One of the things Americans fail to understand, because nobody tells them and politicians don't want them to know, is that the government can spend $10k on someone or something now (e.g., UBI, healthcare) and save itself hundreds of thousands in the future -- or even "profit" in the sense of higher productivity and tax revenues.
Instead, we live in a country that insists on spending $150 million on cops to prevent $104,000 in lost subway fares.
@gwynnion Ah, the general point one can agree with, but the final example (a "cost of quality" issue) could bear some discussion.
You won't get zero losses (to fraud, other crime, quality control failures, whatever) without spending an infinite amount on prevention. If you spend *nothing* on prevention your costs (of crime, recalls, whatever) will be rather higher than you might like, quite apart from the message you're spreading that the bad guys can do WTF they like and get away with it.
Getting the right balance is not easy. Spending *twice* as much on prevention as you're going to save on bad outcomes might actually be reasonable - you don't want to be *too* soft on the bad guys, for all sorts of reasons. [My own involvement has included discussions in council committees as to what point to give up spending money on chasing council tax debts and write them off.]
But yes, a factor of a thousand is probably going too far. They could perhaps drop that $150m to something like $1m and see what happens. Assuming, of course, that they don't already know the answer from historical data.
@TimWardCam @gwynnion I guess I should apologize for being autistic now?
That's a seriously pissed off and sarcastic tone, in case you had trouble not understanding me.
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Tim Ward ⭐🇪🇺🔶 #FBPE
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