Remember the ATCs never recovered from the staffing shortage when Reagan fired them for striking on working conditions. The conditions have not improved the hiring has never caught up. Rates of alcholalism from work induced stress is extremely high and they have been showing up for work while not getting paid.
Anyone who calls all public sector people lazy or entitled, remember ATCs are government workers do work extremely hard and most log extensive overtime. These are government workers and they are American Heros through and through
It's wild ATC isn't funded by use fees instead of being appropriated by congress. Seems like a good opportunity to provide some mechanism so the government has to shit or get off the pot, because if the government won't do the job the airlines would surely be glad to pay for the service themselves.
This seems to be a somewhat inefficient system. There is no absolute need to consider aviation fees to be taxes and collect them through a federal agency.
Individual airports should be capable of financing their local ATC as they see fit, be it their own airport fees or, IDK, a surcharge on hamburgers sold in the local McD or a gift from a wealthy sponsor; and they should only have a duty to maintain certain technical standards.
There’s a whole network of radars and communication centers that are not part of any specific airport. How would you fund that through use fees at an airport?
On the other hand, if the fees corresponded to actual use, that would mean that the infrastructure along the most frequented corridors would automatically be the best funded one, which would probably be overall positive.
In the US system, any revenue collection needs to be authorized by Congress. In fact, it is one of the arguments currently being argued in front of the Supreme Court about the tariffs.
It's a perfectly fine system. It just relies on our elected representatives not playing a game of chicken to get what they want, and act in the best interests of the country. Unfortunately, for a whole lot of reasons, they haven't been able to do this intermittently since the mid nineties.
And I do not use "fucking around" lightly. The FAA's repeatedly delayed and ineffective upgrade effort makes even the original healthcare.gov look like the Apollo program.
Certain is a strong word, but in many other contexts, this is the actually used system, even in aviation. The FAA requires certain standards of maintenance for aircraft, for example, but individual mechanics aren't FAA employees.
Yeah, maintenance seems extremely different from ATC though. Defining and enforcing maintenance standards is trivial and happens well outside the second-to-second operational loop of aircraft actually coordinating.
> the airlines would surely be glad to pay for the service themselves.
No, they would be glad to increase fares so that the flying customers pay for the service themselves. Currently, ATC is subsidized by all tax payers. Your method moves the burden to only those that pay for fares. I'm just pointing it out not saying it is good/bad.
That's probably better anyway. Air fares should cover the costs of flying. It's already a very profitable activity: it's much more efficient than the alternatives, and flying provides much value to passengers. So why can't the industry fund itself?
For distances <120 km, cars are often quicker than trains, and for >900km planes are, but in between trains are often quickest (assuming infrastructure is actually present).
Ok sure the airlines themselves aren't managing to capture the profit from the overall activity (I assume because of intense competition in that part of the value chain) but what about the gains of everyone else involved? For instance the value to passengers is greater than the cost of the airfare, or they wouldn't buy a ticket in the first place. And all the others who make money from it.
I think the argument is that if you take the airline industry as whole (so not just airlines, but aircraft manufacturers, travel agencies, airports, all the concessions there, ...) it's still very profitable.
And if you add the value to the customers, then it's through the roof.
Maybe the reverse is more clear: if air travel didn't exist, it would have a huge economic impact; a clear proof of the value creation. Airlines just happen to capture essentially 0% of it.
For whom? Historically, aviation has not been a profitable industry over its lifetime[0]. The companies that still fly are basically just a combination of "survivorship bias" and "newbies still somehow subsidized".
We're looking at today's companies like you'd look at the half-season cast of Squid Game and thinking "this group seems to be thriving, I guess". That only works if you disregard everything that's happened before now and what will likely happen for the rest of the season.
It is kind of wild that airports themselves don't straight up pay for this. I can understand not wanting to privatize it, as they'll be liable to half-ass it, but surely a usage fee on flights would cover it?
I wonder if this is because bigger airports near major cities and businesses would basically be subsidizing tons of airports in the middle of nowhere, and some people don't want to admit that?
Most airports in the middle of nowhere aren’t controlled.
There are something like 530 ATC towers in the USA out of 5000 or so public airports. 20,000 if we include anything that can be described as an airstrip.
Your wider point still stands though, probably something like 20% of the airports handle 80% of the traffic.
It seems logical that the government should have a lot of control over preventing air disasters. If we allow air traffic control to be turned over to the lowest bidder, then we can expect a lot more incidents, especially at smaller airports that don't attract a lot of traffic.
Commercial airline passengers are not the only users of ATC. If you include mail and parcel carriers and other use cases like med-evac, tourist, and other private flights, you are probably close to 100% coverage of US taxpayers in the country.
The problem isn't that ATC is funded by the government; it's that the government has been taken over by people who don't believe government should exist.
This is a fundamental failure state that it is impossible for any realistic governmental structure to protect against. The best we can do is put in place safeguards to make it harder.
And...we did. It's just that over the past 40 years or so (and increasingly so over the past 15ish), those safeguards have been systematically eroded by the Republican Party, both socially and legally.
From what I understand, ATC also covers military flights in the US, which gives a pretty good national security reason to have central control over it... at least when a particular party isn't intentionally trying to destroy it along with various other government functions.
Remember, the pain this is causing everyone means less to the people in power than does the benefits of this shutdown (to them). We can argue about what those benefits are all day long, but they wouldn't be refusing to have discussions with the Dems if there were not some benefit, be it political power they can wield, or whatever.
The problem is that it's existential for both Democrats and Republicans. Given the current makeup of the federal government, Republicans basically have all the power and have been able to leverage that into spending the last 10 months doing whatever they want. The exception to that power is the Democrats' ability to filibuster in the Senate and shut down the government by not agreeing to whatever the Republicans put forward.
The actual demands I think are essentially irrelevant. If Republicans give up anything to the Democrats, the spell of the last 10 months is broken and Republicans can no longer unilaterally control the direction of government. If Democrats don't get any concessions, they're essentially irrelevant for the next 14 months and that only changes if they win either the House or Senate in 2026. Given that, it's not obvious how this ends.
It's not existential for the Republicans. THEY ARE NOT SUPPOSED TO BE ABLE TO DO ANYTHING THEY WANT. This setup is essentially anti-democratic, which is why they are able to murder hundreds of thousands of aids patients in Africa and kill 'future you' through their cancelling the bulk of investment in life sciences.
> The problem is that it's existential for both Democrats and Republicans.
> If Republicans give up anything to the Democrats, the spell of the last 10 months is broken and Republicans can no longer unilaterally control the direction of government.
How is that in any way shape or form “existential”? Existential means “if they fail they cease to exist or matter”, not “if they fail they don’t get to whatever the fuck they want”.
It's interesting how the effects of filter bubbles are playing out here. Everyone believes that they have the upper hand and the majority of the American people are on their side, because computerized personalization shows them only opinions from people who agree with them. As a result, they think that the negative popular opinion for the shutdown will fall primarily on the other party, and so it is rational for them to continue the shutdown until the other party blinks. Of course, the other party has the same information distortion in the opposite direction, so they also believe that if they just keep going, the American public will blame their opponents.
In reality, the public is pretty close to split down the middle, and both parties are getting blamed, and the real message that people are taking away from this is that Congress is dysfunctional. It's a game of chicken where both parties think that the other side will blink, and so they just end up crashing.
Reminds me of the dysfunction the Roman Republic towards the end of it’s time.
It’s not unique to the US however, I think maybe we are all approaching the end of the line for current political/civil systems without further work that no one seems interested in taking.
The shutdown is a temporary budget squabble in a stable democracy; a banal political stunt that has happened every few years for the past few decades.
Rome’s dysfunction meant civil wars, assassinations, generals seizing poWer, private armies, and uprising (in a fundamentally different society where, incidentally, over 25% of the population was slaves.)
There has been over 2000 years of history since Rome… when a the only analogy a person can come up with is some half-baked allusion to the Roman Empire/Republic it’s a good bet said person lacks a sense of history, knowledge of current events, and common sense.
Assassination & attempted assassinations have all happened within 12ish months.
You’ve got an executive branch stacking all open positions in judicial and legislative branches with their political appointees. And the executive is interpreting the law to gather as much power as possible to the head of state.
It’s not hard to see the parallels but you keep on trucking dude.
> You’ve got an executive branch stacking all open positions in judicial and legislative branches with their political appointees.
The judicial branch is composed of Judges who are confirmed by the Senate… not the executive branch.
And there are no ‘Legislative branch’ appointees.
I assume you mean the executive branch is making appointments to the executive branch? Who would you prefer to make such appointments? The Postal Serice?
None of which has anything to do with the ‘last days of the Roman Republic.’
Feel free to panic and tear your hair out… that’s what both sides do. Boring. The post, however, make some pretentious analogy to the Roman Republic. The analogy was silly. That’s all. It’s just an annoying variant of Godwins law: Rome or Hitler… the only two analogies available to those ignorant of history.
I mean they wouldn't talk to democrats before the shutdown so it seems entirely reasonable for them not to talk to them afterwards.
I still find it (morbidly) hilarious that congress considers doing their job the "nuclear option". If they weren't hiding behind the filibuster and started legislating maybe their approval rating wouldn't be such trash.
I don’t know US specifically but I know a bit about Canadian air traffic controllers. It’s a high stress but very well paying job with good pension etc. But I suspect there’s not a lot of opportunity to change to another job and get the same pay and benefits. So I guess I wonder what the end game is in resigning? Is it just people taking some pre-specified early retirement option, is it early career people that just are cutting their losses? Unless I’m missing something it seems like for someone mid career at least, waiting it out seems like the only real option.
Not really ATC specific, but at some point most people in most jobs can't deal with indefinitely not getting paid and will have to go do something else even if they don't have a good backup plan. Working retail, driving for Uber, etc, all have vastly better ROI at the moment than working ATC getting a $0 paycheck. In theory they'll get backpay and have better future earnings prospects than leaving for an uncertain career change. But that's probably not as comforting as it should be since it's uncertain when that will happen, or even if, since the government has unnecessarily gone out of its way to cast doubt on the promise of backpay.
If they are allowed at work when they are not being paid, why don’t the airlines create a fund where they just pay them something so they can survive the shut down? IIRC the shutdown isn’t happening that often, they probably can just put money in it and use it when needed
Didn't DOGE/Musk try this or at least talk about it? Like modernizing the whole system or something? I don't think the turn around time on such a conversion would be very quick. I'm not sure there are thousands of qualified controllers waiting in the wings private sector, though maybe I'm wrong about that.
Curbing air traffic at major airports by 10% -- seems like this change alone would cause enough upheaval and disruption to everyday operations that it would offset any incremental relief from slightly lower traffic volume.
I heard a radio report that said something like 25,000-30,000 flights a day, so 10% would still be 2-3 thousand flights per day canceled. They said a majority of these would be the smaller legs from smaller airports to the larger hubs. The flights from hub to larger cities would be less impacted. However it breaks down, 2-3 thousand flights a day is a lot of flight crews not working, and similar cascading effects. So not only an inconvenience for travelers, but some people are going to take a financial hit because of this
Laws are irrelevant if they are not enforced. Laws are being very slowly or very selectively enforced these days, while some of the powers that be are flagrantly breaking laws.
> Will they get their salaries and some extra compensation for the tardiness?
Theoretically, yes. Just regular pay plus OT that they are owed. No bonus or extra compensation.
Also, most of these folks can fairly easily get low interest loans from banks or credit cards that will be due when they get back pay.
Part of this story is not being told, but I’m not sure what part.
Were these folks who were about to retire anyway?
Were these folks who plan on getting hired back when the government reopens?
I’m not sure, but I don’t think the complete story is being told here (not necessarily with malice or intent).
>Are there any laws that protect labour in the US?
Air traffic controllers are famously a group of people who were just mass fired for striking. These days the laws in the US actually protect the airlines from them by making it illegal for them to strike.
why are traffic controllers government employees at all? wouldn't it be better for the government to maintain a standards/licensing body and only have a couple on staff as a "traffic controllers of last resort" during emergencies?
when an traffic controller quits, what job can they go to? clearly not another airport
It's probably because a lot of smaller airports in the middle of nowhere would be hard to get coverage for. The current system sends controllers to where they are needed, not to where people want to work.
Now, should more productive parts of the country be subsidizing air travel in less productive parts of the country? That's for you to decide.
There's more of a need to not have planes hit each other and cover areas with wreckage.
I can just imagine the hilarity if air-space was sold off to the highest bidder and then some of the smaller airports may decide to host advertising blimps in their share of the airspace and then charge plane companies extra to navigate around them.
"Now, should more productive parts of the country be subsidizing air travel in less productive parts of the country? That's for you to decide."
I would say "no", personally. In the absence of a subsidy, the network of the rural airports would likely become sparser, but the surviving ones would have better economy and, as a result, infrastructure too.
Isn't that arguably want rural communities want, however? I believe they're the strongest advocates of small government, less subsidies and pulling oneself (ie, their community) up by their bootstraps, regardless of what reality is.
Why would it be better to have this job be driven by profit?
It's a service provided to the public. Seems like a natural fit for being run by government. The only thing is this funding situation for this government is dumb. Otherwise we wouldn't be talking about it.
> It's a service provided to the public. Seems like a natural fit for being run by government.
I don't understand this part of your reasoning. It sounds like you are saying it is a service provided to the public therefore it is a natural fit for being run by the government. Do I understand your reasoning right?
Because if so: A lot of services are provided to the public. For example baking bread. Should every baker be a government employee?
The difference here is that everyone needs air traffic control and there's zero choices so a market structure doesn't make sense.
With bread, maybe I only like certain types of bread. Maybe I don't want bread. It makes sense for there to be a market with diverse offerings. If bread inputs get expensive maybe everyone pivots to eating potatoes.
In contrast if you want to fly out of a major city there's one major airport, and you need air traffic control. It's a uniform service that is required. The same sort of market structure is not really viable.
> The difference here is that everyone needs air traffic control
This is very much not true. People who don’t own or operate aircraft don’t need air traffic control.
> and there's zero choices
Probably what you are saying here is that air traffic control is a natural monopoly. You can’t have two (or more) paralel systems issuing clearances at the same time in the same airspace. That would be madness.
But what I’m saying is not that we should have some crazy capitalist system where rival air traffic controllers compete with each other in the same airspace. What I’m talking about is a system where air traffic control services are provided by a private company. A private company which is funded by service charges to aircraft operators, and one whose operations are regulated by the government.
You can argue why that is not possible, but this is exactly how Canada’s air traffic control is organised. There the air traffic controllers are employed by a non-profit corporation which is funded by service charges. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nav_Canada
Similarly air traffic controllers in the UK are employed by the NATS which is a public-private partnership.
Germany has a similar structure with Deutsche Flugsicherung, or switzerland with Skyguide (formerly known as Swisscontrol).
When you are arguing why it cannot work, you are arguing against all these examples.
Yea that's the point I'm making that it's a natural monopoly. And yea the examples you provide are another way to handle a monopoly, though it's not really clear to me what the comprehensive benefits actually would be. Other than to create an appearance of arms length from government.
Would have the upside of not being shutdown due to the USA's crazy government shutdown nonsense, tho possibly you still have the shutdowns of a union strike.
Kind of reminds me about how people slip up and occasionally call BC Ferries a crown corporation, and are corrected that no, actually BC Ferries is an independent, company, simply one with the sole monopoly contract to provide ferry service that is 100% owned by BC Ferry Authority, which is... owned by the Province and whose board is 44% selected by the Province (another 44% by municipalities, who are creatures of the Province).
> Other than to create an appearance of arms length from government.
Big benefit is to separate the regulator from the regulated entity. That alone could probably stop the kind of group thinking which let them route a busy helicopter route through a busy landing corridor with inadequate procedural controls.
Other big benefit is to make the flight operators pay directly for the services the flight operators need. We are not paying their fuel from taxes, why do we pay for air navigation services from taxes?
> Would have the upside of not being shutdown due to the USA's crazy government shutdown nonsense
That is why it is brought up, yes. That is the most direct benefit at this moment.
Are you flying a Boeing 747-400 from Seatle to London return overflying Canada? That will be $5,370.78 please. It consist of $66.10 for oceanic services and $5,304.68 for enroute services.
Are you flying an Embraer 175 from Halifax to St John return? Good on ya. That will be $1,608.04. Pleasure doing busines.
Why are Americans paying for ICE agents to terrorize America but aren’t paying for ATCs to protect Americans? What decides what is and is not an essential service?
at a certain point, rebooting ATC could become exceptionaly difficult, as the whole aviation comunity, flys.
And no, you cant train new AT controllers, they learn on the job, and what a job it is!
as part of our pilot training they took us into a controll tower, which is a radicaly modern, high tech, high security environment, and let us hang around, the senior hand started chatting with us, while directing air traffic, ground traffic, confering with coleages, talking on the phone, telling us a joke, all at once, and his timing was so good, that the joke was still funny......these are guys who can do other stuff
Depending how bad it gets you could end up in a situation where European controllers are needed to at least help get things stood up again but while the job is similar the systems won’t be.
That or you pay the ones who’ve resigned a shit load of money.
It astounds me how quickly they are breaking things that took decades or more to build.
I can't believe it takes this long. I would resign the very first day my paycheque doesn't arrive. There's one and only one reason I go to work every day.
Their goal, since they 80's, has been to make government look incompetent so they can privatize it and use as a weapon against their adversaries (who they argue want "big government").
I saw this interview with Arie Rothschild, the author of strangers in their own land (https://youtu.be/RywaAeWbXjo). And she described this sort of paradox, that people sort of know that Republicans are the ones screwing them, but the sting from being hurt by the government causes them to be susceptible to the arguments Republicans make about the government not working.
There is no end game. He makes everything up as he goes along.
When (if?) the shutdown ends, he will claim victory no matter what the outcome. If it doesn't end, he will still claim victory. He always wins.
Given that Trump and the left have the same view on this government shutdown as they’re both acknowledging how Republicans control both houses, I wouldn’t say this is part of any plan he has.
Trump has called for the Senate to remove the filibuster, which would allow for the government to reopen with a simple majority instead of needing more votes from Democrats
One could say the only endgame is unilateral control
But this is an issue with Congress which Trump does not control. The Senate is not considering getting rid of the filibuster because of the threat its used in favor of Democrats after midterms
Mike Johnson has been speaker for long enough so that the average follower of politics probably forgets the fiasco behind his selection.
He’s really not a very skilled politician at all.
And of course, Trump is beyond deep fried, he’s a full blown dementia patient. He has no ability to navigate Congress. He even gave away his party’s leverage by fighting against SNAP payments, giving Democrats no reason to back down.
Fun fact, the only two presidents without government shutdowns since the modern budget process began have been Joe Biden and George W. Bush.
Joe Biden in particular was a master at navigating Congress and has relationships all over the place across the aisle. The bipartisan infrastructure bill is a really legitimate accomplishment in that sense.
Without being in favour of it, this is one reason politicians are old. Not necessarily twenty years past typical retirement, but those relationships that were so useful to Biden were built over decades. Getting elected at 40 doesn't mean you also have the history with others in government to actully get things done.
Good faith could be assumed in some other countries, and those relationships could, subsuquently, be less vital. But that's not the political environment America has found itself in.
I think it’s both relationships and being legitimately good at what you do.
Mitch McConnell and Nancy Pelosi were in their prime extremely shrewd strategic leaders.
Someone like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez started off young and somewhat isolated but has quickly turned into someone who is one of the most important leaders of the party before age 40.
The impression I get is that Mike Johnson was not picked for his skills or connections, but because he was someone who his party’s factions didn’t have an existing hate relationship with.
Why do you blame Trump for the shutdown? Isn't it caused by Congress basically failing to agree on a funding continuation? (I think it's been ages since they could actually go further and agree on a budget). Government shutdowns are common under both Republican and Democrat administrations.
You can say he refuses to compromise, but clearly so does the other side, hence the impasse.
The issue is that the Democrats 'compromised' on the last funding bill - basically had an agreement that some programs would stay funded.
Then the trump administration said "funding allocations from Congress are limits, and we do not have to spend that much on these programs if there is not a need"
There's a conflict because Trump thinks the obvious way forward is you destroy the filibuster, and the Republicans in the Senate fear that when there are more Democrats - say, after the mid-terms - they need the filibuster or else Democratic priorities can become law by simple majority.
Imagine trying to explain to Trump that you can't destroy the filibuster because too many of your colleagues might lose an election. It's like telling a five year old that he can't have desert because he hasn't eaten the vegetables. He doesn't want to eat the vegetables, you are a bad person because rather than agreeing with him you're acting as if he's wrong, which is inconceivable.
Some of Trump's advisors may have the idea that they can rig the 2026 elections and so it won't matter. A big problem is that some of these advisors also assured senators that they'd locked down 2020 and that didn't go so well.
To Trump this seems irrelevant. Why should he care about Susan Collins? She's not even hot, and hasn't given him any cool trinkets. So what if she loses to some Democrat? They're both losers, Trump is the ultimate and his people have told him that over 600% of people support Trump, if she loses that's her fault.
So that's a problem, a recurring problem and so far this term the solution has generally been to ignore Trump's useless suggestions but not do anything he explicitly forbids. Trouble is, Trump doesn't care about the shutdown but the at-risk Republican senators do care.
I actually give Trump more credit for understanding scrapping filibuster is the wrong move.
I also think he’s smart enough to realise people think he’s dumb. So he says scrap filibuster as a way to sow the seeds that there’s tension where there really isn’t.
Maybe it’s too much 4D chess but he is a master manipulator of media/public opinion.
The two longest shutdowns in the history of the United States of America have occurred under Donald J. Trump.
Trump is hosting Great Gatsby parties, traveling, golfing, and doing everything except trying to end the shutdown. He doesn't seem to care that much that it is happening. And the entire reason it is happening is because Trump's Big Beautiful Bill did not contain Affordable Care Act subsidies.
It is incorrect to say that what is happening is common under all administrations. This dysfunction is uniquely Trumpian.
> Government shutdowns are common under both Republican and Democrat administrations.
They're not really, especially at this scale. Since they became a thing when Carter was President, Biden and George W. Bush had 0. Reagan had 3, but only for 6 days total and George H. W. Bush had 1 for 3 days. Clinton had 2 for 28 days total and Obama had 1 for 16 days total.
Clinton and Obama's records are a bit more significant, but Trump so far across his 2 terms, 1 of which is less than a year in, has had 3 shutdowns for 77 total days so far. Or to put it another way, out of the 130 days of shutdown that have even happened since they became a thing 45 years ago, ~60% of them have happened in the 5 years Trump has been president. If you do the math, that's roughly 10x worse government uptime. Notably, those are also the only shutdowns that have happened with one party controlling the Presidency, the House, and the Senate.
I'm still not saying this is definitively the Trump administration's fault, but any way you look at it that is not a great record.
> I'm still not saying this is definitively the Trump administration's fault
How is it not?
The budget requires 60 votes, not a simple majority. Thus it's up to the majority party to present a bill that will win 60 votes.
Some important stuff in major democracies is designed to require way more than simple majority.
In Italy, e.g. the president is elected by the parliament, but the quorum required is two thirds of votes.
This is very important because it forces all governments to find a suitable candidate that is as unbiased and trustable as possible by the overwhelming majority of the representatives.
While elections of the president can drag for very long, even for months, I can't but say we italians have been blessed with great presidents. Each one stepped up to represent italians and never political interests.
Well in this case the executive branch isn't even following congressionally appropriations, so one could argue that this particular shut down is more caused by the president than any other in history.
AFAIK this kind of situation is a result of a novel interpretation by an AG of a much older law some time around 1980. I don't think it's ever been tested in court, and we'd operated for decades under the old interpretation before then.
Trump could just say "we're going back to the old interpretation" and at-minimum buy several months of runway while court challenges happened (if they even did). This would be among the least questionable "stretches" (to be very generous) of presidential power he'd exercised.
Pull all air traffic controllers from private airports and shutdown all routes for private jets, then this government shutdown will be done by tomorrow morning.
That’s not how it works, like at all. Private airports don’t have controllers, and the ones I presume you are thinking of (smaller PUBLIC airports) the controllers are either employed or funded by the FAA.
> Absolutely no English speaker doesn't read 'PJs' as 'pyjamas'.
While I agree that “pajamas” is the most common meaning of PJs, there is a certain socio-economic class in the US in which “PJs” is used far more often in speech to refer to private jets than pajamas.
I’m a “language guy”, and it was a new one to me when I started spending more time around people who were referring to, and often users of, PJs.
While the person you were responding to took a crass line, their linguistic intent was very clear to me.
FAA could restrict who flies in and out of airports, why not target private jets? It’s like closing traffic for cars but letting busses in. Much better unit economics in terms of passengers serviced.
If the Democrats are smart, they'll keep the shutdown going until Trump folds, keep it going until the midterms if they have to. It's the first thing they're doing that people like, they blame Trump for all the misery.
He's jumping in front of the bullet by trying to stop SNAP under a goofy theory that Democrats actually care if people go hungry. Many Republicans have this strange but deeply-held crazy belief that Democrats are motivated by ideology rather than the same money that they themselves are motivated by, so they always think threatening to cut the baby in half will work.
And he's busy building a ballroom. People are really loving flights getting cancelled and more expensive, hard to blame that on immigrant fent terrorist antifa; and if there's anything that middle-class people hate, it's minor inconvenience.
Dems don't have to say anything (in fact it's better if they don't say anything) or do anything. Just watch the poll numbers go up and the donations from health insurers go up. All rational people agree that Obamacare sucks. But the Republicans are fighting to make it worse.
Remember recission panels? Remember not being able to get insurance if you had sleep apnea (aka pre-existing condition)? I can go on and on about exactly how insurance sucked shit before the ACA.
The ACA could be better, and it was supposed to be adjusted over time. The problem is that we've got an entire party in the US who sole solution to the problems in the ACA is "Destroy it all" without providing a single alternative or improvement.
I know many of the people reading this will think I'm being hysterical. But there was a small voice in the back of my mind when the shutdown started wondering whether that version of the American government would ever reopen and that voice has started to become much louder in recent days. Specifically the combination of this, the handling of SNAP benefits, and this all happening in November just seems intentionally designed to cause unrest. Families going hungry and/or unable to fly to spend Thanksgiving together feels like a perfectly orchestrated way to cause mass civil unrest that an authoritarian could use to seize power.
The sooner things become intolerably broken in the U.S. the better off I think the rest of the world is. The U.S. kind of scares me right now. So much power, wielded by deeply incompetent, broken, and evil people. And those who aren't those things are demonstrably too weak to do anything about it. I have a sense that things will only improve once they hit an intolerable low. And the longer it takes for that to happen, the more normalized it will become for all of those people. Basically: I really hope the current regime boils the water too fast.
A major part of the plot of The Every[0] is one protagonist's belief, akin to yours, that precipitating things to their worst outcome could be the fastest way to snap public opinion back to sanity.
I don't want to spoil the suspense, but I'll say that I do see the logic in hoping that a quick fire would call everyone's attention to the fire hazard. What you're failing to ask here is "What could possibly go wrong with this plan?"
The house is already on fire. The choices are to allow it to burn down and rebuild, taking the arsonists with it, or attempting to slow them down while the fire continues to burn and their supporters cheer them on.
American Democracy appears to be the same as second generation wealth: unappreciated until gone. Make Functional Governance Great Again. I wish it were not so.
Hahahahahahahhaa the arsonists aren’t going down with it, the arsonists are on mansions in a private island watching it go down. The idea that the people in power will _lose_ power as a result of widespread unrest is bananas. The only people watching the house burn are those with an insurance policy out on it.
> the arsonists are on mansions in a private island watching it go down. The idea that the people in power will _lose_ power as a result of widespread unrest is bananas.
Islands do make easy targets, though—they’re hard to move and they’re hard to hide.
The supporters are the people who keep voting Republican while Republicans (the arsonists) are stripping them of their SNAP benefits and ACA subsidies, while also dismantling the federal government out of ideology. The wealthy might influence (they spent over $40M to influence the NYC mayor election and still lost, for example), but the voters are the root cause.
I get the reasoning and I think it’s colourable. But I can’t help but be irritated having grown up hearing nothing but “Liberty or death” rhetoric of American identity, only to find it was all a pathetic cosplay.
The fact that liberty died far before Trump was part of what he used in his cards to gain power. He sold a tale of draining the swamp, and tailoring back the federal of government. Of course, he's basically expanded the more dystopian power, and pumped in more swamp water, but part of the reason why his campaign is successful was that indeed liberty has been lacking in the USA for a long time and to some of the people that actually cared, he whispered the right lies.
"Liberty or death" never meant the first resort is detonating a proverbial nuke in Manhattan if a bad guy showed up in Time's Square.
But I agree that it's always been a pathetic cosplay. Most "patriots" I've met are by far the least patriotic and actively hate their fellow countrymen.
When my brother and I argue this, that’s the position he takes: the risk is enormous. He’s the most brilliant mind I know (an immigration lawyer who has settled the Government’s hash more than once at the Supreme Court of Canada), so if I had any real say in all this, I would defer to him.
I can't deny that and maybe would even agree with that as an abstract theory, but I just can't stomach the amount of misery and death that would come along with this to ever use a word like "hope" to describe that outcome.
I don’t know if it’s reasonable or not to wish that, as an analogy, the German people had started a true civil war with the Nazis when they seized power. I can see how folks would wonder though.
I don't think this line of thinking has any merit. Genocides have happened before and yet modern genocides still make me sad for humanity and I wish we did a better job preventing them.
I completely agree. It's a good thing we're in a multipolar world now. The US (and its vassal states) have ruled terribly and the world suffered much over it. Sadly, there is still a lot of propaganda that needs to go away.
A great world leader would spread genuine peace. Not corrupt other countries, start wars and shed blood. The USA has failed to even keep its own citizens safe and secure. All I worry about is that they will drag a lot of other countries with them while they are falling.
So how can you completely agree if even you worry?
I worry more. I am certain, for all bad things the US did, the multipolar world will be much much worse. You think the other power players are better? No way.
Less and less likely they’ll drag others down, the first trump presidency was a warning, it’s gonna suck in the rest of the western world but we’ll survive.
The US hasn't been perfect, but you can hardly say we've ruled the world terribly. Because who has ever ruled it better?
We helped Europe and Asia rebuild after WWII instead of conquering them. To the extent that our previous enemies in Germany and Japan now have some of the strongest economies in the world.
There have certainly been wars, often with dubious justification or horrific results, but good luck finding any superpower in history that hasn't gotten into bad wars. Unlike the US, most of the time those other superpowers used war for territorial expansion, like Russia is doing in Ukraine today.
You can dream of your utopian world order all you want, but at some point you have to judge the US against the alternative instead of the almighty.
I love the DS9 reference. But it also reminds me of Hamilton:
You'll be back, time will tell
You'll remember that I served you well
Oceans rise, empires fall
We have seen each other through it all
And when push comes to shove
I will send a fully armed battalion to remind you of my love!
The idea that the world was better off under American rule is so deeply ironic that my brain is breaking.
The hope is presumably that the water boils fast enough to prompt electoral action before this regime eliminates voting rights and inevitably embroils itself in war to distract from its failings at home.
That this is happening is an indication that power has been seized already.
What do you think their goals with the power are? To make your life miserable? No, clearly, all they care about is the wealth and it's profits. Which they're already swallowing whole.
One side abhors "the government" and actively took an axe to the agencies and programs that the other side cared about. The result is that neither party have any sort of active investment in the current status quo.
But having 10%+ of all Americans panicking after missing a few meals is also enough to topple a country. There’s not a whole lot that can unify the different political factions of the US, but going hungry gets people focused on necessity and to deprioritize the shallow / vapid aspects of politics.
Arguably it’s China’s governing body’s biggest single fear.
I currently think this government shutdown is unlikely to do that to the US because politicians have had lots of practice making each shutdown less impactful for most Americans, but the longer we go, the more likely we are to find some high value thing the US government does that Americans don’t want to live without.
China is the world’s most populous country with an autonomous governing body that doesn’t always respond to the voice of the people. And their leadership knows that multiple previous Chinese governments were toppled after the people were famished.
1. The budget doesn't include some insane, unvotable measure. I don't hold any sympathy for either of the parties, but as an external it seems that the majority and the president have been voted on top of repealing the affordable care act and the opposition is weaponizing the budget on topics that voters have already expressed themselves against.
2. Being unable to spend or spend vacations with family are not things that historically lead to unrests.
So imho, no, Occam's razor suggests me this is simply business as usual, but with the usual increasing polarization and extremism we're seeing all around the world.
>voted on top of repealing the affordable care act
Its much more stupid than this. People voted MAGA to get rid of Obamacare, but same dont even realize it IS the ACA. Jimmy Kimmel Live did whole bit around that in 2017 and it still holds true today.
For me, I wonder if Congress will ever reopen. I wonder if the trench warfare in Congress has gone so far that it will destroy itself rather than compromise.
The process of repealing a president (impeachment) is a political process. Republicans could do it at any moment, so every day they don't is an endorsement of what the president has done, continues to do, and even what he threatens to do.
This country is founded on the principle of being able to spot the pretexts (tariffs, terror-driven deportation, selective refugee status of whites fleeing black majorities, dissolving of social nets, rampant corruption) to monarchy-authoritarian leadership.
The current DNC is waaay too weak and uninterested in pushing back against Trump for this to realistically happen. They are complete enablers of this slow fascist takeover. Your only hope now is for the democrats to experience a "tea party" of their own, and have actual leftists take the reins before 2028. Seems highly unlikely now.
Two weeks ago, the German state funded publisher Deutsche Welle published a video making a case about the possibility of Donald Trump actually being a Russian asset: https://youtu.be/JmEtx-EmYtc
I would be speechless if a conspiracy theory comes true, and the American state is actually captured by the Russians. Don’t get me wrong. I don’t wish it, but as a fan of the series The Americans, it will be epic..
Nah, he's swung back and forth on Ukraine at least 4 times now. Russia certainly did help Trump get the White House, what with the propaganda and all, as they correctly foresaw how terrible he would be for the American Empire. But he does not receive his orders from Putin, that's ridiculous. He's just cruel and stupid.
Agreed, but bluntly: what's the effective difference for Russia? They can't give direct orders, but they also don't have the rest of the world calling foul [about an illegitimate American leader, as we ignore Ukraine for a moment].
I'd say Trump not being an explicit asset gets them 90% of what they're after, with almost no downsides
Well, there's one critical flaw which is that Trump is also fucking up with the military. A lot of military members are going unpaid, and many more are going unpaid and their family isn't receiving snap benefits. An authoritarian trying to seize power without the backing of the military is bound to lead to failure, and even though money is being funneled into ICE enmasse they're an untrained legion of goons with little access or ability to use actual military equipment.
If push comes to shove we're not going to get an authoritarian takeover, we're going to get a military coup. Unless they wake up and realize they need the guys with the hardware to do their whole fascist takeover thing.
People who support the guy aren't rational. He could personally take their every cent, say they're lucky that's all he did, and he wouldn't lose a single supporter. If the military went unpaid for half a year, all his supporters in the military would shift the blame to someone else.
ICE is effectively just a government-paid gang designed to harass immigrants and any citizen they think is a bit too uppity. They don't have any actual power to do things like holding down a city or enforcing martial law without the aid of the actual military or national guard. They have guns but not THE guns.
Didn’t they illegally take funds from the CIA to pay the military and ICE?
It seems to me like this is ideal for them. They break the law to pay for the stuff they want, let everything else rot. Why the Democrats have allowed this is beyond me.
Democrats should be counter-messaging every hours of every day, on all media, to create actual dissent within the electorate. They're acting like they can't do anything but watch idly. It's insane that with all that happened, Trump still sits at ~40% popularity. Americans won't realize how shitty the situation is until you tell them, and make sure to blame Trump and the GOP every step of the process.
Insurance premiums on the rise? Thank Trump for that. No planes for Thanksgiving? Blame Vance. Etc.
Democratic representatives are speaking out almost daily. Voters are protesting in force at least monthly.
Yet too many live in filter bubbles and take the talking points they're given. My conservative parents sound very reasonable when they react to unfiltered news, at least in the moment. But then the talking points arrive and they down play or change their outlook completely. It's like a Borg mind which sometimes has high latency.
And I can relate. I lived with that mindset. Teaching myself to twist information to fit the worldview and compartmentalize to dodge the dissonance. Visiting only the safe outlets who would reinforce the comfortable and familiar perspective. Thankfully public schools, the Internet, patient coworkers, and curiosity popped my bubble.
Elon Musk will step in to save the day and privatize air traffic control. The government will transform the nation into a fully decentralized economy owned and operated by oligarchs, with the role of the government shrinking to that of a mediator between the various oligarchs, and employed directly by the oligarchs. Kind of like how they describe it in the sci-fi show Alien Earth.
Remember the ATCs never recovered from the staffing shortage when Reagan fired them for striking on working conditions. The conditions have not improved the hiring has never caught up. Rates of alcholalism from work induced stress is extremely high and they have been showing up for work while not getting paid.
Anyone who calls all public sector people lazy or entitled, remember ATCs are government workers do work extremely hard and most log extensive overtime. These are government workers and they are American Heros through and through
It's wild ATC isn't funded by use fees instead of being appropriated by congress. Seems like a good opportunity to provide some mechanism so the government has to shit or get off the pot, because if the government won't do the job the airlines would surely be glad to pay for the service themselves.
It kind of is https://www.faa.gov/about/budget/aatf
The problem is that tax collection also happens with congressional approval.
This seems to be a somewhat inefficient system. There is no absolute need to consider aviation fees to be taxes and collect them through a federal agency.
Individual airports should be capable of financing their local ATC as they see fit, be it their own airport fees or, IDK, a surcharge on hamburgers sold in the local McD or a gift from a wealthy sponsor; and they should only have a duty to maintain certain technical standards.
There’s a whole network of radars and communication centers that are not part of any specific airport. How would you fund that through use fees at an airport?
You could do airspace overflight fees similar to how it works when you overfly other countries.
It would make routing a tonne more complex tho
Okay what happens now to less prosperous areas of the country?
This is a silly decision because transportation networks are important for the rest of the country to be able to be economically viable.
On the other hand, if the fees corresponded to actual use, that would mean that the infrastructure along the most frequented corridors would automatically be the best funded one, which would probably be overall positive.
A common fund?
That's what we have today.
In the US system, any revenue collection needs to be authorized by Congress. In fact, it is one of the arguments currently being argued in front of the Supreme Court about the tariffs.
It's a perfectly fine system. It just relies on our elected representatives not playing a game of chicken to get what they want, and act in the best interests of the country. Unfortunately, for a whole lot of reasons, they haven't been able to do this intermittently since the mid nineties.
> no absolute need to consider aviation fees to be taxes and collect them through a federal agency.
What if you collect too much? The fund is subject to appropriations.
> financing their local ATC as they see fit
We already use mileage based overflight fees:
https://www.faa.gov/air_traffic/international_aviation/overf...
> What if you collect too much?
You lower fees the next year.
Are you certain maintaining those technical standards would be much more efficient than the current system?
Considering the FAA has been fucking around for decades attempting to recapitalize and modernize the ATC network -- yes.
See: https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-25-108162
And I do not use "fucking around" lightly. The FAA's repeatedly delayed and ineffective upgrade effort makes even the original healthcare.gov look like the Apollo program.
Certain is a strong word, but in many other contexts, this is the actually used system, even in aviation. The FAA requires certain standards of maintenance for aircraft, for example, but individual mechanics aren't FAA employees.
Yeah, maintenance seems extremely different from ATC though. Defining and enforcing maintenance standards is trivial and happens well outside the second-to-second operational loop of aircraft actually coordinating.
> the airlines would surely be glad to pay for the service themselves.
No, they would be glad to increase fares so that the flying customers pay for the service themselves. Currently, ATC is subsidized by all tax payers. Your method moves the burden to only those that pay for fares. I'm just pointing it out not saying it is good/bad.
That's probably better anyway. Air fares should cover the costs of flying. It's already a very profitable activity: it's much more efficient than the alternatives, and flying provides much value to passengers. So why can't the industry fund itself?
> […] it's much more efficient than the alternatives […]
Efficiency by what metric? Energy per distance travelled? Energy per kilogram moved (per kilometer?)? Time? CO2 emissions?
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_efficiency_in_transport
* https://ourworldindata.org/travel-carbon-footprint
For distances <120 km, cars are often quicker than trains, and for >900km planes are, but in between trains are often quickest (assuming infrastructure is actually present).
Human hours (as in total hours, including work hours) per passenger-mile.
> It's already a very profitable activity...
US airlines made approximately zero total profit from 1990-2023.
> ...it's much more efficient than the alternatives
I guess this depends on the definition of efficient and for what measurement.
Ok sure the airlines themselves aren't managing to capture the profit from the overall activity (I assume because of intense competition in that part of the value chain) but what about the gains of everyone else involved? For instance the value to passengers is greater than the cost of the airfare, or they wouldn't buy a ticket in the first place. And all the others who make money from it.
There have been plenty of airlines that have gone out of business, so it's not just a money making machine that you seem to think it is.
I think the argument is that if you take the airline industry as whole (so not just airlines, but aircraft manufacturers, travel agencies, airports, all the concessions there, ...) it's still very profitable.
And if you add the value to the customers, then it's through the roof.
Maybe the reverse is more clear: if air travel didn't exist, it would have a huge economic impact; a clear proof of the value creation. Airlines just happen to capture essentially 0% of it.
Is this definitely not from Hollywood Accounting?
> It's already a very profitable activity
For whom? Historically, aviation has not been a profitable industry over its lifetime[0]. The companies that still fly are basically just a combination of "survivorship bias" and "newbies still somehow subsidized".
We're looking at today's companies like you'd look at the half-season cast of Squid Game and thinking "this group seems to be thriving, I guess". That only works if you disregard everything that's happened before now and what will likely happen for the rest of the season.
[0]: https://aviationstrategy.aero/newsletter/Jun-2015/1/Airline-...
> Your method moves the burden to only those that pay for fares.
Well they are the ones flying why do I have to subsidize them?
I'm obviously borderline joking, but you get the point.
It is kind of wild that airports themselves don't straight up pay for this. I can understand not wanting to privatize it, as they'll be liable to half-ass it, but surely a usage fee on flights would cover it?
I wonder if this is because bigger airports near major cities and businesses would basically be subsidizing tons of airports in the middle of nowhere, and some people don't want to admit that?
Most airports in the middle of nowhere aren’t controlled.
There are something like 530 ATC towers in the USA out of 5000 or so public airports. 20,000 if we include anything that can be described as an airstrip.
Your wider point still stands though, probably something like 20% of the airports handle 80% of the traffic.
It seems logical that the government should have a lot of control over preventing air disasters. If we allow air traffic control to be turned over to the lowest bidder, then we can expect a lot more incidents, especially at smaller airports that don't attract a lot of traffic.
Commercial airline passengers are not the only users of ATC. If you include mail and parcel carriers and other use cases like med-evac, tourist, and other private flights, you are probably close to 100% coverage of US taxpayers in the country.
The problem isn't that ATC is funded by the government; it's that the government has been taken over by people who don't believe government should exist.
This is a fundamental failure state that it is impossible for any realistic governmental structure to protect against. The best we can do is put in place safeguards to make it harder.
And...we did. It's just that over the past 40 years or so (and increasingly so over the past 15ish), those safeguards have been systematically eroded by the Republican Party, both socially and legally.
From what I understand, ATC also covers military flights in the US, which gives a pretty good national security reason to have central control over it... at least when a particular party isn't intentionally trying to destroy it along with various other government functions.
I think the argument is more that ATC, people and equipment needed, should be funded via use fees.
This ensures that the system is self sustaining. Also as demand increases then revenue to run the system would also increase.
How do you determine which party is refusing to capitulate at any particular moment in time.
Doesn’t it take two to have a disagreement?
It's wild that from the many developed countries in the world this issue only happens in the USA, the richest one. Fucking bonkers actually...
Remember, the pain this is causing everyone means less to the people in power than does the benefits of this shutdown (to them). We can argue about what those benefits are all day long, but they wouldn't be refusing to have discussions with the Dems if there were not some benefit, be it political power they can wield, or whatever.
The problem is that it's existential for both Democrats and Republicans. Given the current makeup of the federal government, Republicans basically have all the power and have been able to leverage that into spending the last 10 months doing whatever they want. The exception to that power is the Democrats' ability to filibuster in the Senate and shut down the government by not agreeing to whatever the Republicans put forward.
The actual demands I think are essentially irrelevant. If Republicans give up anything to the Democrats, the spell of the last 10 months is broken and Republicans can no longer unilaterally control the direction of government. If Democrats don't get any concessions, they're essentially irrelevant for the next 14 months and that only changes if they win either the House or Senate in 2026. Given that, it's not obvious how this ends.
It's not existential for the Republicans. THEY ARE NOT SUPPOSED TO BE ABLE TO DO ANYTHING THEY WANT. This setup is essentially anti-democratic, which is why they are able to murder hundreds of thousands of aids patients in Africa and kill 'future you' through their cancelling the bulk of investment in life sciences.
> The problem is that it's existential for both Democrats and Republicans.
> If Republicans give up anything to the Democrats, the spell of the last 10 months is broken and Republicans can no longer unilaterally control the direction of government.
How is that in any way shape or form “existential”? Existential means “if they fail they cease to exist or matter”, not “if they fail they don’t get to whatever the fuck they want”.
> I’m glad there’s OxyContin and video games to keep those people quiet.
I'd kinda assumed that any "benefits" were mostly about the opportunity to blame it on the other party and try to corner them into blinking first.
(Note this works identically well regardless of which side of the aisle you read it as being about.)
It's interesting how the effects of filter bubbles are playing out here. Everyone believes that they have the upper hand and the majority of the American people are on their side, because computerized personalization shows them only opinions from people who agree with them. As a result, they think that the negative popular opinion for the shutdown will fall primarily on the other party, and so it is rational for them to continue the shutdown until the other party blinks. Of course, the other party has the same information distortion in the opposite direction, so they also believe that if they just keep going, the American public will blame their opponents.
In reality, the public is pretty close to split down the middle, and both parties are getting blamed, and the real message that people are taking away from this is that Congress is dysfunctional. It's a game of chicken where both parties think that the other side will blink, and so they just end up crashing.
Reminds me of the dysfunction the Roman Republic towards the end of it’s time.
It’s not unique to the US however, I think maybe we are all approaching the end of the line for current political/civil systems without further work that no one seems interested in taking.
That Meta and Twitter seems interested in.
The tail isn’t wagging the dog anymore, the tail(s) are the dog at this point.
Good grief.
The shutdown is a temporary budget squabble in a stable democracy; a banal political stunt that has happened every few years for the past few decades.
Rome’s dysfunction meant civil wars, assassinations, generals seizing poWer, private armies, and uprising (in a fundamentally different society where, incidentally, over 25% of the population was slaves.)
There has been over 2000 years of history since Rome… when a the only analogy a person can come up with is some half-baked allusion to the Roman Empire/Republic it’s a good bet said person lacks a sense of history, knowledge of current events, and common sense.
Sorry to be harsh.
Assassination & attempted assassinations have all happened within 12ish months.
You’ve got an executive branch stacking all open positions in judicial and legislative branches with their political appointees. And the executive is interpreting the law to gather as much power as possible to the head of state.
It’s not hard to see the parallels but you keep on trucking dude.
> You’ve got an executive branch stacking all open positions in judicial and legislative branches with their political appointees.
The judicial branch is composed of Judges who are confirmed by the Senate… not the executive branch.
And there are no ‘Legislative branch’ appointees.
I assume you mean the executive branch is making appointments to the executive branch? Who would you prefer to make such appointments? The Postal Serice?
I understand Trump nominated and congress/senate approved the last couple of Supreme Court members?
I’d classify things like FDA/FAA as legislative parts of the governments but maybe that’s wrong.
Also I don’t see other governments shutting down regularly with a cheer squad saying yeah this is nothing to worry about, our democracy is 100% A OK.
> Who would you prefer to make such appointments? The Postal Serice?
At this point, I’d even prefer the Girl Scouts.
We’re seeing deliberate attacks on: Fair elections Rule of law Independence of courts Checks and balances
I expect if you don’t think this is going to get bad you’re not paying attention.
None of which has anything to do with the ‘last days of the Roman Republic.’
Feel free to panic and tear your hair out… that’s what both sides do. Boring. The post, however, make some pretentious analogy to the Roman Republic. The analogy was silly. That’s all. It’s just an annoying variant of Godwins law: Rome or Hitler… the only two analogies available to those ignorant of history.
No one’s panicking but you pal.
I made an observation that the present day is rhyming with history. You’re now raising Godwin’s law.
Good job.
Trump said it was Republicans fault.
I mean they wouldn't talk to democrats before the shutdown so it seems entirely reasonable for them not to talk to them afterwards.
I still find it (morbidly) hilarious that congress considers doing their job the "nuclear option". If they weren't hiding behind the filibuster and started legislating maybe their approval rating wouldn't be such trash.
I don’t know US specifically but I know a bit about Canadian air traffic controllers. It’s a high stress but very well paying job with good pension etc. But I suspect there’s not a lot of opportunity to change to another job and get the same pay and benefits. So I guess I wonder what the end game is in resigning? Is it just people taking some pre-specified early retirement option, is it early career people that just are cutting their losses? Unless I’m missing something it seems like for someone mid career at least, waiting it out seems like the only real option.
Not really ATC specific, but at some point most people in most jobs can't deal with indefinitely not getting paid and will have to go do something else even if they don't have a good backup plan. Working retail, driving for Uber, etc, all have vastly better ROI at the moment than working ATC getting a $0 paycheck. In theory they'll get backpay and have better future earnings prospects than leaving for an uncertain career change. But that's probably not as comforting as it should be since it's uncertain when that will happen, or even if, since the government has unnecessarily gone out of its way to cast doubt on the promise of backpay.
If they are allowed at work when they are not being paid, why don’t the airlines create a fund where they just pay them something so they can survive the shut down? IIRC the shutdown isn’t happening that often, they probably can just put money in it and use it when needed
Alternatively, why doesn't the government have an emergency fund for use to cover essential personnel/food etc during shutdowns?
This whole shutdown seems engineered to enable privatization. I wouldn't be at all surprised if ATCs get outsourced to some federal contractor.
Didn't DOGE/Musk try this or at least talk about it? Like modernizing the whole system or something? I don't think the turn around time on such a conversion would be very quick. I'm not sure there are thousands of qualified controllers waiting in the wings private sector, though maybe I'm wrong about that.
Curbing air traffic at major airports by 10% -- seems like this change alone would cause enough upheaval and disruption to everyday operations that it would offset any incremental relief from slightly lower traffic volume.
I heard a radio report that said something like 25,000-30,000 flights a day, so 10% would still be 2-3 thousand flights per day canceled. They said a majority of these would be the smaller legs from smaller airports to the larger hubs. The flights from hub to larger cities would be less impacted. However it breaks down, 2-3 thousand flights a day is a lot of flight crews not working, and similar cascading effects. So not only an inconvenience for travelers, but some people are going to take a financial hit because of this
Fact: This government has done more to reduce CO2 emissions from aviation than any green protester could have hoped for.
Interpretation: none from me. Don’t shoot the messenger.
http://archive.today/aKDPo
Are there any laws that protect labour in the US? Will they get their salaries and some extra compensation for the tardiness?
> Are there any laws… in the US?
Laws are irrelevant if they are not enforced. Laws are being very slowly or very selectively enforced these days, while some of the powers that be are flagrantly breaking laws.
> Will they get their salaries and some extra compensation for the tardiness?
Theoretically, yes. Just regular pay plus OT that they are owed. No bonus or extra compensation.
Also, most of these folks can fairly easily get low interest loans from banks or credit cards that will be due when they get back pay.
Part of this story is not being told, but I’m not sure what part.
Were these folks who were about to retire anyway?
Were these folks who plan on getting hired back when the government reopens?
I’m not sure, but I don’t think the complete story is being told here (not necessarily with malice or intent).
>Are there any laws that protect labour in the US?
Air traffic controllers are famously a group of people who were just mass fired for striking. These days the laws in the US actually protect the airlines from them by making it illegal for them to strike.
why are traffic controllers government employees at all? wouldn't it be better for the government to maintain a standards/licensing body and only have a couple on staff as a "traffic controllers of last resort" during emergencies?
when an traffic controller quits, what job can they go to? clearly not another airport
It's probably because a lot of smaller airports in the middle of nowhere would be hard to get coverage for. The current system sends controllers to where they are needed, not to where people want to work.
Now, should more productive parts of the country be subsidizing air travel in less productive parts of the country? That's for you to decide.
Bear in mind you need radar coverage for overflight even if you don't land.
This is true, but do we have a need for random airports in sparse parts of the country that require government subsidies?
There's more of a need to not have planes hit each other and cover areas with wreckage.
I can just imagine the hilarity if air-space was sold off to the highest bidder and then some of the smaller airports may decide to host advertising blimps in their share of the airspace and then charge plane companies extra to navigate around them.
"Now, should more productive parts of the country be subsidizing air travel in less productive parts of the country? That's for you to decide."
I would say "no", personally. In the absence of a subsidy, the network of the rural airports would likely become sparser, but the surviving ones would have better economy and, as a result, infrastructure too.
Isn't that arguably want rural communities want, however? I believe they're the strongest advocates of small government, less subsidies and pulling oneself (ie, their community) up by their bootstraps, regardless of what reality is.
I think the issue with many rural Americans is that they don't realize they are the most subsidized people in this country.
Because managing the skies over your country is a public service.
Why would it be better to have this job be driven by profit?
It's a service provided to the public. Seems like a natural fit for being run by government. The only thing is this funding situation for this government is dumb. Otherwise we wouldn't be talking about it.
> It's a service provided to the public. Seems like a natural fit for being run by government.
I don't understand this part of your reasoning. It sounds like you are saying it is a service provided to the public therefore it is a natural fit for being run by the government. Do I understand your reasoning right?
Because if so: A lot of services are provided to the public. For example baking bread. Should every baker be a government employee?
The difference here is that everyone needs air traffic control and there's zero choices so a market structure doesn't make sense.
With bread, maybe I only like certain types of bread. Maybe I don't want bread. It makes sense for there to be a market with diverse offerings. If bread inputs get expensive maybe everyone pivots to eating potatoes.
In contrast if you want to fly out of a major city there's one major airport, and you need air traffic control. It's a uniform service that is required. The same sort of market structure is not really viable.
> The difference here is that everyone needs air traffic control
This is very much not true. People who don’t own or operate aircraft don’t need air traffic control.
> and there's zero choices
Probably what you are saying here is that air traffic control is a natural monopoly. You can’t have two (or more) paralel systems issuing clearances at the same time in the same airspace. That would be madness.
But what I’m saying is not that we should have some crazy capitalist system where rival air traffic controllers compete with each other in the same airspace. What I’m talking about is a system where air traffic control services are provided by a private company. A private company which is funded by service charges to aircraft operators, and one whose operations are regulated by the government.
You can argue why that is not possible, but this is exactly how Canada’s air traffic control is organised. There the air traffic controllers are employed by a non-profit corporation which is funded by service charges. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nav_Canada
Similarly air traffic controllers in the UK are employed by the NATS which is a public-private partnership.
Germany has a similar structure with Deutsche Flugsicherung, or switzerland with Skyguide (formerly known as Swisscontrol).
When you are arguing why it cannot work, you are arguing against all these examples.
Yea that's the point I'm making that it's a natural monopoly. And yea the examples you provide are another way to handle a monopoly, though it's not really clear to me what the comprehensive benefits actually would be. Other than to create an appearance of arms length from government.
Would have the upside of not being shutdown due to the USA's crazy government shutdown nonsense, tho possibly you still have the shutdowns of a union strike.
Kind of reminds me about how people slip up and occasionally call BC Ferries a crown corporation, and are corrected that no, actually BC Ferries is an independent, company, simply one with the sole monopoly contract to provide ferry service that is 100% owned by BC Ferry Authority, which is... owned by the Province and whose board is 44% selected by the Province (another 44% by municipalities, who are creatures of the Province).
(boy sure does sound like a crown corporation...)
> Other than to create an appearance of arms length from government.
Big benefit is to separate the regulator from the regulated entity. That alone could probably stop the kind of group thinking which let them route a busy helicopter route through a busy landing corridor with inadequate procedural controls.
Other big benefit is to make the flight operators pay directly for the services the flight operators need. We are not paying their fuel from taxes, why do we pay for air navigation services from taxes?
> Would have the upside of not being shutdown due to the USA's crazy government shutdown nonsense
That is why it is brought up, yes. That is the most direct benefit at this moment.
> People who don’t own or operate aircraft don’t need air traffic control.
Also people who ride on airplanes.
Indirectly. Do you think electric substations should be also bought from tax money? Everyone who uses electricity need those too (indirectly).
It is a clear service which certain companies and individuals need. Why don’t we let them pay for it.
This is not some crazy fringe idea. This is how it works in Canada. Here are the current prices to operate a flight in or over Canada: https://www.navcanada.ca/en/customer-guide-to-charges---effe...
Are you flying a Boeing 747-400 from Seatle to London return overflying Canada? That will be $5,370.78 please. It consist of $66.10 for oceanic services and $5,304.68 for enroute services.
Are you flying an Embraer 175 from Halifax to St John return? Good on ya. That will be $1,608.04. Pleasure doing busines.
Maybe there's a better word for it. I'd put it in a class of things like firefighters, police departments, life guards. Utilities should be there.
> Why would it be better to have this job be driven by profit?
Er, to avoid it being used as leverage during government infighting?
That will save you for 15 minutes until the infighting goes after the company providing services because it’s not owned by the right oligarch.
ATC should, like some other essential services, be exempt the budget thing.
This is a disaster in the making.
Why are Americans paying for ICE agents to terrorize America but aren’t paying for ATCs to protect Americans? What decides what is and is not an essential service?
Yeah Happy Holidays everyone.
at a certain point, rebooting ATC could become exceptionaly difficult, as the whole aviation comunity, flys. And no, you cant train new AT controllers, they learn on the job, and what a job it is! as part of our pilot training they took us into a controll tower, which is a radicaly modern, high tech, high security environment, and let us hang around, the senior hand started chatting with us, while directing air traffic, ground traffic, confering with coleages, talking on the phone, telling us a joke, all at once, and his timing was so good, that the joke was still funny......these are guys who can do other stuff
Depending how bad it gets you could end up in a situation where European controllers are needed to at least help get things stood up again but while the job is similar the systems won’t be.
That or you pay the ones who’ve resigned a shit load of money.
It astounds me how quickly they are breaking things that took decades or more to build.
I can't believe it takes this long. I would resign the very first day my paycheque doesn't arrive. There's one and only one reason I go to work every day.
What is Trump's endgame here? Everyone stranded for Thanksgiving, poor kids going hungry, all for...what, exactly?
Their goal, since they 80's, has been to make government look incompetent so they can privatize it and use as a weapon against their adversaries (who they argue want "big government").
I saw this interview with Arie Rothschild, the author of strangers in their own land (https://youtu.be/RywaAeWbXjo). And she described this sort of paradox, that people sort of know that Republicans are the ones screwing them, but the sting from being hurt by the government causes them to be susceptible to the arguments Republicans make about the government not working.
How much do they need that angle anymore?
Recent history shows that a lot of the old rules, about persuasion and enabling actions, don't currently apply.
There is no end game. He makes everything up as he goes along. When (if?) the shutdown ends, he will claim victory no matter what the outcome. If it doesn't end, he will still claim victory. He always wins.
Poor people starving is the upside for these folks.
To own the libs, apparently.
Given that Trump and the left have the same view on this government shutdown as they’re both acknowledging how Republicans control both houses, I wouldn’t say this is part of any plan he has.
Trump has called for the Senate to remove the filibuster, which would allow for the government to reopen with a simple majority instead of needing more votes from Democrats
One could say the only endgame is unilateral control
But this is an issue with Congress which Trump does not control. The Senate is not considering getting rid of the filibuster because of the threat its used in favor of Democrats after midterms
Trump needs to sooth the Senate with the message there will be no midterms.
lmao that could actually work, scary
Trump has no remaining mental powers and is not orchestrating this shutdown.
Mike Johnson has been speaker for long enough so that the average follower of politics probably forgets the fiasco behind his selection.
He’s really not a very skilled politician at all.
And of course, Trump is beyond deep fried, he’s a full blown dementia patient. He has no ability to navigate Congress. He even gave away his party’s leverage by fighting against SNAP payments, giving Democrats no reason to back down.
Fun fact, the only two presidents without government shutdowns since the modern budget process began have been Joe Biden and George W. Bush.
Joe Biden in particular was a master at navigating Congress and has relationships all over the place across the aisle. The bipartisan infrastructure bill is a really legitimate accomplishment in that sense.
Without being in favour of it, this is one reason politicians are old. Not necessarily twenty years past typical retirement, but those relationships that were so useful to Biden were built over decades. Getting elected at 40 doesn't mean you also have the history with others in government to actully get things done.
Good faith could be assumed in some other countries, and those relationships could, subsuquently, be less vital. But that's not the political environment America has found itself in.
I think it’s both relationships and being legitimately good at what you do.
Mitch McConnell and Nancy Pelosi were in their prime extremely shrewd strategic leaders.
Someone like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez started off young and somewhat isolated but has quickly turned into someone who is one of the most important leaders of the party before age 40.
The impression I get is that Mike Johnson was not picked for his skills or connections, but because he was someone who his party’s factions didn’t have an existing hate relationship with.
Why do you blame Trump for the shutdown? Isn't it caused by Congress basically failing to agree on a funding continuation? (I think it's been ages since they could actually go further and agree on a budget). Government shutdowns are common under both Republican and Democrat administrations.
You can say he refuses to compromise, but clearly so does the other side, hence the impasse.
The issue is that the Democrats 'compromised' on the last funding bill - basically had an agreement that some programs would stay funded.
Then the trump administration said "funding allocations from Congress are limits, and we do not have to spend that much on these programs if there is not a need"
And then stopped funding things anyway.
Republican Congress is in his pocket. If he wanted a compromise you bet your bottom dollar it would happen.
There's a conflict because Trump thinks the obvious way forward is you destroy the filibuster, and the Republicans in the Senate fear that when there are more Democrats - say, after the mid-terms - they need the filibuster or else Democratic priorities can become law by simple majority.
Imagine trying to explain to Trump that you can't destroy the filibuster because too many of your colleagues might lose an election. It's like telling a five year old that he can't have desert because he hasn't eaten the vegetables. He doesn't want to eat the vegetables, you are a bad person because rather than agreeing with him you're acting as if he's wrong, which is inconceivable.
Some of Trump's advisors may have the idea that they can rig the 2026 elections and so it won't matter. A big problem is that some of these advisors also assured senators that they'd locked down 2020 and that didn't go so well.
To Trump this seems irrelevant. Why should he care about Susan Collins? She's not even hot, and hasn't given him any cool trinkets. So what if she loses to some Democrat? They're both losers, Trump is the ultimate and his people have told him that over 600% of people support Trump, if she loses that's her fault.
So that's a problem, a recurring problem and so far this term the solution has generally been to ignore Trump's useless suggestions but not do anything he explicitly forbids. Trouble is, Trump doesn't care about the shutdown but the at-risk Republican senators do care.
I actually give Trump more credit for understanding scrapping filibuster is the wrong move.
I also think he’s smart enough to realise people think he’s dumb. So he says scrap filibuster as a way to sow the seeds that there’s tension where there really isn’t.
Maybe it’s too much 4D chess but he is a master manipulator of media/public opinion.
The two longest shutdowns in the history of the United States of America have occurred under Donald J. Trump.
Trump is hosting Great Gatsby parties, traveling, golfing, and doing everything except trying to end the shutdown. He doesn't seem to care that much that it is happening. And the entire reason it is happening is because Trump's Big Beautiful Bill did not contain Affordable Care Act subsidies.
It is incorrect to say that what is happening is common under all administrations. This dysfunction is uniquely Trumpian.
> Government shutdowns are common under both Republican and Democrat administrations.
They're not really, especially at this scale. Since they became a thing when Carter was President, Biden and George W. Bush had 0. Reagan had 3, but only for 6 days total and George H. W. Bush had 1 for 3 days. Clinton had 2 for 28 days total and Obama had 1 for 16 days total.
Clinton and Obama's records are a bit more significant, but Trump so far across his 2 terms, 1 of which is less than a year in, has had 3 shutdowns for 77 total days so far. Or to put it another way, out of the 130 days of shutdown that have even happened since they became a thing 45 years ago, ~60% of them have happened in the 5 years Trump has been president. If you do the math, that's roughly 10x worse government uptime. Notably, those are also the only shutdowns that have happened with one party controlling the Presidency, the House, and the Senate.
I'm still not saying this is definitively the Trump administration's fault, but any way you look at it that is not a great record.
> I'm still not saying this is definitively the Trump administration's fault
How is it not?
The budget requires 60 votes, not a simple majority. Thus it's up to the majority party to present a bill that will win 60 votes.
Some important stuff in major democracies is designed to require way more than simple majority.
In Italy, e.g. the president is elected by the parliament, but the quorum required is two thirds of votes.
This is very important because it forces all governments to find a suitable candidate that is as unbiased and trustable as possible by the overwhelming majority of the representatives.
While elections of the president can drag for very long, even for months, I can't but say we italians have been blessed with great presidents. Each one stepped up to represent italians and never political interests.
Well in this case the executive branch isn't even following congressionally appropriations, so one could argue that this particular shut down is more caused by the president than any other in history.
This is true on multiple levels.
AFAIK this kind of situation is a result of a novel interpretation by an AG of a much older law some time around 1980. I don't think it's ever been tested in court, and we'd operated for decades under the old interpretation before then.
Trump could just say "we're going back to the old interpretation" and at-minimum buy several months of runway while court challenges happened (if they even did). This would be among the least questionable "stretches" (to be very generous) of presidential power he'd exercised.
Pull all air traffic controllers from private airports and shutdown all routes for private jets, then this government shutdown will be done by tomorrow morning.
That’s not how it works, like at all. Private airports don’t have controllers, and the ones I presume you are thinking of (smaller PUBLIC airports) the controllers are either employed or funded by the FAA.
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> Absolutely no English speaker doesn't read 'PJs' as 'pyjamas'.
While I agree that “pajamas” is the most common meaning of PJs, there is a certain socio-economic class in the US in which “PJs” is used far more often in speech to refer to private jets than pajamas.
I’m a “language guy”, and it was a new one to me when I started spending more time around people who were referring to, and often users of, PJs.
While the person you were responding to took a crass line, their linguistic intent was very clear to me.
> That's what PJ's means. It means pyjamas, it always has.
I read it as pajamas. And I bet you enjoy burgers with chips rather than fries.
But the point still stands.
FAA could restrict who flies in and out of airports, why not target private jets? It’s like closing traffic for cars but letting busses in. Much better unit economics in terms of passengers serviced.
If the Democrats are smart, they'll keep the shutdown going until Trump folds, keep it going until the midterms if they have to. It's the first thing they're doing that people like, they blame Trump for all the misery.
He's jumping in front of the bullet by trying to stop SNAP under a goofy theory that Democrats actually care if people go hungry. Many Republicans have this strange but deeply-held crazy belief that Democrats are motivated by ideology rather than the same money that they themselves are motivated by, so they always think threatening to cut the baby in half will work.
And he's busy building a ballroom. People are really loving flights getting cancelled and more expensive, hard to blame that on immigrant fent terrorist antifa; and if there's anything that middle-class people hate, it's minor inconvenience.
Dems don't have to say anything (in fact it's better if they don't say anything) or do anything. Just watch the poll numbers go up and the donations from health insurers go up. All rational people agree that Obamacare sucks. But the Republicans are fighting to make it worse.
> All rational people agree that Obamacare sucks.
Um, no, we don't.
Remember recission panels? Remember not being able to get insurance if you had sleep apnea (aka pre-existing condition)? I can go on and on about exactly how insurance sucked shit before the ACA.
The ACA could be better, and it was supposed to be adjusted over time. The problem is that we've got an entire party in the US who sole solution to the problems in the ACA is "Destroy it all" without providing a single alternative or improvement.
I know many of the people reading this will think I'm being hysterical. But there was a small voice in the back of my mind when the shutdown started wondering whether that version of the American government would ever reopen and that voice has started to become much louder in recent days. Specifically the combination of this, the handling of SNAP benefits, and this all happening in November just seems intentionally designed to cause unrest. Families going hungry and/or unable to fly to spend Thanksgiving together feels like a perfectly orchestrated way to cause mass civil unrest that an authoritarian could use to seize power.
The sooner things become intolerably broken in the U.S. the better off I think the rest of the world is. The U.S. kind of scares me right now. So much power, wielded by deeply incompetent, broken, and evil people. And those who aren't those things are demonstrably too weak to do anything about it. I have a sense that things will only improve once they hit an intolerable low. And the longer it takes for that to happen, the more normalized it will become for all of those people. Basically: I really hope the current regime boils the water too fast.
A major part of the plot of The Every[0] is one protagonist's belief, akin to yours, that precipitating things to their worst outcome could be the fastest way to snap public opinion back to sanity.
I don't want to spoil the suspense, but I'll say that I do see the logic in hoping that a quick fire would call everyone's attention to the fire hazard. What you're failing to ask here is "What could possibly go wrong with this plan?"
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Every
The house is already on fire. The choices are to allow it to burn down and rebuild, taking the arsonists with it, or attempting to slow them down while the fire continues to burn and their supporters cheer them on.
American Democracy appears to be the same as second generation wealth: unappreciated until gone. Make Functional Governance Great Again. I wish it were not so.
Hahahahahahahhaa the arsonists aren’t going down with it, the arsonists are on mansions in a private island watching it go down. The idea that the people in power will _lose_ power as a result of widespread unrest is bananas. The only people watching the house burn are those with an insurance policy out on it.
> the arsonists are on mansions in a private island watching it go down. The idea that the people in power will _lose_ power as a result of widespread unrest is bananas.
Islands do make easy targets, though—they’re hard to move and they’re hard to hide.
Easy targets to whom?
The imaginary people with the power to go take a private island in this fantasy scenario are the same people with the existing power to be on one.
How are you planning to go storm those beaches?
The supporters are the people who keep voting Republican while Republicans (the arsonists) are stripping them of their SNAP benefits and ACA subsidies, while also dismantling the federal government out of ideology. The wealthy might influence (they spent over $40M to influence the NYC mayor election and still lost, for example), but the voters are the root cause.
It's quite literally a cult now. It doesn't matter if the house burns down, they'd still rather die in the fire than let woke liberals "win".
If the house burns down, we'll be both poor and surrounded (and led) by neo-Nazis.
I get the reasoning and I think it’s colourable. But I can’t help but be irritated having grown up hearing nothing but “Liberty or death” rhetoric of American identity, only to find it was all a pathetic cosplay.
The fact that liberty died far before Trump was part of what he used in his cards to gain power. He sold a tale of draining the swamp, and tailoring back the federal of government. Of course, he's basically expanded the more dystopian power, and pumped in more swamp water, but part of the reason why his campaign is successful was that indeed liberty has been lacking in the USA for a long time and to some of the people that actually cared, he whispered the right lies.
"Liberty or death" never meant the first resort is detonating a proverbial nuke in Manhattan if a bad guy showed up in Time's Square.
But I agree that it's always been a pathetic cosplay. Most "patriots" I've met are by far the least patriotic and actively hate their fellow countrymen.
When my brother and I argue this, that’s the position he takes: the risk is enormous. He’s the most brilliant mind I know (an immigration lawyer who has settled the Government’s hash more than once at the Supreme Court of Canada), so if I had any real say in all this, I would defer to him.
I can't deny that and maybe would even agree with that as an abstract theory, but I just can't stomach the amount of misery and death that would come along with this to ever use a word like "hope" to describe that outcome.
I don’t know if it’s reasonable or not to wish that, as an analogy, the German people had started a true civil war with the Nazis when they seized power. I can see how folks would wonder though.
Germany was not the hub of the world back then. Very different situations.
Yes, that is what an analogy is...
> A similarity in some respects between things that are otherwise dissimilar. A comparison based on such similarity.
Generations before you suffered far worse. Why should the current crop of humans be exempt?
I don't think this line of thinking has any merit. Genocides have happened before and yet modern genocides still make me sad for humanity and I wish we did a better job preventing them.
I completely agree. It's a good thing we're in a multipolar world now. The US (and its vassal states) have ruled terribly and the world suffered much over it. Sadly, there is still a lot of propaganda that needs to go away. A great world leader would spread genuine peace. Not corrupt other countries, start wars and shed blood. The USA has failed to even keep its own citizens safe and secure. All I worry about is that they will drag a lot of other countries with them while they are falling.
So how can you completely agree if even you worry?
I worry more. I am certain, for all bad things the US did, the multipolar world will be much much worse. You think the other power players are better? No way.
Less and less likely they’ll drag others down, the first trump presidency was a warning, it’s gonna suck in the rest of the western world but we’ll survive.
The US hasn't been perfect, but you can hardly say we've ruled the world terribly. Because who has ever ruled it better?
We helped Europe and Asia rebuild after WWII instead of conquering them. To the extent that our previous enemies in Germany and Japan now have some of the strongest economies in the world.
There have certainly been wars, often with dubious justification or horrific results, but good luck finding any superpower in history that hasn't gotten into bad wars. Unlike the US, most of the time those other superpowers used war for territorial expansion, like Russia is doing in Ukraine today.
You can dream of your utopian world order all you want, but at some point you have to judge the US against the alternative instead of the almighty.
> but you can hardly say we've ruled the world terribly.
"Terribly" is definitely a fair assessment.
> who has ever ruled it better?
Blatant whataboutism.
> instead of conquering them
"I protected them in so many ways, cared for them as if they were my own children. But to this day, is there a single statue of me on Bajor?"
I love the DS9 reference. But it also reminds me of Hamilton:
The idea that the world was better off under American rule is so deeply ironic that my brain is breaking.What you call whataboutism, I call comparative evaluation.
On an absolute scale, every world power in history and humanity in general has been terrible. Endless injustices and atrocities since the very start.
That’s just not a very useful way to look at things though.
Historically low points are when very bad regimes seize full control.
This is, uh, not usually how these things work out, historically speaking.
A desperate country with an extremely strong military is not a great situation for anyone.
The hope is presumably that the water boils fast enough to prompt electoral action before this regime eliminates voting rights and inevitably embroils itself in war to distract from its failings at home.
I suppose we'll find out in the next 361 days?
Europe has certainly had its share of deeply incompetent, broken, and evil people. So, so many. Such profound impact.
I think any country will see this, despite all the wishing in the world.
That this is happening is an indication that power has been seized already.
What do you think their goals with the power are? To make your life miserable? No, clearly, all they care about is the wealth and it's profits. Which they're already swallowing whole.
You _already_ live in their prison.
One side abhors "the government" and actively took an axe to the agencies and programs that the other side cared about. The result is that neither party have any sort of active investment in the current status quo.
Maybe.
But having 10%+ of all Americans panicking after missing a few meals is also enough to topple a country. There’s not a whole lot that can unify the different political factions of the US, but going hungry gets people focused on necessity and to deprioritize the shallow / vapid aspects of politics.
Arguably it’s China’s governing body’s biggest single fear.
I currently think this government shutdown is unlikely to do that to the US because politicians have had lots of practice making each shutdown less impactful for most Americans, but the longer we go, the more likely we are to find some high value thing the US government does that Americans don’t want to live without.
> Arguably it’s China’s governing body’s biggest single fear.
Why China's? What you said is true in any corner of the globe.
China is the world’s most populous country with an autonomous governing body that doesn’t always respond to the voice of the people. And their leadership knows that multiple previous Chinese governments were toppled after the people were famished.
> Chinese governments were toppled after the people were famished
In imperial china it's a cultural/religious thing.
Famines always represented a sign that the ruling party wasn't wanted "by the skies" anymore.
In any case, ain't nobody ever gonna starve in modern china.
I don't buy it for few reasons.
1. The budget doesn't include some insane, unvotable measure. I don't hold any sympathy for either of the parties, but as an external it seems that the majority and the president have been voted on top of repealing the affordable care act and the opposition is weaponizing the budget on topics that voters have already expressed themselves against.
2. Being unable to spend or spend vacations with family are not things that historically lead to unrests.
So imho, no, Occam's razor suggests me this is simply business as usual, but with the usual increasing polarization and extremism we're seeing all around the world.
>voted on top of repealing the affordable care act
Its much more stupid than this. People voted MAGA to get rid of Obamacare, but same dont even realize it IS the ACA. Jimmy Kimmel Live did whole bit around that in 2017 and it still holds true today.
That’s MAGA for you.
For me, I wonder if Congress will ever reopen. I wonder if the trench warfare in Congress has gone so far that it will destroy itself rather than compromise.
Yes, exactly. I second this. Time to repeal the president before this gets terrible.
The process of repealing a president (impeachment) is a political process. Republicans could do it at any moment, so every day they don't is an endorsement of what the president has done, continues to do, and even what he threatens to do.
Repealing a dictator is extralegal.
This country is founded on the principle of being able to spot the pretexts (tariffs, terror-driven deportation, selective refugee status of whites fleeing black majorities, dissolving of social nets, rampant corruption) to monarchy-authoritarian leadership.
It will happen all over again here.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Declaration_of_I...
We're all migrants here, we're really the enforced guests of Native Americans whose land we occupy.
The current DNC is waaay too weak and uninterested in pushing back against Trump for this to realistically happen. They are complete enablers of this slow fascist takeover. Your only hope now is for the democrats to experience a "tea party" of their own, and have actual leftists take the reins before 2028. Seems highly unlikely now.
It’ll be extralegal, think non linear/chaos.
Two weeks ago, the German state funded publisher Deutsche Welle published a video making a case about the possibility of Donald Trump actually being a Russian asset: https://youtu.be/JmEtx-EmYtc
I would be speechless if a conspiracy theory comes true, and the American state is actually captured by the Russians. Don’t get me wrong. I don’t wish it, but as a fan of the series The Americans, it will be epic..
Nah, he's swung back and forth on Ukraine at least 4 times now. Russia certainly did help Trump get the White House, what with the propaganda and all, as they correctly foresaw how terrible he would be for the American Empire. But he does not receive his orders from Putin, that's ridiculous. He's just cruel and stupid.
Agreed, but bluntly: what's the effective difference for Russia? They can't give direct orders, but they also don't have the rest of the world calling foul [about an illegitimate American leader, as we ignore Ukraine for a moment].
I'd say Trump not being an explicit asset gets them 90% of what they're after, with almost no downsides
Well, there's one critical flaw which is that Trump is also fucking up with the military. A lot of military members are going unpaid, and many more are going unpaid and their family isn't receiving snap benefits. An authoritarian trying to seize power without the backing of the military is bound to lead to failure, and even though money is being funneled into ICE enmasse they're an untrained legion of goons with little access or ability to use actual military equipment.
If push comes to shove we're not going to get an authoritarian takeover, we're going to get a military coup. Unless they wake up and realize they need the guys with the hardware to do their whole fascist takeover thing.
People who support the guy aren't rational. He could personally take their every cent, say they're lucky that's all he did, and he wouldn't lose a single supporter. If the military went unpaid for half a year, all his supporters in the military would shift the blame to someone else.
But it’s totally not a cult, no. Just a party, taking care of you. You love the party. The party loves you.
ICE is being paid
ICE is effectively just a government-paid gang designed to harass immigrants and any citizen they think is a bit too uppity. They don't have any actual power to do things like holding down a city or enforcing martial law without the aid of the actual military or national guard. They have guns but not THE guns.
A bigger budget can fix that.
Didn’t they illegally take funds from the CIA to pay the military and ICE?
It seems to me like this is ideal for them. They break the law to pay for the stuff they want, let everything else rot. Why the Democrats have allowed this is beyond me.
> Why the Democrats have allowed this is beyond me.
Republicans control all three branches of government. What can Democrats do except filibuster and budgetary maneuvers like they're already doing?
Democrats already tried (briefly) going along with the inhumane BBB and Republicans kept cutting and disregarding the law anyway.
Democrats should be counter-messaging every hours of every day, on all media, to create actual dissent within the electorate. They're acting like they can't do anything but watch idly. It's insane that with all that happened, Trump still sits at ~40% popularity. Americans won't realize how shitty the situation is until you tell them, and make sure to blame Trump and the GOP every step of the process.
Insurance premiums on the rise? Thank Trump for that. No planes for Thanksgiving? Blame Vance. Etc.
Democratic representatives are speaking out almost daily. Voters are protesting in force at least monthly.
Yet too many live in filter bubbles and take the talking points they're given. My conservative parents sound very reasonable when they react to unfiltered news, at least in the moment. But then the talking points arrive and they down play or change their outlook completely. It's like a Borg mind which sometimes has high latency.
And I can relate. I lived with that mindset. Teaching myself to twist information to fit the worldview and compartmentalize to dodge the dissonance. Visiting only the safe outlets who would reinforce the comfortable and familiar perspective. Thankfully public schools, the Internet, patient coworkers, and curiosity popped my bubble.
The Republicans have tried to pay the military, the Democrats blocked it.
https://www.cnn.com/2025/11/07/politics/shutdown-congress-fe...
Elon Musk will step in to save the day and privatize air traffic control. The government will transform the nation into a fully decentralized economy owned and operated by oligarchs, with the role of the government shrinking to that of a mediator between the various oligarchs, and employed directly by the oligarchs. Kind of like how they describe it in the sci-fi show Alien Earth.
This thought gives me Back to the Future II vibes. Trump even reminds me of Biff.
Cue AI traffic control
You're absolutely right, that is another plane in your flight path.