Here's How Much Democrats’ Refusal To Fund Border Security Cost America During Shutdo

RamataKahn

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Here's How Much Democrats’ Refusal To Fund Border Security Cost America During Shutdo

A new report by a statistics professor at Washington University in St. Louis estimates that the 35-day partial government shutdown cost seven times more than the $5.7 billion that President Donald Trump requested for a border wall on the U.S.-Mexico border.

Liberty Vittert, who is also an ambassador for the Royal Statistical Society, writes that estimates for the cost of the shutdown per day range from $52 million to $360 million.

Through a series of calculations, Vittert estimates that the cost "associated with our furloughed federal workers is about $5 billion," which includes both the amount of money that the government workers missed out on, as well as the amount of money that was not spent in the economy as a result.

Vittert also notes that disruptions to the economy that were caused by the shutdown cost significantly more than the cost of the furloughed workers.

Vittert writes:

Standard & Poor’s has estimated that this shutdown will cost the American economy $6.5 billion per week – a figure they based on data from previous shutdowns. This estimate includes the reduction in spending by furloughed federal workers (though not their actual pay), as well as other trickle-down effects: lost business and revenue to private contractors, fewer vacations and school trips due to park closures, etc. That puts us at about $32 billion just for basic economic disruption.

Vittert continues by noting that "money not earned is not taxed," meaning that the $32 billion doesn’t take into account the loss of federal tax dollars, which she estimates is over $5 billion.

Vittert concludes her calculations by noting that approximately $1 billion has been lost in a lack of services provided by the government and in the amount of funding that the government provides to "many organizations."

In total, Vittert estimates that the shutdown cost the American public approximately $40 billion, which she notes would have paid for "the entire wall to be built and maintained for 40 years."

Instead of providing the Trump administration with $5.7 billion for the wall, the Democrats opted to allow the government shutdown to continue to the point where it cost the American public seven times that amount, and America got nothing in return.

Making matters even worse for the Democrats is the fact that they have supported tens of billions of dollars for border security, including physical borders, in the past — showing that they would rather oppose Trump and harm the American public than spend the money to secure the border.

On Friday, during a press conference at the White House where it was announced that the government would be reopening, Trump noted some of the major problems that are related to the unsecured southern border.

"Last year alone, ICE officers removed 10,000 known or suspected gang members, like MS-13 and members as bad as them. Horrible people. Tough. Mean. Sadistic," Trump said. "In the last two years, ICE officers arrested a total of 266,000 criminal aliens inside of the United States, including those charged or convicted of nearly 100,000 assaults, 30,000 sex crimes, and 4,000 homicides or, as you would call them, violent, vicious killings. It can be stopped."

"Vast quantities of lethal drugs — including meth, fentanyl, heroin, and cocaine — are smuggled across our southern border and into U.S. schools and communities," Trump continued. "Drugs kill much more than 70,000 Americans a year and cost our society in excess of $700 billion."
 
It was like an exercise in failure, on both sides and on many levels. It seemed programmed to cause maximum disruption to US society, with no satisfactory expectation of a positive goal, achievement, or outcome. I can't wait to see it happen again about something else, with no hope of success. Maybe he should cut back and build only part of it, and then it should be slowly added on to. I have stated before that the drug issue is like a quiet war is being fought against us. To spies and deep criminal gangs, they consider deaths that go misreported or reported as illegal drug overdoses as "free murders."

He analyzed what it was doing and how much it was costing, and so he put an end to it. Dems made some people scratch their heads, and I heard a lot of stuff that didn't seem common sense or democratic at all, from both sides. His friends also probably called him up and explained how it was so hard to fly.
 
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so, just to provide a counterpoint, vittert's analysis does not take multiple factors into account. i would like to point out that her statistical expertise is in facial recognition, not economics. she also has professional culinary training. impressive.

1. The Office of Personnel Management (OPM) says federal workers are paid $84,913 per year on average, meaning each worker will be due roughly $11,378 for the 35 days of work that they (so far) simply didn’t do. That’s $4.3 billion in total.

this is a leap, allowing the reader to infer that the value paid out is equivalent to the value generated by government workers. i doubt that vittert herself or any of the magaheads on this board would believe that to be true. at the very least, it does not provide a nuanced analysis of value that is deferred, which is to say that once people are back and working, an immeasurable portion of the backlog of work would eventually get completed, so the value would be captured.

2. In addition, all 800,000 furloughed workers aren’t spending nearly as much money in our economy right now. It’s been estimated that during the 2013 government shutdown, shopping by federal furloughed workers dropped by 7 percent. Most Americans spend what they earn, so that is a loss of about $640 million to our economy.

given the shopping tendencies of the middle class, some of those purchases will be deferred, not lost. she does not account for that in her analysis.

3. Standard & Poor’s has estimated that this shutdown will cost the American economy $6.5 billion per week – a figure they based on data from previous shutdowns. This estimate includes the reduction in spending by furloughed federal workers (though not their actual pay), as well as other trickle-down effects: lost business and revenue to private contractors, fewer vacations and school trips due to park closures, etc. That puts us at about $32 billion just for basic economic disruption.

the s&p estimates at least acknowledge that the value is deferred - their analysis is relative to Q4 GDP. vittert basically restates this estimate and then adds her own estimates, when the s&p analysis already includes factors she is estimating. she is double dipping, and ignoring the s&p's acknowledgement that gdp is deferred, so it's not a true measure of a loss of total value, it's a measure of a loss of value within a given snapshot of time.

4. And remember: money not earned is not taxed. So that $32 billion doesn’t take into account the loss of federal tax dollars. At the current rate of 17 percent, that’s another $5.4 billion.

when the workers are paid, the government will get their money back. also, she assumes that the 32bn "loss" is a given and uses it as her baseline, which it is not as previously established.

5. The federal government provides a significant amount of funding to many organizations. Take for example the University of Minnesota which typically receives about $500,000 per day in federal grant money. Since the shutdown began, the university has had to cover that cost out of its own coffers. Yes, they expect to be paid back when the shutdown is over. But with interest? Probably not. That’s $120,000 completely lost to the University of Minnesota.

if you take $500K/day for 35 days, that's $17.5 million. at current savings account interest rates (2.3%), that would come to about $38K, not $120K. the university would need to be earning over 7% for her figures to add up. show me the bank that is offering that, i'm in.

6. There is no doubt that the cost of this shutdown has already exceeded the amount that President Trump requested for the border wall. And if my estimate is correct, it could have paid for the entire wall to be built and maintained for 40 years.

yes, there is a lot of doubt, i figure.

of course, blaming it all on the dems is a deliberately blind perspective to begin with, but she's not arguing that point.
 
Ohh I forgot walls are immoral

“A dollar? A dollar? Yeah, one dollar,” Pelosi told a group of reporters just off of the House floor.

She later seemed to rescind even that offer.

“We’re not doing a wall. Does anybody have any doubt about that? We are not doing a wall. So that’s that,” she said.

“It has nothing to do with politics. It has to do with: The wall is an immorality between countries. It’s an old way of thinking [and] it isn’t cost-effective.”

Pelosi jokes about paying $1 for Trump's border wall | TheHill
 
Okay, I am #triggered.

You have to be a goddamn moran to side with the dems/left/faggots on this

PERIOD. You fucktards
 
32 Billion it cost not to give trump the 5.7 Billion he asked them for

this is our government in a nut shell now

:shrug:

and Trump is the bad guy.......bad man
 
just to be sure we're on the same page, are repubican's really insistent on a wall across the entire southern border?
 
well we cant fuckin exterminate everyone south of the rio grande so a wall is the 2nd best option
 
I mean logistically we could and it wouldn't even be that hard

but even I'm not for genocide

id like it a lot if ppl could get their shit together and make their countries safe and prosperous rather than just try to come here for the gibs
 
the president (or anyone) shouldn't be able to use government shutdown as a negotiating tactic. it's, as Trump would say, sad.

ya

its not as if they could have passed something that was veto proof

y is having better security on the border 'immoral'?

y couldnt dems offer a security package for the border, as they claim, to pull some republican votes to get past a veto?
 
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