On 12/18/2018 6:07 PM, John B. Slocomb wrote:
On Tue, 18 Dec 2018 09:16:54 -0600, AMuzi wrote:

On 12/18/2018 1:36 AM, John B. Slocomb wrote:
On Mon, 17 Dec 2018 21:11:04 -0800 (PST), "
wrote:

On Monday, December 17, 2018 at 8:58:15 PM UTC-6, John B. Slocomb wrote:
Today's Bangkok Post had an article entitled "US careens towards
government shutdown". From reading the article it seems that the
President wants a 5 billion dollar budget for the Mexican Wall and
Congress doesn't want to give it to him.

5,000,000,000 divided by 1,954 miles is what? $25,588,536.33 a mile
(that may be wrong as I'm not used to working with really big numbers)
but even for the largest economy in the world that seems a tiny bit
expensive, doesn't it?

cheers,

John B.


What Jeff said. $2.5 million per mile of fencing. Not $25.
Given the cost of everything the government buys, $2.5 million for a
mile of fence doesn't really sound too extreme. We pay
$10-20-30-40-50 Billion for every airplane or boat we buy for the
military. So $2.5 million per mile is change we could find in the
couch. Of course the fence could just be a single strand of electric
fence with a stake stuck in the ground every 100 yards. All put up by
some Mexican illegal immigrants paid below minimum wage. And the
contractor could be laughing at how he made out like a bandit stealing
money from the government as he jets off to Hawaii for vacation. That
sounds far more reasonable. And of course this crook will make a $2.5
million donation to the Republican party and his buddies.

Yes, as I said, I don't work well with really large numbers but
then... there are such things a "cost overruns". The San Francisco
bridge was originally estimates at $250 million and actual costs were
about $6.5 billion. At that rate the 5 billion might just be a drop in
the bucket.

Re the $10-20-30-40-50 Billion. President Eisenhower, in his farewell
address warned about the potential influence of the "military -
industrial complex". Did anyone listen?

cheers,

John B.



Here's how things don't work out here in the real world:

https://www.constructiondive.com/new...poor-p/542635/

We once bid a job to construct a oil gathering station in a rather
remote area in S. Sumatra. This included the station, living quarters,
roads in and out and several pipelines.

We were awarded the contract and then because of the Indonesian
Government the project was delayed for several months and by the time
that we were given the go ahead the rainy season had started. You
can't build roads and pipeline right or ways through swamps in the
rainy season and you can't do major earth works in the rainy season so
all major construction was delayed and our "cost overruns" were up
something in the neighborhood of a million dollars on that project.

We attempted to get compensation for what we termed an act of God (it
rained) but in those days all oil projects were a joint venture with
the Indonesian government and they argued that as the terms in the
contract were clear, Acts of God were spelled out and didn't include
rain, that we had no claim. Ever try to sue a national government?


No but I did fight City Hall.
Predictably, I lost.

--
Andrew Muzi
www.yellowjersey.org/
Open every day since 1 April, 1971