From: Spike Jones (spike66@ibm.net)
Date: Mon Jul 17 2000 - 21:57:22 MDT
> James Rogers wrote: Note
> that this type of accounting is how you apparently have the government
> spending $400 on a hammer and similar; they include the direct and
> indirect costs at all steps of acquisition/production rather than using
> the "on paper" purchase price....
Ja, except that this example is misleading. The famous $x00 hammer
that started the meme that the government was being wasteful, etc,
was a modal hammer, which is a device that looks a little like a hammer
but the similarities end there. It is not used for driving nails at all, but
has accelerometers mounted on it to measure resonances and vibration
modes. If you or I were to try to buy such a device that the government
bought for $x00, it would cost us twice as much since we dont purchase
in quantity. spike
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