The Sequester is looming—$85 Billion (with a B!!) in spending cuts, put in place in 2011, started kicking in as of Friday, March 1st. Unless Democrats and Republicans can come together and reach a deal, cuts that will total $1.1 Trillion (With a T?!?!) will go into effect over time. That means air traffic controllers, education, and basically every single thing you could ever imagine.
Interestingly, no one seems to care. I mean, not no one. Politicians appear to be busying themselves blaming one another as the reason a deal wasn’t struck before Friday. But the sequester isn’t exactly a hot topic at your local Starbucks.
Last week, Gawker tried to engage Americans in discussion about the sequester in the best way the media has found to reach Americans—through Kate Upton and Ryan Gosling, whose unwitting photographs narrate an easy-to-understand explanation of what’s happening.
So, if the dream team of Upton/Gosling can’t convince you to care, and you’re uninspired by the Funny or Die parody above, what do you think will do it?
Why do you think the average American isn’t more alarmed about the consequences of the sequester? Have we just given up?
About Joanna Schroeder
Trust me, those of us who work for the Department of Defense ARE indeed “Crapping our Pants.” And for very good reasons. This is going to GUT more jobs and industries than I care to imagine. It is a very rash and foolish error. It has reached a meltdown point and the solutions are outside any bounds of common sense or economic wisdom.
Good. The most horrifically corrupt sector in our government (and in the economy, second only to financial sector) is crapping it’s pants.
Perhaps you should all order fewer weapons systems we’ll never use (or need, even if we did use them)? Maybe you’ll funnel less money into your corporate boards you all go to work for when you ‘retire’? Maybe you’ll stop treating the general fund as your own personal vacation savings accounts? Maybe you’ll stop inventing excuses to blow brown people into chunky salsa in deserts none of you will ever see, and that you couldn’t even pick on a map?
I have no beef with your pensions, nor with your unions. But the people who stand behind you are a cancer on this country. Sometimes you have excise living tissue to cut a cancer out.
Have we just given up?
Speaking for myself… yeah, pretty much. Call me a cynic, or unpatriotic, or whatever name you want, but at 25 I’ve come to the conclusion that no amount of enthusiasm or outrage on my part has any effect whatsoever on what happens in Washington, D.C. It’s wasted energy to be upset about these things. The sequester is the gruesome punchline to the joke that is partisan politics, a joke I never understood to begin with. So why bang my head against a wall about money I’ll never see? Why waste my time on a feeble attempt to influence my representatives at the Capitol?
I live in Ohio. Guess who rep’s me in Congress? John Boehner. What’s a girl to do…
I do feel sympathy for all those who will be directly effected by the sequester. But sympathy is all I have to offer… not panic, or outrage, or passion, or purpose, or action. I have very low expectations of my government. Sometimes they come through and surprise me, and I’m grateful. But for the most part, I find pessimism is more accurate than blind faith & hope when it comes to these matters.
And I’d venture a guess that this isn’t getting much attention at Starbucks for similar reasons – that feeling that this is going to happen whether we like it or not, whether we do something or not, and in the meantime we’d all just like to get on with our days, please.
Besides, compared to the austerity measures in some Euro Zone countries that have unemployment above 26%, I guess it’s hard to take our little budget cuts too seriously. Maybe it’s time for our own taste of austerity. Sucks, doesn’t it. Such is life.
Given up? Yeah, pretty much. The federal government has masked enormous structural flaws in our economy for too many years now with infusions of borrowed money. The longer we let it go on, the harsher the ultimate reckoning. So that’s our choice: Some pain now while we still have some resources to deal with the crisis, or much worse pain later when we’re much less able to deal with it.
President Obama said “This is not going to be an apocalypse. It’s just dumb.”
“The greatest nation on earth doesn’t conduct its business in month to month increments, or by careening from crisis to crisis,” Obama said.
“It is absolutely true that this is not going to precipitate the type of crisis with the country defaulting…but people are going to be hurt,” he said. “The economy will not grow as quickly as it would have, unemployment will not go down as quickly as it would have, and there are lives behind that.”
The above isn’t exactly what was being presented by the media BEFORE the sequester.
“The above isn’t exactly what was being presented by the media BEFORE the sequester.”
I think that plays into my feelings of ambivalence/apathy about the sequester. All the warnings and projections pre-sequester didn’t make me panic – if anything, it sounded like the same old, same old hyperbolic fearmongering and had the opposite effect, leaving me skeptical and cynical. After the “debt ceiling” crisis and the “fiscal cliff” crisis and the accompanying media hysteria, I think the public is growing deaf to calls for panic.
I think the reason this topic is not all the rage in America is because most of us feel little control over what our government does any more. I vote, voted in last election and it still did not make a difference. I am afraid most Americans are looking for the person who promises the most, whether or not the person follows through in those promises does not seem to matter and so we will continue to have the same type of government, same problems.
No, Americans should not be crapping in our pants over the sequester.
In less than 30 years, America has gone from the worlds largest creditor nation to the worlds largest debtor nation. Why? One simple word: debt.
The sequester cuts a lousy $85 Bil from a projected 2013 deficit of $1 Tril plus. A lot of fuss is being made about nothing. What this sequester has done is for the first time made a symbolic cut in outlays for 2013. However, we are still spending more in 2013 than we spent in 2012. And the projected 2013 is still $1 Tril. The whole thing is a charade.
My boomer generation has really shown our penchant for me me me at the expense of their children. I think we are in for a rude awakening if we really think our children are going to pay 50% of their income to clean up a mess their parents made. Do not hold your breath.
JMO.
Not an American citizen. I do however, spend many hours each and every day studying your economy, your politics, and your media. And more hours studying Euroland (delusionville) and China/India.
The level of financial and economic knowledge that your media appears to possess, is downright frightening. Appealing to Kate Upton and Ryan Gosling to ‘sell’ a narrative about the same is so grotesque, that I feel I have slipped down a rabbit-hole.
First, this sequester as an austerity program is a joke. It is closer to being denied a third twinkie, when you need a healthy diet. The sequester cuts will actually make close to no difference, since they will not be adhered to anyway. I say this because, we did this in Canada in the nineties. What happened? They fired a bunch of people, then rehired them as ‘consultants’ at a higher rate. Then later they turned around and KEPT the consultants AND replaced the fired workers with new workers. The amount of fraud that went on, relative to the cuts that were supposed to be made, was astonishing. The savings came by cutting transfers to the subordinate levels of government, in our case, provinces, in yours, states. Sadly, many of your states are insolvent, and technically bankrupt many times over.
The most effective way to cut government spending is to eliminate departments with hiring authority completely. That is not going to happen here. Will there be some token cases of partial furloughing, wage cuts, or even job cuts. Sure. For a month.
If I were you, I would not be worrying about the sequester, or even the CR nonsense that will be along in a week or two.
Start worrying about the new regime in China, and their stance of buying US debt issues. They are less concerned about propping up the exporting manufacturers, and so less interested in defending their peg by buying debt. They are a LOT more interested in spending those reserves by resource properties in Africa, South America, and Canada. Then watch what ugly really looks like.
Have you noticed the Italian election, and the popularity of the 5 Star movement there? Does that bother you?
I am a victim of crisis fatigue and distrust. Even if this one is a bad as reported, I don’t trust any source to give me objective information based on the chicken little coverage of the last half dozen fiscal and social crisis.
One side is acting like they are still trying to get elected and the other like there is no such thing as elections. Neither is willing to go to their voter base and tell them they are putting a herd of sacred cows into the butcher house and that’s the only way to actually do anything that will make a long term difference.
I just want our politician to stop selling KKZ and my kids future. I’d almost be happy to eat the 20% pay cut I’ll take during the furlough if I actually thought it would help us on a path to a future that doesn’t keep looking more and more like Greece.
Rampant excess n corruption, spending trillions on illegal wars, allowing banks n stock companies to play foul with huge amounts of peoples money to get so bad as to be bailed out, geee I wonder what could possibly go wrong. How about slowing down the American Empire’s Military Machine n taking care of home first? Address the jobs issue, get rid of absolute bullshit and quite frankly criminal costs of medicine like 50grand+ for snake antivenom which costs a hundred bucks in Mexico. $500 hammers and $900 toilet seats or whatever excessive spending goes on needs to be cut too.
Problem is the major cuts happen so quick that it can take a while to adjust, in Australia we’re having some high levels of budget cuts like in Queensland where many many thousands of public servants got fired and in Australia hospitals are getting their budget cut too. Hopefully in the future governments will be better with their spending…