Kevin Hassett is probably not a familiar name, but you’re going to remember the chair of the White House Council of Economic Advisors after this one. According to Hassett, the 25 percent of federal workers who are furloughed without pay are better off because of the government shutdown.
Here’s Hassett’s logic. Many people take vacation days between Christmas and New Year’s. This year, hundreds of thousands of workers weren’t allowed to work during that time because they were furloughed.
So then they have the vacation, but they don’t have to use their vacation days. And then they come back, and they get their back pay.
Then in some sense they’re better off.
Hey, it’s all good, everyone has the money to float themselves through an unknown amount of time without pay, right? Not knowing when your next paycheck will come wouldn’t put a damper on Christmas, would it? And everyone knows that a vacation where you don’t have the money to go out and have fun is the best kind of vacation there is.
Spoken like a guy who’s never lived paycheck to paycheck and doesn’t realize that if bills come in and pay doesn’t, that’s a problem for most people. Spoken like a Trump administration official.