@TerryHancock

My favourite #debunking of the "government paid $EXCESSIVE for $THING" kind of story was by Jerry #Pournelle. It's currently offline, and archive.org is still recovering, so I can't link it. Actual numbers below are made up because I don't remember the exact figures, but the gist is correct.

It was the "#Pentagon paid $17,000 for a #toilet seat" one. What actually happened was that the Pentagon needed to procure more toilet seats for the B-52 bomber - the planes were (and still are!) old and stuff wears out or gets damaged. There was no remaining stock of parts.

The problem was that the #manufacturer had long ago junked the tooling used to make the parts (they were metal, requiring tool & die etc). Making that tooling is quite expensive - it's difficult, skilled work. Other costs involved in getting a #manufacturing line set up are also expensive. And they couldn't justify buying and storing tons of extra toilet seats.

So what you get is a high fixed #cost to rebuild a line, divided by a relatively small number of finished articles, giving an apparently absurd price per unit. Say, a million dollars to make 60 replacement toilet seats to original spec.

And that gives... $16,667 per seat. And a great, totally #misleading #headline.

#B52 #B52Bomber #ToiletSeat #GovernmentWaste #waste #procurement