Zam-Zam
Senator
A few here have been wringing their hands over the latest The sky is falling!" crisis (?), but for much of the nation it's just business as usual. That has to be frustrating for the panic-mongers:
There are many reasons why the nation has crisis disinterest right now.
First, there has been no shortage of past shutdowns or debt limit deadlines. Seventeen times from 1976 to 1996, the government shut down. As for raising the debt limit, it has happened 53 times from 1978 to 2013. Familiarity may breed contempt eventually, but it spawns apathy first.
Second, there is the question of the impact. America has been here before – already this year to be exact. Remember the ballyhooed $85 billion sequester earlier this year? Although billed as the apocalypse, the sequester’s lower spending levels are now the norm and people have moved on. The shutdown’s effects are far less at this point and no one expects the shutdown to last for as long as the sequester.
As of now, America has not felt the crisis. The same October AP poll asked: “have you personally or has anyone in your household felt any impact from the federal government shutdown, or not?” Eighty-one percent of respondents said “no.” Not many issues, let alone “crises,” prevail when they register less than one in five feeling an effect......
.......However, the biggest problem is with “crisis messaging” itself and the media’s dissemination of it. Everything in America is now a “crisis” – nowhere more so than in Washington and to no one more than the media. The problem is that when everything is a “crisis,” nothing is.
Complete text: http://www.forbes.com/sites/realspin/2013/10/12/washington-d-c-is-crying-wolf-yet-again-but-no-one-is-listening/
There are many reasons why the nation has crisis disinterest right now.
First, there has been no shortage of past shutdowns or debt limit deadlines. Seventeen times from 1976 to 1996, the government shut down. As for raising the debt limit, it has happened 53 times from 1978 to 2013. Familiarity may breed contempt eventually, but it spawns apathy first.
Second, there is the question of the impact. America has been here before – already this year to be exact. Remember the ballyhooed $85 billion sequester earlier this year? Although billed as the apocalypse, the sequester’s lower spending levels are now the norm and people have moved on. The shutdown’s effects are far less at this point and no one expects the shutdown to last for as long as the sequester.
As of now, America has not felt the crisis. The same October AP poll asked: “have you personally or has anyone in your household felt any impact from the federal government shutdown, or not?” Eighty-one percent of respondents said “no.” Not many issues, let alone “crises,” prevail when they register less than one in five feeling an effect......
.......However, the biggest problem is with “crisis messaging” itself and the media’s dissemination of it. Everything in America is now a “crisis” – nowhere more so than in Washington and to no one more than the media. The problem is that when everything is a “crisis,” nothing is.
Complete text: http://www.forbes.com/sites/realspin/2013/10/12/washington-d-c-is-crying-wolf-yet-again-but-no-one-is-listening/
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