Essential v Non-Essential: An Illustration

Online news comments are filling up with a lot of "if all those people aren't essential, why are we wasting money on them in the first place? Let 'em find real work, hur, hur, hur."

Avoiding an entire post about why the hell people who campaigned on strengthening the economy and middle class and job creation have instead thrown hundreds of thousands of workers out of work, an illustration of essential vs non-essential.

Imagine you are a town mayor. Your town has four schools (elementary, middle, high, community college), a fire department, a police department, code enforcement (the folks who write up citations for grass that's too long, garbage in the front yard, etc.), a museum, a road crew, a law team to deal with federal and local issues, a branch of the state MVA (car licenses and titles), mass transit, a lakeside park, and a general public works office where people can file for state or federal assistance (unemployment benefits, food stamps, job search, etc.)

Because this is an older town, most of the wiring is above ground. Newer buildings have buried their power lines and telephone lines (if they even have landlines installed) but many don't. The town also has a lot of trees. The town is proud of their many, many pretty trees.

Things are chugging along as normal... until the day the tornado hits.

There was plenty of warning so everybody battened hatches and/or got out. Nobody was killed. But when it passes, your town:

1) Is 90 % out of power. The private hospital and the schools are running on their generators, but downed lines and blown transformers mean that most buildings and almost all homes are dark. All traffic lights, including the one leading to/from the interstate highway crossing your town's main road are out.

2) Is blocked in. Massive tree limbs and even more massive trees have come down, some of them big enough to entirely block roads. (True: during a hurricane, a centuries old oak blocked our main road out. The thing was about 6 feet in diameter, and stretched entirely across the road.)

Obviously, your town is in a state of emergency. You need your road crew most obviously, but you're going to need your fire department as people misuse generators and you need your cops to help keep the peace and keep an eye on empty stores.

What you DON'T need:
- Anybody else

The support staff for the cops or fire department, their PR offices and office managers are superfluous today. So are the school's teachers, janitors, office workers, cafeteria people. MVA and mass transit is shut down, code checks are suspended, the park is closed, and public works are a secondary concern.

All of those people and more are non-essential in an emergency.

But does that really mean you don't NEED THEM AT ALL?

Riiiiiiiiight

The government has shut down because it's That Important to delay/stop the mandate that people buy their own health insurance if they don't get it through their employer. Only... I can't work because I'm caught up in the government shut down. I am prevented by the shutdown alone from doing the work that brings in the money to my employer.

Which means, I am informed, that the health care benefits that are deducted from my paycheck will run out. My options are to 1) reimburse my employer for the money that can't be deducted from my nonexistent paycheck or 2) to buy my own insurance via the "Obamacare" exchanges.

In other words, it was more important to shut the government down than to force me to pay for my own health care, except SPECIFICALLY BECAUSE I can't work, I will be forced to pay for my own health care.