It was framed this way by some involved parties, but it's a second independent decision to let that happen.
The other option was for the Treasury to stop issuing checks at a rate higher than than it's inflows.
This is similar to what many of us might have done at some point (college might be one), riding as close to your limit as possible, but making minimum payments and reducing spending as needed.
I'm sure they have a playbook somewhere that sets priorities of payments. Actually defaulting on a tranche (does that term apply here?) of bonds would spike the rate so much, they'd avoid it for all but paying themselves, probably.
I'm asking because I'm a morning person, but I doubt I would enjoy 'getting to it' at 5am everyday. Although there is allure to that amount of focused 'personal time'. Doing all that after day job would not appeal to me as much.
This thread has taught me more about how different lifestyles are than anything. I think the actual hourly rate of many people in IT roles might be in a tight band (until you've 'made it'). This would mean the biggest differentiator would be # of hours one puts in, with more hours typically being rewarded, either through higher salary or side job payments (tax benefit?).
I put in an average of 50 hours per week first half of the year and earned enough to make an average rate of $45 per hour.
Do you all consider it part of your job to listen to what's happening in the tech world, learn about personal productivity, etc? If these times were taken out and only time producing tangible output were measured, my average rate would go up, maybe to $70 per hour.
There's also cost of living. I'm not in the bay area, but in another pretty fun and techy place. According to bankrate I would have to make 2.2x to have the same quality of life in The Bay.
My free time is not (currently) consumed with projects. It's consumed by my GF, running, going out, casual reading, a couple TV shows. All this I think is a worthwhile tradeoff. And I need to be away from computer screens after a while!
It would be very interesting to gather people's net pay, hours worked for that pay, and MBTI (ENTJ here), to see what types cluster around what effective hourly rates, what types cluster in terms of total hours, etc.
Just one data point, but there's some humor to be gained from it: http://www.zerohedge.com/news/speaking-credibility-here-cbos...