That’s 100% fair, there’s a good portion of controllers who are ex military that know the drill when a shutdown comes around, they have money saved up and can last a few pay periods without a check. Theres also a good portion of controllers that didn’t win the ATC lottery of going to a Z facility and ended up in VFR tower in a HCOL city barely making $70K. Can they live on that, sure, plenty of people make way less than that and survive, but it’s not easy.

The whole situation is ridiculous, no matter which side of the aisle you’re on. ATC and the ATO as a whole provide an outsized impact on the economy compared to what they’re paid, and the fact that they can go unpaid at all is a failure of government. Nobody joins federal service to get rich (unless you’re in Congress), but at the very least they shouldn’t have to worry about a $0.00 paycheck. Yes, they’ll eventually get back pay, but in the meantime the system suffers more with each passing day. The ATO and the FAA overall aren’t a burden on taxpayers they’re largely self funded, we don’t have to play this game every few months.

And to your point, yes, controllers know what they’re signing up for when they enter government service, just like pilots know there’s always a chance of a furlough that cuts off paychecks entirely. Atleast these days as pilots we have things like high pay, profit sharing, direct 401k contributions, and tons of time off that make the risk worth it in the long run. So What’s the incentive for controllers? FERS is 4.4%, 6 day work weeks, having to flip your body clock weekly. I mean, the “talent” the FAA attracts is only going to decline and it was already steeply declining when I left.