Imagine that you decided to live according to the personal version of the federal government shutdown rules when it came to the way you spent your money and time. You would be continuing your revenue collection activities, so you would still go to work, and you would pay for the bus ticket to get there. You would continue spending where necessary to protect life, health, and property, and you would honor your contractual commitments, so that would mean buying food and paying the cell phone bill. But your TV subscription would have to go. Magazines and newspapers, when they came up for renewal, would stop coming. If you were paying someone to mow the lawn, that would stop. You wouldn’t go to the movies. But activities with an independent source of funding would carry on, so if someone else wanted to pay for your haircut, you could still get your hair done.
It’s all very complicated, but the bottom line is that you would have a lot of spare time that you could use to further protect your health (or life or property, as the case may be). Possibly you might exercise for a couple of hours a day and get a full night of sleep.
I am not saying anyone would ever do this. It is just a thought.
