system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
ELI5 Why is the government shut down supposed to cost tax payers $100 million a day?

I heard on NPR if the government shuts down then it would cost taxpayers millions. Why would it cost us millions if no one is going to be there working and essentially taking a break because of the budget.
gpt
One thing to keep in mind, without the government running the economy as a whole will shrink.

People won't be able to get visas to come to the US as quickly, people won't be able to get passports to leave to go do business and bring money back.

Companies that require environmental assessments, legal actions etc. could all be delayed.

Companies that rely of federal contracts, even for something as basic as supplying 'gas' (car fuel) to government vehicles are going to have less work, and will need to lay people off until the government comes back.


The government also has to keep paying for a lot of the stuff it owns even if it's not using it.  Imagine you have an office full of environmental assessors.  Well, if you lay off the assessors for the government shut down you still need to pay for the heating and cooling of the building, you need security for the building to keep people from looting the place etc.  So you're still paying for a lot of the stuff that goes around government- but without getting government services for it.

100 million dollars a day by the way is nothing.  The US government spends about 3700 billion dollars a year, which is just over 10 billion dollars a day.  


If the situation results in back pay - and it might (and there are some complex legal reasons why that might be necessary, remember the workers aren't fired and aren't quite on unemployed, they are expected to be able to return to work on short notice, + unions) you would have just paid a pile of money to people who didn't work.  But that's part of why a shutdown is such a stupid idea.