How bad is a system that rewards those who don’t go to work?
I’m not here to defend the furloughed workers, who will get paid eventually, but they didn’t orchestrate the shutdown. To the extent some of them are willing to work for free for now, I commend it. For those who won’t do that, I can’t recommend in favor of slave labor, either.
When this is over, those who can’t handle up to two months without pay should get some serious economics counseling. They’ve got the decent wages and benefits and most often security of a federal job. That they don’t have savings to last two months, or at least an arrangement with a bank for a temporary loan if this happens, is incomprehensible. This has happened enough in the past so they should’ve prepared for it.