The government shut down at midnight. I know this because I heard about it on the news. But I’ve gotten through nearly an entire workday and done everything that I normally do without noticing anything at all that’s changed. And that got me thinking.
The markets have been mostly up all day, and they’ve closed up – U.S., futures, most international. Clearly no one all Wall St. thinks this is a big deal. And what about the government agencies themselves? Well, I looked it up, and here is what I found.
At the Commerce Department, a little over 40,000 of its 46,000 employees have been furloughed, but commerce is still happening. Shops are open. I’m going to the grocery store after work and I don’t expect there to be any problems with my transaction.
At the Education Department, only about 200 of its 4200 employees will continue to work, but no schools closed today. Much to the chagrin of millions of children all over America, schools continued to operate as normal.
The Department of Energy will send home somewhere between 8500 and 12,000 employees, but my lights are still on, and I’m typing this on a computer that’s plugged in to my wall.
The EPA is furloughing 15,000 of its 16,000 workers, but I haven’t seen any factories spewing black smoke into the air or dumping toxins into rivers.
At the Department of Labor, fewer than 3,000 its 16,000 employees will continue to work, but I’m still at my job today. Everyone I know in the private sector is still working. Labor has gone on uninterrupted.
I could keep going. There’s a more complete list available here. But my point is this. Sure, some of these agencies do things that may be valuable. Maybe if they were all closed long enough, someone would eventually notice. But if we can send huge numbers of workers home and shut down most of the operations of multiple departments without very many people seeing any impact on their lives at all, then maybe we should rethink the resources we’re pumping into all these bureaucracies. Maybe we don’t need a federal Department of Education in order for our kids to be educated. Maybe we can conduct commerce perfectly well without paying 40,000 bureaucrats to oversee it. Maybe the EPA needs to be reined in a little bit.
Maybe a government shutdown actually provides a much needed reality check.
