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What is Slippage In Crypto And How To Avoid It? Business 2 CommunityDakota Murphey analyses the causes of digital burnout, how we can avoid it, and for employers, protect against it…
The way we work looks very different to the professional landscape of just a few short years ago. For many, remote working is now a part of normal life with 38% of working adults having worked at home at least one day per week in 2022. That is a significant proportion of the population enjoying the freedom and benefits that working from home brings.
There are also plenty of us who have been given work devices that we can use in the office or at home, meaning we are always connected and available to work. But, every rose has its thorn and for all the benefits of remote working and increased connectivity, there are drawbacks people must overcome.
Perhaps the biggest danger to our well-being is digital burnout, with people being available to work for longer and more often than if they are based at home. There are ways we can avoid overexposure to work and avoid digital burnout.
Digital burnout occurs when we are exposed to our screens for too long. Being forced or feeling compelled to stare at your screen for hours at a time can lead to workplace stress. This can manifest itself in various forms such as tiredness or exhaustion, anxiety, a loss of interest in your job or depression and loss of sleep.
Whether you work into the late evenings while at home, skip lunch or open your laptop at the weekends to check in, we are being overwhelmed by work through our digital devices. This can lead to mistakes and lapses in concentration which can range from falling for the latest security vulnerabilities to being short-tempered with colleagues.
Working flat out at any time can see us struggle to maintain momentum and eventually our productivity can wane. The same is true of always being switched on and we need breaks from our screens and devices and time to clear our thoughts of anything work-related, even if just for a moment. There are several symptoms of digital burnout to look out for if you think you are in danger of too much screen time.
Of course, these symptoms are not exclusive to digital burnout but experiencing them could be an indication that there is an imbalance in your life. Asking yourself if you are working too much or spending too much time staring at your screen is the first step towards finding a solution to the problem.
Credit: Alamy Stock
If you are sick, you are sick but there is a temptation to keep working when you have access to a work device. Sure, for mild symptoms then perhaps a day or two in your pyjamas while you work from the sofa is okay but for more serious illnesses and conditions, we need time to rest and recuperate.
We have learned that isolating when infectious is an important step to avoid passing it on to others, but dialling into a Zoom meeting while sick is often still expected of people. That can be exhausting for someone who needs rest but the expectations of ‘presenteeism’ mean we can feel the pressure to attend meetings virtually, even if we’d really rather not.
Sleep and rest are essential for recovery from illness so being able to shut your laptop and get some is important. Not to mention how your performance will be impaired and the likelihood of mistakes will increase.
The risks of overworking are not just mental, it can put our health at serious risk. Studies have shown that overworking can lead to a 42% increased chance of heart problems and a 19% chance of stroke. Although it might not seem like overworking because you aren’t ‘at work’, digital burnout is not something to overlook.
There are plenty of ways we can get lured into working longer hours and when your laptop is so close by it can be tempting just to log on and do another hour. Breaks are important, and when working on a screen all day a useful way to get enough time away from your device is the 20-20-20 rule.
This rule states that every 20 minutes you need to stare at something 20 feet away for 20 seconds. Applying this rule throughout the day can reduce eye strain and let you refocus. But staring off into the distance isn’t enough for an eight-hour shift and once per hour you should get up from your desk for 5-10 minutes.
This might be to make a coffee, have a toilet break or simply take a quick walk around the block. If you are feeling stressed or overwhelmed by the level of screen time you are experiencing, meditation and deep breathing exercises can help to restore a level of calm.
It is not just the responsibility of the individual to ensure they are free from digital burnout and companies must do their part to ensure the safety and continued well-being of their staff. Companies can make a start by adopting an approach that normalises taking breaks and finishing work in good time.
A company culture of working through the evening as well as the day isn’t a healthy one and it’s the first place to make a change. Companies can encourage staff to take regular screen breaks and ensure that managers are checking in on staff regularly to assess their working hours. Communication is important to help recognise the signs both in other people and in ourselves.
Encouraging face-to-face meetings periodically gives everyone the chance to sit around the same table, without the need to stare through their screen. Plus it’s good to be in the same room as people from time to time, even if remote working is your preference. Healthy digital practices help to avoid toxic workplace habits and encourage staff to avoid digital burnout.
Catch-up or listen again to this session:
Join Westfield Health CEO, Dave Capper, Professor Jeff Breckon from the Advanced Wellbeing Research Centre at Sheffield Hallam University and Sky Wellbeing Health & Fitness Manager Alistair Hugo, now...
It’s one thing to read about burnout; it’s another thing to have it come knocking on your door. I’ve experienced the latter. That’s why I’m now such a firm proponent of putting measures in place to prevent burnout for everyone—including executives.
A Deloitte survey found that more than three-quarters of workers have felt burnout. That’s a considerable number. Put simply, even if you have 10 employees, at least seven might be at risk of burnout. And as I found out, one of those seven could be you.
I’ve always been a workaholic. As a CEO, you can probably relate. When the pressure’s on, you want to go into action. Yet, even if you feel energized by your Type-A routine, you might be in for an unpleasant surprise.
My “surprise” happened on a Monday. I was mingling at a large dinner that was part of a conference I was hosting. Before I could sit down, I suddenly felt lightheaded. The next thing I knew, I was in the hospital. However, I was determined to get back to the conference. So, that’s what I did.
A few days later, I wasn’t feeling good. I had a headache and nausea. It turns out I had a concussion from hitting the deck. It took six weeks to recover.
What happened? My body and mind were trying to get my attention. I wasn’t listening, so it literally knocked me on my ear. I’m listening now. I’m also keen on ensuring my experience doesn’t happen to other executives.
I ignored the initial signs of burnout. My enthusiasm was waning, and my temper was rising. I felt like it was tough to get my mojo back sometimes. However, I told myself it was just normal, post-pandemic stuff.
I brushed away all the symptoms of burnout that were threatening my health. Your symptoms might look different, of course. Burnout affects everyone in unique ways. Some people feel fatigued; others get edgy. Regardless, burnout is pervasive and often requires professional intervention once it’s reached its peak.
Unfortunately, burnout is rising, not just because of the coronavirus but because of tech. We’re now faced with more information than we could ever consume. It’s overwhelming. It’s also addicting. We haven’t quite adapted to the influx of data at our fingertips, leading us to become hypervigilant. We’re always paying attention, always “on,” and always getting bombarded by stress-related hormones.
See the problem? We weren’t built for screens, endless scrolling, or late-night Slack messaging. We were made to need brain breaks, which we’re not getting. Accordingly, our brains are pushing back — and hard. They’re breaking down and trying to tell us, “Houston, we have a problem.” Only, we’re not listening. We’re going full force and then ending up on the floor during a convention dinner in front of 100-plus guests.
At this point, you’re hopefully wondering how to avoid burnout. I have some solid advice:
1. Focus on sleep hygiene. Most leaders I know don’t get enough sleep. And as a CNN Business report explains, the longer you stay awake, the more likely you are to lose your edge. Therefore, start a better sleep regimen tonight.
First, make sure your room is dark and cold. Stretch and relax before hitting the sack. Try to eat a balanced diet during the day, or at least in the hours before bedtime. It’s hard for your body to get into a restful state if your belly is trying to digest a cheeseburger, fries, and beer. (Speaking of beer, alcohol can wreak havoc on your sleep schedule. It’s okay to imbibe conscientiously, but limit yourself. Bedtime and bourbon don’t go great together.)
2. Incorporate physical activity into your day. I know you don’t want to hear this because you’re probably having trouble getting a shower, let alone a walk, jog, hike, or bike ride. Nonetheless, a doctor friend of mine suggests carving out 37 minutes daily for activity. He wishes he could write prescriptions for “forest bathing,” which he explains means getting lost in the glory of green spaces.
I honestly don’t have time to get to a park or even just outside sometimes. But that doesn’t matter. I try to do more intentional movement at home. As a result, I always feel rejuvenated. Remember: The body is made for movement. When you give it what it craves, it helps you heal from the inside out. Ironically, exercising will help you with your sleep, too.
3. Stop using devices first thing in the morning. Do you start the day by checking your phone and hitting up your emails? For the next week, I challenge you to stop. Get a cup of coffee. Take your 37-minute stroll or Peloton ride. Make a nutrient-rich breakfast. But don’t ramp up your stress levels by tapping into the digital world right when you open your eyes.
By the way, after you’ve done this for a week, do it for another week. The old saying is that it takes 42 days to develop a habit. Still, we’ve all quit after the 42-day mark. That’s why the gyms are packed in January and empty by late February. So, aim for 84 days of behaving nicely to yourself by going tech-free first thing in the morning.
It’s hard to admit that you can’t cope with everything. Guess what, though? You’re human. You have limits. Yes, you can push the bar and reach for the stars. But even the astronauts who made moon shots needed to ensure they had the oxygen to achieve their goals. Rather than risk a burnout breakdown, embark on some healthier habits. As they say, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. With burnout, the price of the cure could far outweigh the trouble of some simple daily changes.
Twitch star Jeremy "Disguised Toast" recently talked about the financial side of owning a Valorant team on The Wisemen podcast, streamed on Hiko and Sgares' channels. Slasher and Steel were also on the panel as the owner of DSG gave his opinion on the influence of crypto on gaming and esports businesses.
Disguised Toast revealed his apprehension with getting a crypto sponsor for his team, who recently qualified for the VCT NA Challengers League 2023 set to start in February. He also discussed ways to get investment for his team but promised to try avoiding anything to do with cryptocurrency due to its volatile state.
The Offline TV streamer's reasoning is that crypto's influence on the esports industry and its decline in recent months are the reasons why so many orgs have been laying people off:
"Esports orgs, a lot of them are hand in hand with crypto. That's why there's so much layoffs happening, like the gaming space in general. You know, with the NFT stuff that was going on. I'm gonna try my best to avoid it."
Disguised Toast has gone on record talking about the difficulties of owning an esports team and the finances behind it all. Only a couple of days ago, he claimed that his team made a grand total of 0$ for qualifying for the VCT Challengers. Here's a more recent tweet of him sarcastically talking about the same issue:
The tweet garnered a lot of attention, gaining millions of views within a day as esports personalities and fellow streamers took to the replies section to offer solutions.
Disguised Toast's friend Tarik, who recently won a hyped showmatch between Mogul Moves and Offline TV at the Ludwig x Tarik Invitational Valorant event, joked about esports teams making money:
Ludwig had a much more comprehensive answer:
Thanks to cases like Logan Paul's Cryptozoo fiasco becoming highly talked about in recent times, not to mention the FTX collapse, the problems with big crypto projects are on full display.
(Tweet from January 11, 2023)
Regardless of the financial difficulties of owning a Valorant team, Disguised Toast seems adamant about not dipping his toes in the crypto business:
"As an esports org you can't accept crypto money and then like shill it to all your fans and once it goes down be all, 'Well, guys we are actually not going to be in the crypto space anymore. Sorry!' Just wipe your hands pretending like you weren't just selling this to your very young player base, getting them to invest."
Timestamp 1:23:50
As the chat spammed the words "TSM FTX," the streamer concluded:
"I don't think you can walk away and act like it was a regular sponsor. It's not a regular sponsor when it comes to crypto. It's not like you are selling Pizza Pops. It's like, you got fans to buy into this very volatile currency, right?"
Here are some reactions from r/ValorantCompetitive, where the clip has gained quite some traction:
Disguised Toast's Valorant team comprises some pretty well-known figures, including steel, Exalt, Genghsta, XXiF, and clear, with OCEON as the coach. They won all their matchups at the Open Qualifiers, making their way into the NA Challengers that will start next month as part of this year's overhauled Valorant Champions Tour.
Do you know about the symptoms of norovirus? No? Well, here’s an overview of what this infection is all about. In this article, we will about what exactly is norovirus, its symptoms, its causes, and how you can prevent it.
Norovirus, also called stomach flu or winter vomiting bug, is a highly contagious infection that passes through direct or indirect contact with an infected person. The infection can even spread through contaminated water, food, and surfaces, and can also pass quickly in closed quarters, including schools, hospitals, offices, etc.
Though it’s not actually flu, the vomiting and diarrhea can be severe and badly affect your health.
There are many causes of norovirus, and people can get the infection in many ways.
You can get a norovirus infection through direct contact with someone who's sick or perhaps you sit on an infected surface or touch an infected door before touching your nose or mouth, or drinking or eating contaminated water and food.
The tiny particles enter the body through your nose or mouth, make their way to the stomach and enter the intestine, causing various symptoms of norovirus. Sometimes, certain sea foods, such as oysters, are already contaminated with norovirus, and further spread after consuming or even touching it.
Symptoms of norovirus start between 12 and 48 hours after being exposed to the infection and can range from very mild to severe.
Some major norovirus symptoms in adults include the following:
Usually, the symptoms of norovirus last between 24 to 72 hours, but if they persist beyond, you must see your doctor immediately, especially if you start experiencing bloody stools.
Always remember that diarrhea can lead to severe dehydration, so, it's important to seek medical assistance at the right time.
Infants and toddlers are more vulnerable to viruses and are more likely to get infected. So, it's important to look out for certain symptoms so that serious complications can be avoided.
Symptoms of norovirus in infants and children include the following:
It's important to note that infections spread quickly among small children, so infected children should avoid schools and other activities.
Norovirus spreads quickly in crowded and compact places such as parks, schools, nursing homes, etc., and is common during the winter season and early spring months. While you can’t really prevent the infection, you can certainly reduce the risk of getting exposed to it by following important tips.
Some daily preventive measures you can take to reduce your chances of getting norovirus include:
There's no treatment to cure this infection, but following certain steps can ease symptoms and help you feel much better. These include drinking lots of water and healthy liquids, eating bland and homemade foods, and getting proper rest.
Do you know about the symptoms of norovirus? No? Well, here’s an overview of what this infection is all about. In this article, we will about what exactly is norovirus, its symptoms, its causes, and how you can prevent it.
Norovirus, also called stomach flu or winter vomiting bug, is a highly contagious infection that passes through direct or indirect contact with an infected person. The infection can even spread through contaminated water, food, and surfaces, and can also pass quickly in closed quarters, including schools, hospitals, offices, etc.
Though it’s not actually flu, the vomiting and diarrhea can be severe and badly affect your health.
There are many causes of norovirus, and people can get the infection in many ways.
You can get a norovirus infection through direct contact with someone who's sick or perhaps you sit on an infected surface or touch an infected door before touching your nose or mouth, or drinking or eating contaminated water and food.
The tiny particles enter the body through your nose or mouth, make their way to the stomach and enter the intestine, causing various symptoms of norovirus. Sometimes, certain sea foods, such as oysters, are already contaminated with norovirus, and further spread after consuming or even touching it.
Symptoms of norovirus start between 12 and 48 hours after being exposed to the infection and can range from very mild to severe.
Some major norovirus symptoms in adults include the following:
Usually, the symptoms of norovirus last between 24 to 72 hours, but if they persist beyond, you must see your doctor immediately, especially if you start experiencing bloody stools.
Always remember that diarrhea can lead to severe dehydration, so, it's important to seek medical assistance at the right time.
Infants and toddlers are more vulnerable to viruses and are more likely to get infected. So, it's important to look out for certain symptoms so that serious complications can be avoided.
Symptoms of norovirus in infants and children include the following:
It's important to note that infections spread quickly among small children, so infected children should avoid schools and other activities.
Norovirus spreads quickly in crowded and compact places such as parks, schools, nursing homes, etc., and is common during the winter season and early spring months. While you can’t really prevent the infection, you can certainly reduce the risk of getting exposed to it by following important tips.
Some daily preventive measures you can take to reduce your chances of getting norovirus include:
There's no treatment to cure this infection, but following certain steps can ease symptoms and help you feel much better. These include drinking lots of water and healthy liquids, eating bland and homemade foods, and getting proper rest.
Zinkevych / Getty Images/iStockphoto
Social Security beneficiaries who are in default on federal student loans could have their monthly payments garnished to pay the debt down. To avoid this financial hit, there are steps you can take to get the loan out of default.
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More than 2.6 million Americans who are 62 and older owed a combined $107.3 billion in federal student loan debt at the end of 2022, Fox Business reported, citing U.S. Department of Education data. A relatively small percentage have loans in default. Those who do could have up to 15% of their Social Security benefits garnished, though the agency can’t reduce benefits to less than $750 a month or $9,000 a year, as GOBankingRates recently reported.
Before the garnishment begins, Social Security will send a notice, according to the Legal Aid Society of Cleveland. Debtors can’t appeal, challenge, change or question this debt, meaning the only way to avoid it is to get the loan out of default. Among the ways to do this are to consolidate the loan or set up a rehabilitation program.
Borrowers who received Direct Loans or FFEL Program Loans and qualify for rehabilitation must meet the following requirements, according to StudentAid.gov:
To consolidate a defaulted federal student loan into a new Direct Consolidation Loan, you must either agree to repay the new Direct Consolidation Loan under an Income-Driven Repayment plan or make three consecutive, voluntary, on-time, full monthly payments on the defaulted loan before you consolidate it.
Social Security benefits can be garnished for a number of reasons. In addition to defaulted student loans, these include overdue federal taxes as well as child support, alimony or restitution.
State laws determine a valid garnishment order for child support, alimony and restitution, according to the Social Security Administration. You can’t appeal to the agency to challenge this kind of garnishment. For that, you’ll need to contact an attorney or representative in the jurisdiction where the court issued the order. To appeal a tax garnishment, you will need to contact the IRS at 800-829-7650 to discuss your appeal rights.
The Department of the Treasury can also withhold Social Security benefits to collect delinquent non-tax debts owed to other federal agencies. There is no appeal available under the Social Security Act, so if you find yourself in this situation you can contact Treasury staff at 800-304-3107.
If there are any changes to your garnishment order, you should go to your local Social Security office with a new court order that changes the garnishment of your benefits.
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Your Social Security benefits are not subject to garnishment when it comes to private debt such as medical costs, car loans and credit card bills.
More From GOBankingRates
The food in your kitchen cabinets may not be what it seems.
"I guarantee you any time a product can be passed off as something more expensive, it will be. It's that simple," Larry Olmsted, author of "Real Food/Fake Food," told CNBC.
Fraudsters motivated by economic gain secretly infiltrate the global food market through a variety of means, including counterfeits, dilutions, substitution and mislabeling.
This not only harms consumers' wallets, but it also puts public health and safety at risk.
Some estimates say food fraud affects at least 1% of the global food industry at a cost as high as $40 billion a year, according to the Food and Drug Administration.
"We might not know the overall impact of food fraud because so much of what fraudsters do is hidden from us and has been for centuries." Kristie Laurvick, senior manager of the foods program at the U.S. Pharmacopeial Convention, told CNBC.
Even the FDA says it can't estimate how often this fraud happens or its economic impact.
"Be aware of the product that you put on you or plug in the wall," John Spink, director of the Food Fraud Prevention Think Tank, told CNBC.
Between 2012 and 2021, the most common type food fraud was lying about an animal's origin and dilution or substitution, both ranking at 16% of recorded incidents by food-safety monitor Food Chain ID.
For example, dilution could entail adding a cheaper vegetable oil to an expensive extra virgin olive oil.
"If I drink scotch, I couldn't tell you [the] difference between a $50 bottle and a $5,000 bottle. So, I know I could be deceived at that point," Spink said.
The Food Fraud Prevention Think Tank suggests five questions a consumer can ask themselves to reduce their vulnerability to product fraud.
Watch the video above to learn more about the different types of food fraud, how the industry is preventing risk, what consumers can do and where fraud in the olive oil, spices and seafood markets may be lurking.
Studies show that in 2020, nearly 400 people were killed in a car accident related to texting while driving (via Forbes). When you break that down, it equates to more than one person killed each day. The biggest problem with this statistic is each one of these deaths could have been avoided, but people chose their phones over their safety and the safety of others. As it's stated on many billboards and highway signs, no text is worth your life... and they're absolutely right.
Even if you survive a crash, you could have injuries that can affect you forever. Looking at that same data in 2020, we learned approximately 30,000 injuries were caused by people being distracted by their phones. Think about it: would you rather wait 20 minutes until you arrive at your destination to check your texts or potentially change your life in a matter of seconds?
2023 brings the United States a new Congress with a new Republican majority in the House, and (after many many hours of voting) a Republican speaker of the House, and you know what that means: There will be a massive fight over the debt ceiling.
The ceiling, a legal limit on how much outstanding debt the federal government can hold, sparked standoffs between the Democratic White House and Senate and the GOP House in 2011, and again in 2013, and is now set to unfold yet again. The Republican House rebels who voted against Kevin McCarthy in the speaker election over a dozen times finally forced a promise to never pass a “clean” debt ceiling increase (that is, one without spending cuts attached) in exchange for their votes.
Breaching the ceiling would be almost incomprehensibly bad: Beth Ann Bovino, chief US economist at Standard and Poor’s, was hardly alone in 2017 when she predicted that “the impact of a default by the U.S. government on its debts would be worse than the collapse of Lehman Brothers in 2008, devastating markets and the economy.”
And yet America keeps running this apocalyptic Groundhog Day. Luckily, there is a way out of the dilemma: ending the debt ceiling once and for all. The best way to do this is through legislation, but given the stranglehold of Republican hardliners in the House, that looks impossible. The administration couldn’t raise the debt ceiling on its own, but experts have floated a few options for the president to consider to avert a crisis. None of these are free from risk, and all would likely spark considerable litigation that could in turn cause market turmoil. But all would be preferable to defaulting on US debt.
There are at least four ways a president could nullify the debt ceiling without Congress.
It’s strange but true: As blogger Carlos Mucha pointed out back in 2010, an existing law gives the US treasury secretary the power to issue platinum coins of any value she wishes.
The intention of the original 1997 law was about making it easier to produce platinum coins for the international coin collector market, but in 2011, Mucha revived the idea in the context of that year’s debt ceiling standoff. The treasury secretary could issue, say, a platinum coin worth $2 trillion, deposit it into the Treasury’s account at the Fed, and use those funds to sustain the government until the debt ceiling is raised.
The Obama administration found the idea too unserious there to use, but the legal case for minting the coin is as solid as platinum. Just ask debt ceiling hardliner Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT), who was sufficiently concerned about the option to introduce legislation to close the platinum coin loophole. The plain text of the 1997 law clearly allows the treasury secretary to do this, and Jay Powell, the Fed chair who in a past career was an expert on the debt ceiling and its dangers, is arguably legally required to accept the coin as a deposit.
You can also imagine more serious variations on the concept. Progressive economist Mike Konczal once proposed issuing a $20 billion coin every day to keep the government running until Congress agrees to abolish the debt ceiling for good. And a $20 billion coin is, what, 1 percent as silly as a $2 trillion one?
Some legal scholars have argued that Section 4 of the 14th Amendment, which specifies that “the validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law ... shall not be questioned,” renders the debt ceiling unconstitutional, as it threatens the validity of the US’s public debts by creating the possibility of default.
This is hardly a consensus position among constitutional law experts, but if Biden were to declare he was ignoring the debt ceiling because it’s unconstitutional, it’s not clear that anyone would have legal standing to sue him and challenge the decision. That helped encourage a number of political actors, from then-House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi to former President Bill Clinton, to urge Obama to invoke the 14th Amendment during his debt ceiling showdowns.
Obama declined repeatedly, arguing in 2013 that “if you start having a situation in which there’s legal controversy about the US Treasury’s authority to issue debt, the damage will have been done, even if that were constitutional, because people wouldn’t be sure.”
University of Florida law professor Neil Buchanan and Cornell law professor Michael Dorf have, in a series of papers, proposed a way out of the debt ceiling that’s related to but distinct from the 14th Amendment option.
Buchanan and Dorf note that Congress, by setting spending and tax policy as well as a debt limit, has given the president three mandates: to spend the amount Congress authorizes, to tax the amount Congress authorizes, and to issue as much debt as Congress authorizes. When the debt ceiling is breached, it becomes impossible for the president to obey all three of these legal requirements.
Prioritizing spending on certain activities and cutting it elsewhere usurps Congress’s spending power by cutting spending unilaterally. Raising taxes without congressional authority would usurp Congress’s taxing power. And ignoring the debt ceiling would usurp Congress’s power to set debt limits.
The last option — respecting Congress’s taxing and spending powers while ignoring its debt limit — is the “least unconstitutional” option, Buchanan and Dorf argue. This judgment would no doubt be challenged in court, but it’s arguably less dramatic than the president unilaterally declaring the debt ceiling a violation of the 14th Amendment.
Steven Schwarcz, a professor at Duke Law and expert on capital markets, has proposed getting around the debt ceiling by having the Treasury Department create a “special-purpose entity” to issue new securities, distinct from traditional Treasury bonds, that can pay for government expenditures. Because they’re not Treasury bonds, these securities would not be subject to the debt limit.
This may seem bizarre, but Schwarcz got the idea from state and municipal finance in the US; many states raise most of their debt with special-purpose entities, rather than by directly issuing bonds, often so they can get around their own state debt limits.
Ideally, Biden will use one of the above methods to evade the debt ceiling and prevent Kevin McCarthy and his caucus from using the threat of federal government default to extract policy concessions.
But these are all relatively dramatic steps, and it’s possible that Biden will, like Obama before him, demure and ultimately accept that he needs to bargain with McCarthy and agree to spending cuts to get a debt ceiling increase passed. If that happens, it’s worth considering what such a spending cut deal will look like.
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The best guide here is the 2011 Budget Control Act, the result of that year’s debt ceiling standoff. The Obama White House took a firm line against any deal that cut Social Security or Medicare without increasing taxes. For a brief time, House Speaker John Boehner seemed to be playing ball, agreeing to as much as $800 billion in revenue increases, but it soon became clear that he could not get his caucus to support major tax increases. Without the tax hikes, the Social Security and Medicare cuts that Obama was open to — like slowing cost-of-living adjustments for the former and raising the age for the latter to 67 — went off the table.
And while Republicans have ideological reasons to want to cut Social Security and Medicare, their older-than-average voting base, combined with those programs’ overwhelming popularity, also give them reasons to avoid cuts in this area.
So the ultimate 2011 deal kicked the can down the road. It included $917 billion in direct spending cuts, mostly implemented by capping “discretionary” spending, which includes defense programs and everything else the government does that isn’t a mandatory entitlement program like Social Security, food stamps, or veterans’ benefits.
The bill then mandated another $1.2 trillion in deficit reduction to be determined through a congressional committee (colloquially called “the supercommittee”). If the supercommittee failed to put together a package slashing $1.2 trillion through tax hikes or spending cuts, indiscriminate spending cuts would ensue through forced decreases in the caps on defense and non-defense discretionary spending. Unless Congress passed spending bills with totals below these new, even lower caps, a “sequestration” process forcing across-the-board cuts to every affected program would ensue.
The across-the-board cuts included as a backup were never meant to take effect. They were an enforcement mechanism meant to pressure Congress into making a deal, the equivalent of paying a guy from Craigslist to punch you if you don’t get your work done on deadline.
But the supercommittee failed, forcing those spending cuts. Because the deal took cuts to Social Security, Medicaid, and the beneficiary side of Medicare off the table, the toll on Americans was lighter than it could have been. (Medicare payments to providers were cut, though, which some studies have found reduces quality of care received.) Further, Congress agreed in another deal at the end of 2012 to delay the sequestration cuts for two months, so they began on March 1, 2013. But they took effect then, as planned.
The sequestration led to 7.7 percent across-the-board cuts to defense and 5.1 percent across-the-board cuts to domestic discretionary spending. Military operations funding fell by $17.1 billion, National Institutes of Health funding by $1.6 billion, nuclear weapons security by $903 million, border security and immigration enforcement by a combined $890 million, and on and on.
Perhaps worse, agency heads had little to no flexibility in distributing these cuts; every “program, project, and activity” had to be cut equally, and “activity” was defined to include things as small as a single buoy the government floated in the Chesapeake Bay. That buoy, somehow, had to be cut by 5 percent (in practice, that meant scraping 5 percent less bird poop off the buoy).
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These across-the-board cuts, though, only came because Congress approved spending bills totaling more than the caps they set for themselves (again, assuming the cuts wouldn’t actually take effect). After 2013, Congress knew it had to pass spending bills that did abide by the caps, after which no across-the-board cuts would ensue. It simply had to make decisions about what spending it wanted to prioritize, subject to those limits. It also could, and occasionally did, change the caps, as in the 2013 and 2015 budget deals, which raised defense and non-defense spending caps in the short term, partially offsetting that with lower spending later on. The 2018 and 2019 budget deals under Trump increased the caps still further and barely included any offsets, driven largely by a Republican desire to restore defense spending.
Taking all these changes together, the Committee on a Responsible Federal Budget’s Goldwein told me, the Budget Control Act of 2011, the fruit of the debt ceiling crisis, resulted in $1.2 trillion or so in overall deficit reduction. This was less than the $2.1 trillion originally promised (due to the repeated deals which raised the budget caps), but it was still a sizable hit. Overall spending was substantially lower from 2011 until the Covid-19 pandemic hit (and threw the federal budget into general chaos) than previously planned.
So, what did this all mean for actual users of government services? For some, the impact was temporary. Head Start, the pre-K program for low-income children, kicked 57,000 kids off its rolls when the sequestration hit, kids who permanently lost access to the program. But the next year, funding was restored and stayed roughly on track for the rest of the decade. Some affected spending categories rose dramatically over this period, most notably health care for veterans, which members of Congress prioritized in appropriations bills.
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So what did suffer? The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities’ David Reich co-authored a category-by-category report and found that, between 2010 and 2021, every single category of non-defense discretionary spending besides veterans’ programs saw declines after adjusting for inflation and population growth. Economic security, health care, and scientific research programs were close to stagnant, falling by 4 percent or less. But funding for environmental protection and parks fell by 15 percent; general government operations by 26 percent; education and job training by 14 percent; diplomacy and foreign aid by 19 percent; agriculture, energy, and commerce by 19 percent.
Housing vouchers through the Section 8 program could not keep up with rents; the center estimated that between 2010 and 2017, voucher funding fell by 9 percent after adjusting for rent inflation, resulting in “significant decreases in the number of families that were being served over that time,” Peggy Bailey, the center’s vice president for housing and income security and a former senior adviser to HUD Secretary Marcia Fudge, told me last year.
A study from the American Association for the Advancement of Science found that aggregate research and development spending from the federal government was $200 billion lower due to the Budget Control Act; health research from the National Institutes of Health and the VA fell by over $7 billion a year relative to previous historical trends, while the National Science Foundation got almost $2 billion a year less.
This was all bad news for people interacting with government programs. The two biggest social assistance agencies in the US are the Social Security Administration (which administers old-age and disability payments) and the IRS, which administers tax credits that are crucial for reducing poverty. Adjusted for inflation, funding for the agencies fell by 13 and 19 percent between 2010 and 2021, respectively.
Perhaps the single worst category of cuts that took effect — given what followed — were to programs related to pandemic preparedness and effectiveness. As Reich and Katie Windham note, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s budget fell by 7 percent between 2010 and 2021, and its grants to state and local public health agencies fell by 20 percent. That almost certainly hampered America’s ability to anticipate and respond to pandemics like Covid-19, and almost certainly cost lives.
In short: We don’t know.
For one thing, experts say there’s a huge amount of uncertainty about when the ceiling will be hit this year. July or August 2023 has been thrown about as a likely deadline, but the ceiling might not be hit until 2024 if tax revenues surpass expectations, allowing the government to pay its own way temporarily. While House Speaker Kevin McCarthy got his job by promising a fight on the debt ceiling, his majority is very narrow, meaning that six or more Republican defections could enable Democrats to pass a “clean” increase using a tool called a discharge petition, through which a majority can force a floor vote in the House even if leadership doesn’t want one. (This is an important plot point in the 2003 classic Legally Blonde 2: Red White & Blonde, our modern-day Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.)
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Personally, though, I’m steeling myself for a repeat of the 2011 budget deal, precisely because the dynamics that led to it narrowly focusing on a small sliver of the budget are still there. Republicans are if anything even more vehemently opposed to tax increases, and Democrats are equally vehemently opposed to tax hikes affecting all but the richest 1 percent or so of Americans. Social Security and Medicare are still hot potatoes, and while other “mandatory” programs like food stamps are less popular, Democrats have historically held firm against any cuts to them.
That leaves discretionary programs, both defense and non-defense, covering everything from the FBI to medical research to US embassies abroad. Those programs took a severe battering during the 2010s under the Budget Control Act, and there’s every reason to expect them to take a battering in whatever deal emerges in 2023. The consequences are not straightforward, but could weaken important parts of the government that have already been underfunded for a decade. And the odds of a showdown actually addressing the drivers of the long-run budget deficit — inadequate tax revenue, an aging population with growing health and pension bills — are basically zero.
The one thing debt ceiling fights never do is solve the debt issue.
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