Throughout the near-three week shutdown—approaching its 22nd day tomorrow!—the federal government has offered its 800,000-odd employees a variety of tips for managing the period in which they’ve either been furloughed or forced to work without pay. Among the pearls of wisdom: hold a garage sale, get a second job, “turn your hobby into income,” offer to “trade services” for rent, and declare bankruptcy. But who wants to work, anyway? On Thursday night, White House economic adviser Kevin Hassett proffered a somewhat different perspective on real-life nightmares such as being evicted, or forgoing medicine to afford food: free vacation days!

“Right now, about 25 percent of government workers are furloughed,” the chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers explained to PBS NewsHour. “Which means that they are not allowed to go to work. But then when the shutdown ends, they go back to work, and they get their back pay. A huge share of government workers were going to take vacation days, say between Christmas and New Year’s. And then we have a shutdown, and so they can’t go to work. So then they have the vacation, but they don’t have to use their vacation days. And then they come back, and they get their back pay. Then in some sense, they’re better off.”

Emphasis ours because, really, why didn’t we think of that? If people would just take a step back, they would surely realize this whole furlough disaster is actually a blessing in disguise, and one they should be thankful for. Incredibly, Hassett’s answer came as a response to the question, “Is the government shutdown going to have a negative impact on the economy, particularly if it drags on?” and not to something like, “Is the administration thinking about the shutdown’s impact on federal workers?,” meaning Hassett presumably planned this sterling talking point in advance. (We highly recommend watching the clip to see the bemused look on the interviewer‘s face when he realizes a White House representative is about to claim furloughed employees should actually be grateful for their time off.) At least Hassett didn’t say people working without pay should consider it a “free internship,” though, considering his track record and the apparent number of working brain cells, it’s possible he did and that the remark was cut for time.

While it’s true that people will ultimately receive backpay once they return to work, and a shutdown, of, say, two or three days could be regarded as free time off, this advice, viewed in the context of reality, isn’t particularly helpful when 1) many workers live paycheck-to-paycheck and 2) per the Wall Street Journal, White House aides are preparing for a scenario in which the shutdown is still in place several weeks from now, and possibly into February. At which point, the government will presumably have put the finishing touches on a tip-sheet that includes the lines like “sex work is a growing and increasingly respectable way to earn money” and “you could easily get a thousand bucks for a kidney.”

If you would like to receive the Levin Report in your inbox daily, click here to subscribe.

Ivanka Trump’s name being floated for job she’s not remotely qualified for, World Bank edition

On Thursday, World Bank president Jim Yong Kim announced that he would be leaving the organization to take a job in private equity. According to the Financial Times, names of possible successors floating around Washington include qualified individuals like economist David Malpass and U.S. Agency for International Development chief Mark Green and, as an aside: