US Government shutdown

On September 30, the US government will run out of money for the next fiscal year. That means that, unless a compromise is reached in Washington, there will be a government shutdown. For us, this comes all of a sudden, we had heard about this a couple of days ago. We weren't even sure what this means and what is going to happen. After a bit of documentation, I'll try to summarize for you what the government shutdown is, why it happened and what the consequences are.

According to the definition in Wikipedia, a government shutdown is a situation where the government stops providing all but "essential" services. As "essential" is understood police services, fire fighting, medical care, armed forces, traffic management and similar activities that provide national security. The non essential federal employees will then be furloughed (non paid leave).

The reason for such shutdown is a disagreement of a legislative body for a budget financing its government program for the next fiscal year. In other words, it is known that there is no budget for the next fiscal year (starting October 1), so the non essential services can't be provided any longer. This shutdown can only be avoided if the lawmakers reach a compromise on a federal spending measure. 

There has been national shutdowns in the past, the last one was in 1995 and lasted 21 days. Since then there has been several threats of shutdowns, being the last one in 2011.

Like everything in politics, several issues are linked together, and it is all about the interests of the different parties what really moves the decisions made. The reason why the Congress doesn't reach an agreement is the new Health Care Act, also known as "Obamacare". Ever since the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act and the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act of 2010 was made law, there have been those in Congress trying to figure out how to get rid of it. For me it is not very clear why exactly Republicans try so hard to avoid public health care, (other than the hate to any public service that might threaten the capitalist system) but the fact is that this disagreement will potentially force the shutdown. As I understood, the republicans are pushing to  avoid this health care Act, and the democrats want to move forth with this measure, even though this could mean billions of loss due to the shutdown. 

But what does it mean for the everyday life? 

- The non essential government employees are vulnerable for furlough or unpaid leave. 

- The essential employees will be paid retroactively when the shutdown is over. 

- The U.S. judicial branch is likely to continue to operate for a period of time using various fees it receives. 

- Passport service workers are not considered essential, so passports and Visas will not be processed.

- All the national parks will close during the shutdown --> this is especially important for us, since we are traveling to Vegas to do a 2-week roundtrip visiting the National Parks... You might think we couldn't have chosen better dates :)
- All public museums, zoos etc, will remain closed to the public.

To be honest, it seems somehow extreme that this happens in a country like this, but apparently every government has this kind of disagreements; no matter how big and powerful, there are always two forces that use their power to sabotage their opponent's attempts for change.

As for our vacation, as you can imagine, we are continuously trying to get the latest news on that topic, hoping not to change our plans. But surely it will be great, no matter how it turns, vacation is always great :)

We'll keep you updated. Lots of love

Lita & Andres

Visiting the capital of the US

On September 2 we celebrated Labor Day in the US, so we used the longer weekend to visit Washington. I have to clarify, Washington DC (everybody asks this clarification here, since they have a state and a city with the same name :)). We spent two full days there, and got a really nice impression of the capital, it is definitely worth to spend at least a week if you want to visit a couple of museums (which, by the way, are all free). We were supposed to meet the Obamas, but unfortunately they had planned to travel to Europe at that time. If not, they'd had made time for us, I'm sure :)

Getting from Detroit to Washington by car is long, it took us around 12 hours, things that happen before a long weekend, we were not the only ones on the road. We got there around 11,30 pm, and then we had to look for parking. Not fun. But at last, we made it. The next day we started the visit of the downtown area, where we saw the White House (photo above), and the Mall, an open are in the center of the city where the main monuments are located. In the photo below you see the obelisk called Washington Monument, unfortunately, it was under construction at that time.

Not far away from there we got to the Smithsonian Museums, the largest museum complex in the world. Our first station was the Space and Air Museum. There you can find everything from the first planes used to impressive models of turbo-machines, as well as a lot of material related to aerospace, the universe... Really extensive, and yet not so to get boring.

Here is Andres before getting in the space rocket to the moon :)

After a quick lunch we walked around the Capitol. It is so awkward to finally see the building that so many times is shown on the news. It feels somehow as if you had already been here before.

The heat was unbearable, so we decided to go slowly towards the hotel. On the way to the subway station, which was on the other side from the capitol, we had to stop on every museum, only to cool down for a second. Good thing they are free :)

Later in the evening the went out to Georgetown, a nice area of the city full with shops and restaurants, beside the Potomac river. There we saw some interesting spots, like the oldest Old Stone House, the oldest unchanged building in Washington.

These stairs became famous with the movie "The Exorcist", nowadays  they're called the "Exorcist steps".

This is a photo of the main street in Georgetown, nice little houses that call for a calm walk after the busy and warm day.

The next day we walked back to the downtown area. We started saluting the president Lincoln, sitting in the Lincoln Memorial.

Despite of our visit, he remained seated...

Here I am standing in front of a big wall with the names of the fallen in Vietnam.

This is the Roosevelt Memorial, apparently he loved his dog very much, so it forms part of the memorial too.

As part of the Roosevelt memorial, these statues of people waiting in the bread line represents the Great Depression that preceded the World War II.

These are statues that form part of the Korean War Memorial.

Across the lake there is the Jefferson Memorial.

After so many memorials, we felt like not having the clear picture in our minds, so we visited the Museum of American History. It was very interesting, especially we liked the section of the Civil War.

After that, we went back to Dupont Circle, walked around a little bit, and then went back to the hotel. For the night, we repeated our choice of the previous night and went to Georgetown, where we enjoyed a very nice meal near the see.

In summary, Washington has many enjoyable walks, you can learn a lot from the many museums, and the restaurant diversity has a lot to offer. We will visit again soon :)

Lots of love,
Lita & Andres

History of work

Before we came here, we had already heard that the Americans work a lot. And in fact, it is not only true, but rather I find it worse than I expected: They spend way more time at work than any other country in Europe, they never take vacations (most of them just "survive" with long weekend, extending the normal weekend with an additional half or full day), and they even work on a Saturday or Sunday. Even the national holidays are located on Fridays or Mondays, so that people can't do half a week off. I am talking in general terms, there are job positions that allow a bit more freedom to the employees, but the work conditions (or the lack of them) make it really difficult for this society to have a happy and complete life aside work. Additionally, another fact that we all are experiencing is the huge unemployment rates in some countries, starting with this one. All this put together made me think that I don't have very clear picture of the history of work, why and when people started to work and how we came to the current situation. So I decided to research a little bit on the origin of work, and I'd like to share some of this with you, so that you can get a wider picture too.

Talking about the history of work, it seems like it has always been there. However, if we think how life used to be some centuries ago, we can well imagine people not working in exchange for money, but rather a trade between products. In that sense, there had to be a fisherman that provided fish for his society, but unlike now, he would share the fish he caught with the rest of his neighbors. Those would in return provide him with the fish nets, any repairs needed on his boat etc. Every one had a function and they did not need economic transaction among them, because it was equally important to have a fisherman as to have a doctor. 

Looking a bit later than that, not everyone in the society worked. In the classical society, the wealthy class would inherit properties from their ancestors, not needing to work to survive. The only population that needed to work were the poor, since they started with nothing. Even the Romans and Greeks had no interest in working, as it would give them less time to develop their ideas, beliefs, morality etc.

It was later on that working acquired a positive value for the person doing it. Its probable origin seems to come with the Judeo-Christian beliefs. But the idea of work as a gratifying act for every single person didn't really establish until the 16th century. This was a need that came with the industrial development, for which the workers needed to feel gratified although they had to work long hours and poor working conditions. And from that point on, the attitude and values of working have been accepted, becoming the norm in the Western culture. It was said that only if you work hard, you will be responsible of your own destiny in life.

With the big industrial development, a huge amount of the population worked in factories, doing repetitive and very specialized tasks that took long time to execute. It was at that moment when the definition of work started to lose the sense of control over one's destiny, as the activities didn't stimulate the workers intellectually. At a certain point, they realized that the workers needed a challenging situation to keep motivated and not become lazy at work. That is when they invented the rewards for workers, to make them feel important at work (according to this, when your boss offers you a promotion, it actually doesn't mean that you're good, but rather you're getting lazy and need more challenge...). It was also this time when employers started to provide better conditions for their workers, like a salary, health and retirement policies, etc. With the introduction of these social factors to the workers, something really interesting happened: nothing changed. The motivation of the workers to do their jobs did not seem to increase.

Soon after this was established, a lot of these working population were replaced by machines that made the same work faster and more accurate. The job offer decreased dramatically. But the society had already entered the concept of work as the only method to provide for one's future... Following the old model and using it to cover current necessities, many job positions have become obsolete, unnecessary, and sometimes redundant. 

My takeout in that matter is that there was a need once to establish work as a gratifying act, in order to get everybody's agreement to help develop products (like in the war). After that, the need for people decreased. But the moral value attached to work and to define someone's value through its profession remained in society. It is very probable that if you ask somebody why he or she works, they'd say "because I need the money". But that might not actually be the real motivation, rather than "because everybody is supposed work to get money". And those are different aspects; the first one is meant as a necessity, it is the only way to survive; the second one is an established tradition.

And that is why people work their lives to death, because it became a "learned need", and is accepted by everybody. And the truly demand of work to be done is much smaller than the amount of workers. It is a deadly combination for the employee but the best scenario possible for an employer, and may explain why Americans don't take vacations. It is not because there is work to be done that can't wait for a week, it is because work scarcity helps get people's energy to the maximum. Because they know that if they show weakness or decide to take some free time, there is somebody else prepared to do its job who is willing to work twice as much.

But instead of finishing the post with this dramatic conclusion, I would like to give hope for a future where work can still have a meaning, and we are seeing it already in the society. Although it is true that mechanical jobs are not as important now as they were during industrialization, the era of the information gives the opportunity to find new ways to develop and transfer new knowledge. Knowledge is an unlimited resource, all different aspects are open for further investigation. The problem with knowledge is that it is also scarce, it is difficult to invent something new, and a lot of specialization in then needed. So, only by working collectively, this kind of work can be a success. But in order to be a knowledge worker, creativity is needed. And working 60 hours a week nobody can stay creative.

I hope this reflexion helps some of you, you might as well have other theories of the current situation and I'm sure I simplified a lot on the way, and left out some really "clever" ways of creating jobs like businessmen or banking. But my goal was to understand where the need of work comes from, and to share my thoughts with you on the way :)

Lots of love,
Lita&Andres