the longest government shut down in US history. While that has far-reaching effects all over the nation (such as the billions of dollars it cost) and even beyond, one of the most crucial issues being furloughed government workers. While it's easy to have sympathy for someone is such a situation, many people may not even realize the full extent of the issue. Not all federal workers were just without work until the government reopened, some were forced to work anyway, with their pay restricted until the shutdown ended. While anyone working without their usual paychecks is going to find the situation undesirable, the real victims are the workers and their families that were living paycheck to paycheck before. Even though these workers will be given back pay, workers who lived paycheck to paycheck found themselves unable to make ends meet. It doesn't matter that they will eventually be compensated. Their rent, their bills, their expenses, needed to be paid then. While many furloughed workers have decided to take up other jobs while they're waiting for the government to reopen, those who are still expected to work don't have that "luxury." They couldn't get another job, they already had one that wasn't paying. It's a brutal situation for someone to be stuck in, but other than avoiding shutdowns all together, there seems to be no answer to keeping government workers out of this temporary "slavery" anytime a shutdown rolls around.
https://www.latimes.com/opinion/editorials/la-ed-government-shutdown-20190124-story.html
https://www.latimes.com/opinion/editorials/la-ed-government-shutdown-20190124-story.html
I agree with you on this. I think it is so sad that the government was shut down just because Trump wanted to get his way. All of those government workers deserved to get paid for doing their jobs, and the shut down stopped this from happening. I think that the government shutdown makes prevalent a very important realization; the fact that the same government workers who protect us before we go on airplanes are dependent on the government to get paid every month, while the rest of us are dependent on people who can't shut down the government. This is one of the many reasons why the government shutdown was not only unfair, but completely unnecessary and without a doubt, foolish. As people, I feel that we have a moral obligation to keep something like this from ever happening again.
ReplyDeleteThis is a very interesting topic and I think it becomes much more personal and relatable to an average person when one focuses on the effect the government shutdown has on employees. I think that most people don't realize the amount of people that are affected by the shutdown because their pay was halted and although there were many who could get a different job for the time being, that was not the case for all. Some people either had to work without pay but others would have a very hard time getting a different job because they had no idea when the shutdown would end whether it be the next day or in a month.
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