Congress and President Obama are fighting over whether the federal government should spend $40 trillion (Republicans) over the next ten years or $46 trillion (Democrats). Either way, the government will spend more money than it takes in and future generations will be burdened with additional debt. Either way, the states will continue to have enormous pension and retiree health care obligations that they have set aside no money to pay.
In the midst of this question of how best to impoverish our grandchildren, there is a risk that the “non-essential” federal government will shut down. To me, the most senseless part of a shutdown is the closure of the National Parks. A principal reason that the U.S. is so wealthy is that we stole such a great piece of land from the Indians. We’ve been reaping a return on that stolen investment for 400 years. The National Parks yield some of the highest return of any of the land. Foreigners come here to see the parks and pay at least the following taxes: airfare taxes, airport facility fees (mostly to government agencies), rental car tax, gasoline tax, hotel tax, restaurant tax, sales tax on anything that they buy, payroll tax (indirectly through the workers whose jobs at hotels, restaurants, etc. they support), property tax (indirectly through the landlords of the hotels and restaurants, etc.), and income tax (again through workers).
If, as a society, we’re running out of money, shouldn’t we at least keep the profit centers open?
It’d be interesting to see actual numbers on this, but I imagine the return on our stolen investment from mineral rights dwarfs that from tourism. It’s not a coincidence that the few states without budget shortfalls have few people and lots of mineral-rich public lands (hello Wyoming!). And fortunately, private industry knows enough to always keep profit centers running, so never fear, the wells will keep pumping!
The first item to be not paid should be Congressional salaries. That might concentrate a few minds.
Things like parks that people actually use are the first things that get cut when there are budget problems. Then, the people will feel the pain and vote for more money to be spent, even though the parks are a rounding error in the budget.
I like when they close the parks. You can just waltz on in for free through a non-gated entrance and there are no rangers around to kick you out.
I always resent having to fork over $10 to go for a walk in the woods.
The last vignette in this Forbes blog post explains it precisely (it’s like bob said, treat the people like expendable peons in a executive-legislative game):
http://blogs.forbes.com/warrenmeyer/2011/04/07/why-do-we-accept-the-government-budget-process/
JCS
enplaned – Isn’t congress the ultimate millionares club? It seems Unlikely to have the same affect as most people missing a paycheck.
If you’re not already aware of the blog, Warren Meyer runs contracts for several state and federal parks and blogs about it at http://parkprivatization.com/ . He often mentions that parks he runs were kept open during the last government shutdown; and uses this as an argument to have contractors run more parks.
Look up Washington Monument Syndrome on Wikipedia. (I would link but I think the spam filter eats it.)
Can we please keep the National Parks open during the government shutdown?
No, absolutely not in my opinion. Shutting everything down gives the American taxpayer an appreciation for the services the government provides.
I say stop Social security payments, medicare, TSA, national parks, income tax refunds, CDC, and anything else that depends on Federal dollars. Probably the only employees you can’t furlough are the military service people and the FPS. Make too many exceptions, though, and the point won’t be made.
Then Americans can have an honest discussion of what services they want, because, let’s face it–the deficits are huge and the debt is enormous.
Gary: It is not the American (resident) taxpayer that I’m talking about. It is the visitor from Europe, Asia, Africa, or Latin America. One of our competitive advantages as a tourist destination has been our relative stability. A tourist here was unlikely to have his or her trip ruined by civil unrest, a general strike, etc. If we ruin too many $8,000 vacations, we may suffer a permanent loss of foreign tourism to countries that are either more interesting or more stable.
Maybe the answer is to keep the parks open, but only for foreigners.
They’re cutting NIH funding and shutting down the National Labs and you’re worried about the parks? Seriously?
You want return on investment? It’s called Science. It works. And it’s more important than anything on the table.
Bob has it right. The point isn’t to make money but to hurt us.
Jim: If the U.S. government shuts down some of its scientific research facilities for a few weeks, that does not prevent universities and corporations worldwide (including in the U.S.) and non-U.S. national labs from continuing to pursue whatever research they think is most important. The U.S. does not have a monopoly on smart people or on nature.
http://www.sciencewatch.com/dr/sci/11/mar27-11_1D/
says “The Asia-Pacific region has become the dominant producer of research papers in chemistry. The region now contributes some 43% of those published in the internationally influential journals indexed by Thomson Reuters”. Scientific inquiry and progress should survive the complete collapse of the U.S. economy and government.
By contrast, the U.S. government has granted itself a monopoly over providing access to National Parks.
Finally, if there is a return on a scientific investment, it will come between 5 and 50 years after the investment is made. By contrast, the National Parks should be generating positive cashflow right here right now. That’s what I meant in the original post by “profit center”.
[Separately, I would be interested to see your source for government spending on science being a sure source for return on investment (or even that the spending could be considered an “investment”). It costs $1-2 billion to send an experiment into space. It is interesting to learn about Venus or the moon, for example, but it is hard to see how the U.S. economy grows in response to that new knowledge. CERN, home of the most advanced scientific instruments on the planet, e.g., the Large Hadron Collider, is funded by (among other European nations) Greece, Portugal, Spain, and Italy. Investing in science at CERN hasn’t kept those nations from going broke.]
philg:
“A tourist here was unlikely to have his or her trip ruined by civil unrest, a general strike, etc. If we ruin too many $8,000 vacations, we may suffer a permanent loss of foreign tourism to countries that are either more interesting or more stable.”
Indeed. Of course, the TSA has already ruined some $8k vacations, or simply prevented them from being scheduled. A fair number of Europeans already consider travel to the U.S. to be more trouble than it is worth.
Since we stole the land from the Indians, why don’t we just lease the land back to the Indian tribes through some kind of profit-sharing plan?
Allow the Indians to open casinos and/or operate the parks like they are currently. Since the Indians are not government employees or even US citizens, there is no need to give them pensions or health care, and they won’t be affected by the government shut-down.
Then open the land to all international and domestic tourists. Any revenue collected would be split between the feds, the relevant states, and the Indian tribes in question.
This plan should even garner political support from left and right. To the right, it could be sold as a way to reduce deficit and government staff. To the left, it could be sold as “giving back to the Indians what’s theirs.”
I can’t imagine a company where it would be acceptable for the upper management to have so much infighting that they have to just shut the place down and stop doing business for a while.
It is impacting real companies and real labs and real people already – nobody related to any government work has any new (emphasis on new) money to spend or any idea when they will again. If you are on a zillion dollar project that is already underway maybe you are OK, but otherwise it is an ugly situation.
Of course the big joke is that this has absolutely nothing to do with the budget, the deficit, or the debt and everything to do with the programs that the Dems like vs. the programs that the Reps like. Essentially this is a couple of teenagers playing chicken and trying to show their girlfriends who is the coolest, toughest and has the biggest pair. Sadly all the rest of us are the innocent bystanders to this replay of hormone-fueled adolescent behavior.
Does the government have waste and unnecessary programs? Of course it does. So does every organization in the world to one degree or another. But unless and until we are willing to have a fundamental conversation about defense and entitlement programs (Medicare, Medicaid, etc) you could essentially eliminate the entire discretionary budget and barely make a small dent in the problem.
Of course the American people are no help here since on average they really don’t understand how government works, the budget, or numbers bigger than about 500. For example, a recent CNN poll reported that Americans believed that public broadcasting received approximately 5% of the federal budget. The actual number is closer to 1/100th of 1% (source: http://i2.cdn.turner.com/cnn/2011/images/03/31/rel4m.pdf)
Well, here in Larimer County, Colorado our sheriff claims he is going to keep Rocky Mountain Park open during the shutdown. The national park service doesn’t seem to agree, however, claiming that they will issue citations to people who enter the park illegally during the shutdown.
http://www.coloradoan.com/article/20110408/NEWS01/104080321/Sheriff-We-ll-keep-park-open-during-shutdown-?odyssey=tab|topnews|text|FRONTPAGE
The gubment is out of money. No way around it. It won’t shut down any time soon, but someday it will. We are all part of the animal kingdom, no matter how much we try to create special privileges for rulers. Giving some states back to the Indians would be a better idea. Michigan actually had higher employment in Indian times than after we fixed it.
Point of information: all Indians born within the territorial limits of the United States are citizens, by the Indian Citizen Act of 1924.
Phil,
As I’m sure you known, the INTERNET was created at CERN! And the major players are France, Switzerland and Germany…also the three best economies in Europe and the primary scientific and technical drivers…not the PIIGS nations.
The ROI was closer to a 5 years than 50; the funding, even for the LHC, let alone the Internet is “only” $12B or so.
Can science, or rather technology, prevent a nation from going bankrupt? Of course not…the power of innumerate politicians to ruin an economy is far greater than the power or technology to create wealth!