Downward spiral

Here's a question:

As a state worker, at what point should I just stop caring?

Headline from the Sacramento Bee:

"State to shut down first and third Fridays each month"

Awesome.

Now, I work for the state, but my agency is not under the direct control of the Governor, so we are ostensibly exempt from the Governor's various orders on state employees. However, there are other areas where we are not, and if the legislature steps in and passes a law that says we are included, well then, I'll get a 3 day, unpaid weekend twice a month.

So, again I ask, at what point do I stop caring? And I don't mean to insinuate that my desire to do my job, or the fervor with which I care about the issues I work on suffer, just my desire to show up and be productive. About the only productive thing I'll be doing is updating my resume. That being said, I'll certainly take a reduction in pay if it means that I'll keep my job, and this furlough order is basically losing a month of pay over the year; I doubt that the union that supposedly represents my interests agrees with me though.

I won't go into a big, long post about the problems between the Democrats, Republicans and the Governor in Sacramento, there's been enough about that. What I will say is that we can't meet this deficit simply by raising taxes, all that will do is depress spending and production even more; of course, we can't meet this by cutting spending, government does play some role and have a purpose after all. Someone needs to be willing to find that middle ground. That's about all I really feel like talking about on this- it's a mess.