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US air traffic controllers start resigning as shutdown bites

thedailybeast.com

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Re: US air traffic controllers start resigning as shutdown bites

#321

Post by vidarh »

user68858788 wrote: post #311

A quick search shows that there are over 20,000 ATCs employed in the United States. (I'm not confident in the sources I found - anyone know where to get reliable stats for things like this?) Is the number of retiring ATCs higher than normal? I assume it is, but the article doesn't mention the baseline. It's hard for me to understand the scale of the issue from this article alone.

If we take the lower number of 15, than that is nearly 5.5k a year. Even if we round it down, that'd be 25% a year if your number is right and this situation continued. Of course it can't continue very long, because there won't be that many old enough to have the choice, presumably. But it's a crazy rate.

Re: US air traffic controllers start resigning as shutdown bites

#322

Post by kevin_thibedeau »

samrus wrote: post #296

So the deadlock is over ACA premium tax credits. A subsidy towards premiums, inversely proportional to income. Republicans have to budge on this right? Health insurance is already dire in this country, you cant fuck it up even more. The working class is the biggest part of the citizenry, and we are in an affordability crisis

60% of ACA recipients are in Republican controlled districts. That shows how much they care about their constituents.

Re: US air traffic controllers start resigning as shutdown bites

#323

Post by muglug »

samrus wrote: post #296

So the deadlock is over ACA premium tax credits. A subsidy towards premiums, inversely proportional to income. Republicans have to budge on this right? Health insurance is already dire in this country, you cant fuck it up even more. The working class is the biggest part of the citizenry, and we are in an affordability crisis

They absolutely don’t have to budge. The affected population has a lot of low-propensity voters.

Re: US air traffic controllers start resigning as shutdown bites

#324

Post by Jtsummers »

jmclnx wrote: post #297

If this keeps going, lots of knowledge will be lost. But at least by retiring they will start getting paid (I think) via 401k, Social Security or pensions. In a way we have an idea what to expect. When Reagan fired the controllers in 1981/2, AFAIK there were no major incidents with air travel. But I think Military Controllers were brought in to cover the holes the firing left. This time, I thought I saw Military Cont…

> But at least by retiring they will start getting paid (I think) via 401k, Social Security or pensions.

Gov't 401k is called TSP, and like regular 401k plans it's not accessible (without penalties) until you're 59 1/2. Social Security also has a minimum age (62) before you can start receiving benefits. ATC can access FERS earlier than other federal employees because of their mandatory retirement age (56) which is below MRA under FERS (57 for most people now). They can get their pension at age 50 with 20 years of ATC time or any age with 25 years of ATC time (some other services also get this benefit and count towards that).

And an important point there, because ATCs retire before 59 1/2 and before 62 by necessity (56 is the oldest they can be), they won't get their TSP or Social Security for several more years.

Pensions are being held up for people who are retiring right now as the people processing retirements are also furloughed (I don't think all, but it's impacted friends of mine with delays to processing). Retirements are already slow to process and occasionally people end up waiting 6+ months to get their pension (they should get back pay in that case, but it's still months without income).

Re: US air traffic controllers start resigning as shutdown bites

#325

Post by throw0101a »

retrochameleon wrote: post #307

I'm a heavy gamer. I like lots of strategy games. Sometimes I look at our country like a strategy game: where we are investing resources, infrastructure planning and investment, active problems or threats and how they are being prioritized and handled, managing citizen happiness, etc. The last 10-20 years feel like a massive lost opportunity to invest in some of these improvements and forward-thinking planning. In th…

> I'm a heavy gamer. I like lots of strategy games.

Politicians should have to play several hundred hours of 4X games (Civ 4/5/6/7, Stellaris, Europa Universalis, Hearts of Iron) before they're allowed to run for office.

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/4X

If they can't beat some of these videos at the highest difficulty settings they should not be allowed to break things IRL.

Re: US air traffic controllers start resigning as shutdown bites

#327

Post by RestartKernel »

dathinab wrote: post #300
xg15 wrote: post #294

I get that the Trump admin doesn't care a bit about the impact of the shutdown on the general population (they're fighting in court for NOT having to release the emergency funding that would instantly reinstate SNAP) and probably even welcome it as an opportunity for "government downsizing" - but things like air traffic becoming restricted would start to touch even the areas that the ultra-rich are interested in, wou…

yes but Musk has claimed he could trivially re-implement the system with more or less only using AI putting aside weather that is true or not and just assume it to be true for the later argument then it is the perfect chance to replace a public service the country depends on by a billionaire controlled private company thats how you convert a country to an oligarchy, bit by bit replacing essential parts with entities…

> trivially re-implement

That's... concerning to anyone who has tried or witnessed a trivial rewrite. Let me hold some hope in the institutions that be to stop this from being hastily deployed.

Re: US air traffic controllers start resigning as shutdown bites

#328

Post by TylerE »

pinkmuffinere wrote: post #320
neko_ranger wrote: post #310

Would increasing the age limit of 31 for new air traffic controllers fix anything?

Wow, didn’t realize there’s an age limit for new controllers! That does seem silly

No it doesn’t. They require years of specialized training paid for on the governments dime, and have a mandatory retirement at age 56. Much older than 31 and it simply does not justify the expense of training.

Re: US air traffic controllers start resigning as shutdown bites

#329

Post by antonymoose »

kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #322
samrus wrote: post #296

So the deadlock is over ACA premium tax credits. A subsidy towards premiums, inversely proportional to income. Republicans have to budge on this right? Health insurance is already dire in this country, you cant fuck it up even more. The working class is the biggest part of the citizenry, and we are in an affordability crisis

60% of ACA recipients are in Republican controlled districts. That shows how much they care about their constituents.

What percentage of this recipients are Republican constituents?

Re: US air traffic controllers start resigning as shutdown bites

#330

Post by silisili »

retrochameleon wrote: post #307

I'm a heavy gamer. I like lots of strategy games. Sometimes I look at our country like a strategy game: where we are investing resources, infrastructure planning and investment, active problems or threats and how they are being prioritized and handled, managing citizen happiness, etc. The last 10-20 years feel like a massive lost opportunity to invest in some of these improvements and forward-thinking planning. In th…

It's hard not to zoom out and look at the world as a game at times. If you do that, and go back way more than 10 years, it feels like every country is playing terribly.

Countries used to routinely go on domination quests for land and resources. They used to go find exotic lands and claim them as their own. They used to harvest resources and enslave the losers.

Now, not so much. If you watched it zoomed out as a game, you'd assume the powerful players all got bored with it and gave up.

Of course, realizing it's not a game but real people, you realize the world collectively is probably in a better place. But it also means powerful countries giving up power, which is weird to see happen.

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