{"id":1940,"date":"2009-08-18T19:35:28","date_gmt":"2009-08-18T18:35:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/?p=1940"},"modified":"2012-04-29T08:23:38","modified_gmt":"2012-04-29T07:23:38","slug":"bonkers-economics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/?p=1940","title":{"rendered":"Bonkers economics"},"content":{"rendered":"

News just in from the Department of Silly Ideas<\/em><\/p>\n

All public services in the US City of Chicago have been shut down for the day and the city staff have had<\/em> to take the day off as an enforced unpaid holiday.<\/p>\n

This is being done, we are told, in an attempt to deal with the city’s \u00a3184m budget deficit.<\/p>\n

What?<\/p>\n

While other folk might read this story and think fulsome, praising thoughts along the lines of ‘Good for them, at least they’re trying to do something about the problem’, all I can do is sit here and think…<\/p>\n

What?<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

I’ve heard of the silly season, but has that now become the stupid season?<\/p>\n

Am I honestly expected to believe that all<\/em> of the private\/partnership organisations who have contracts with the City of Chicago won’t<\/em> be charging for their services, even if their contracted services are not taken up?<\/p>\n

Really?<\/p>\n

Because if that’s what I’m expected to believe, I don’t believe it.<\/p>\n

So what’s the real saving here?<\/p>\n

Are the police still patrolling the streets? Well yes, of course they are.<\/p>\n

Are the fire services still on the same degree of on-call readiness? Well yes, of course they are.<\/p>\n

So what is really being saved here, apart from the salaries of the teachers and administrative staff?<\/p>\n

Overhead costs on the building services?<\/p>\n

Maybe.<\/p>\n

A bit of electricity here or there?<\/p>\n

Possibly.<\/p>\n

But everyone knows that a building standing idle – an asset not in the production cycle – is a loss-maker, everyone knows this simple rule of economics.<\/p>\n

Or, to put it another way: an asset not in use is a liability. It ceases to be an asset when it is not in production.<\/strong><\/p>\n

So really, all that’s being ‘saved’ is the salary that would<\/em> have been paid to the city workers.<\/p>\n

Except…<\/p>\n

Had these same city workers been in paid employment they would have paid taxes on their salary, and that’s a big bunch of lost income<\/em> to the US Treasury.<\/p>\n

How is taking revenue away from the US Treasury a saving?<\/p>\n

No, go on, I’m all ears. Please tell me; how is this exercise saving the city of Chicago money!<\/p>\n

Oh, and one final thought.<\/p>\n

America, being the over-litigious society that it is; how long do you think the city leaders will have to wait before a collective of Chicagoans club together and sue the living shit out of the city for the day of lost services that they have paid for via their taxes.<\/p>\n

Saving?<\/p>\n

Don’t make me laugh.<\/p>\n

Do I look that naive?<\/p>\n

Source<\/a>:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

News just in from the Department of Silly Ideas All public services in the US City of Chicago have been shut down for the day<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1940","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-stuff","two-columns"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1940","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1940"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1940\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1940"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1940"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1940"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}