Government Shutdown 2011? 5 Reasons Why It Wouldn’t Really Matter Either Way

Is the U.S. government going to shutdown on March 4th, 2011?  Possibly.  The current temporary funding extension expires on that day.  Speaker of the House John Boehner has pledged that the Republicans in the House will not pass another temporary funding extension that does not include “deep” cuts.  Barack Obama has pledged that he will veto the 61 billion dollars of budget cuts that the House of Representatives has just passed.  So now Boehner and Obama are playing a really bizarre game of chicken, and if neither of them blinks the U.S. government will shut down on March 4th.  So what will that mean?  Well, in a “government shutdown”, the entire government does not actually shut down.  Rather, only “essential personnel” are kept on during a shutdown and only “essential services” are provided.  Barack Obama would keep showing up at the White House and the U.S. military would continue to do their thing.  But it would cause a temporary disruption to a lot of government activities that people normally rely on. (Read More...)

How Does Any American Family Make It On Less Than $50,000 A Year?

A rapidly increasing number of American families are finding it really, really hard to make ends meet each month.  The price of food, gas, health insurance and other basic necessities has continued to escalate, but wages have not followed suit.  So more Americans are finding themselves squeezed financially at the end of every month.  Instead of having extra money with which to enjoy the American Dream, millions of families are now experiencing the American Nightmare of working too hard but never having quite enough.  But what can be done?  Certainly we can all cut back on unnecessary expenditures, but there are some expenses that just cannot be eliminated entirely.  We all have to eat, we all have to drive to work and we all have to pay the rent.  In fact, it is very hard to imagine any American family making it on less than $50,000 a year.  Of course millions of American families are making it on far less than that,  but it isn’t easy.  The truth is that $50,000 doesn’t go nearly as far as it used to. (Read More...)