Janet is currently exploring the implications of the California university furloughs. If you haven't been paying attention, California is so grossly dysfunctional that the state government has had to order all employees-- including university faculty-- to take 9% of their work time off as unpaid "furlough" days, in order to cut costs enough to have an approximately balanced budget.
Janet's comments, and the stories about the impact on scientists reminded me of the Great Government Shutdown of 1995, when I was a grad student working at NIST.
That shutdown was the result of a game of "chicken" between Bill Clinton and Newt Gingrich over the Federal budget. Clinton refused to agree to the budget measures being put forward by the "Contract With America" class in Congress, and as a result, no budget was passed, and the government officially shut down.
Of course, you can't really shut down an entity like the Federal government-- too many of the services they provide are critical to the day-to-day operation of our society. As a result, there was a provision that allowed employees who were categorized as "essential" to continue to work even through the shutdown. At NIST, this meant that "essential" employees were put on a list and approved to enter the facility even when it was closed down.
The designation of "essential" personnel was left to the individual laboratory directors at NIST. The director of the Physics laboratory, Katherine Gebbie (a really terrific person who did right by her lab), delegated this to the individual group leaders, with the end result being that just about everybody in an experimental group like ours was designated "essential."
The shutdown lasted about three weeks, and by the end of that time, the parking lot at the Physics building was basically full. There were a few people who didn't come in at all, but pretty much all of the physicists kept working more or less as usual. There were some things you couldn't do, of course-- no equipment purchases, and the like-- but I spent most of the shutdown as an "essential" graduate student, playing around with lasers just like I did the rest of the year.
Other lab directors were less accommodating. The Chemistry lab parking lot was basically empty the whole time, making a stark contrast. I don't think there was ever any official response to the whole thing, though. Katherine was still in charge the last I knew.
I hope that the California situation manages to resolve itself with as little fuss. I suspect, though, that the California polity is comprehensively broken enough that things won't get better for a while yet.
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If they catch you thinking off-clock, do they punitively confiscate your mind? Such could be the only facile entry of science into management.
After management shuts down the power (think Green!) it will pontificate about refrigeration. Compassion and diversity demand that those who have so much to give must, and those who have so much to receive will. The defective future you purchased at horrendous cost arrived last Tuesday. It opened its own shipping crate and now demands unbounded feeding forevermore. Kill it.
Of coruse, this is but a bump in the road. Suppose US currency inflated tenfold. 90% of accumulated debt would simply vanish in terms of buying power. Current challenges would then be repackaged as brilliant financial strategy.
As a current UC employee, I can say that we've definitely seen a lot of cutbacks. For instance, they forced early retirement on all of the staff that they could get away with before they even got to the furlough business. Faculty have also taken an 8% pay cut. Admissions to grad programs are way down. Luckily, I'm skipping state next month so I won't really suffer through it all.
The underlying problem is the California constitution coupled with highly gerrymandered districts. They need a 2/3 majority to raise taxes (although sales tax doesn't count which is why it's so high) and there are just enough gerrymandered dyed-in-the-wool Republican districts to make this impossible. So no taxes. That would make things tough enough to run but on top of that it's easy to get propositions on the ballot and to pass they only need 1/2 popular vote. But these ballot measures often involve a bunch of spending. So basically the public votes directly for spending and then indirectly vote for people who will never raise the revenue stream with taxes. I believe this is spelled F-U-C-T.
The 2/3 majority is only a minor part of the problem in California. It's just an easy way for the Dems to blame all of their problems on the Reeps. The gerrymandered districts are a much bigger issue, because the majority of the legislators are either in strong Republican or strong Democratic districts. Any sense by their voters that they may be compromising with the other side guarantees a primary challenge.
Also, the parties are internally disfunctional. For the past 3 budget bills now, either the Senate or the Assembly have adjourned early, prior to the other side getting a budget passed as an "f-you" to the other house. It started with the previous leadership, but God forbid that the new Pro-Tem and Speaker act like grownups and quit doing it. This year it forced the governor to use his line-item veto to cut even more spending, when the Senate adjourned before the Assembly voted, leaving the Assembly with a bill that neither caucus could deliver enough votes to approve. They ended up voting out an unbalanced budget, forcing the Gov to line-item it into balance, and now the Senate leader is suing him because he doesn't like the budget that happened after he left town.
As the previous Josh pointed out, the initiative process is also a huge issue, at least on budgetary matters.
Furloughs are a lot better than loss of jobs.
But there is also the problem here where some people seem to feel that when times are tough, the government should just take more money (tax increases) instead of dealing with the reduced cash flow like everyone else. When people as a whole have less money is no time to take more from them.
... so grossly dysfunctional ... is a euphemism.
I think Harlan Ellison spelled the more accurate term, "PHUQT".
Jay @ # 4 - pls read some economic history. Increased government spending is not only a fairly reliable way to ameliorate/end financial flops, it may well be the only way that works.
Pierce. That's debatable. Not everyone is a Keynesian.
The other way to end financial flops is to just stand by and wait...while a lot of people suffer. The consequences should include zeroing out the severance packages of the executives whose "leadership" precipitated the mess. Of course, that's not the way it works out in practice...
Josh S @ # 7: Not everyone is a Keynesian.
Quite so. But has any well-documented recession/depression ever been ended (whether deliberately or by happenstance) through any other means than those recommended by JMK?