From: hallam@zeus02.desy.de (Phill Hallam-Baker)
Subject: Re: DOUBLE the size of GOVERMENT!
Reply-To: Hallam@zeus02.desy.de
Organization: Deutsches Elektronen Synchrotron, Experiment ZEUS bei HERA
Date: Thu, 1 Oct 1992 23:40:19 GMT

In article <67910004@hpdmd48.boi.hp.com>, slack@hpdmd48.boi.hp.com (David Slack)
writes:

|>	Okay, I hope I have your complete attention.  No.  Oh well! 
|>With the elections cumming up soon, I thought some of you might be interested
|>in a new book that is out on what our goverment does with a lot of the
|>money that it gets from US taxpayers.
|>
|>	The book is very easy to follow, just simple numbers and some ideas
|>on a few solutions.  Covers almost all the agencies and branches of gov.
|>Some of the things that is points out are:
|>
|>	$ spent on consultants in one year - 4.9 BILLION

I am a consultant. A week of my time costs you an awful lot of money. Mind you
that is because I have a reputation and people know that not only can I get the
job done I can save money in the process. I sliced ten percent off the cost of
the last hardware project I did, on software projects it is generaly considered
that I do better than that but the costs can't be measured.

	Point is if you have a $100 million project do you want to buy cheap or pay for
quality staff?

|>	$ spent on flying any gov. person free on the taxpayer - over $25,000
|>	  per person per flight.  (at least 20 times any commercial flight).

If you want to build a lab in Texas, fine. Only if you want my help you are
either going to ferry your staff over to me or fly me out to see you. It is
traditional in these matters that the company paying for my time pays. I fly
commercial flights on ecconomy tickets because I don't consider the business
class fares to be justifyable in terms of extra cost. I am not aware that the US
state dept have a markedly different policy.


|>  	$ on repairs and alterations to Building #6 at the World Trade Center-
|>          a building that the gov. doesn't even own - 1.6 million.

Well hate to come all smug again. I predicted that O&Y would come a cropper on
Canary Wharf five years ago. The situation was a carbon copy of the Harlem
property collapse. Harlem in NY was built as luxury accomadation for middle
class famillies now able to get downtown via the new subway. Overbuilding lead
to a collapse in property prices and the place rapidly turned into a slum as
there is no point in repairing bankrupt property. Docklands is exactly the same
except that the building standards were worse. Several proud owners of $500,000
appartments have discovered that they are in urgent need of repair.

Still if you put people in an office block and the commpany running it goes
under you can end up with either your people out on the street or a large bill.
Bad joss. The US should have done what the Brits are doing, they are screwing
O&Y by offering to buy space at *way* *below* the normal rate.

|>	$ on cars for the congres - $7000 for lease and upkeep, times 340,000
|>          cars.

Let me see that must mean that each congressman gets a new car on average every
two days!

I think that some elasticity is being applied in the term "congress".


|>	In all honesty, I was begining to believe that our only way to solve the
|>national debt was to raise taxes. 

Yep then you read a book which converted you eh? Yeah, the "contrite convert"
gambit "I used to beleive in evolution until I learned the truth".


|> No I am a lot more aware of what we have been
|>paying for.  As pointed out in the book, there is no reason for agencies like
|>|>the dept of ag. to have 60,000 employees for only 2.1 million farms.

Or 1 employee per 30 odd farms. There are of course some *very* large farms in
the US. I suspect that for some of the larger operations may find 1/30th of a
beauracrat rather too little. Big and small farmers alike both like their
government to get their paperwork done efficiently.


|>	"At the turn of the century, the Department had 3000 employees to   
|>handle 5 million farms, what were to become the breadbasket of the world.
|>By 1935, there were 6.3 million American farmers and the D of A had 20,000 
|>employees."  The punch line today, "The number of farmers has dropped      
|>preciptously to 2.1 million, half ow whom are part-timers. 

Farmers or farms? How many people do these farms now employ?

I would guess between 1-3 people at turn of the century and 10 odd now. However
each farm worker now produces very much more food than at the turn of the
century and in the process they use rather less well tried and tested
techniques. They also require new wheat strains, pesticides etc etc to maintain
yield.

There may be waste in government, however simply comparing numbers employed is
not a reliable guide.


--

Phill Hallam-Baker
Newsgroups: alt.politics.elections