Has anyone in the history of government estimated that for anything?

I know you're asking rhetorically, but... yes.

Yes, ROI estimates are very common in all kinds of government spending.

I fucking hate how this completely ignorant bullcorn about government waste has infected the minds of so many otherwise seemingly intelligent people that they just assume that the most powerful nation on the planets government just lights money on fire for no reason whatsoever, with no systems for estimates, for accountability, for accounting of spend, etc.

Meanwhile the reality is almost comically inverse. Which is not to say government pork doesn’t exist and projects don’t end up wildly bad on ROI, but just to say I have seen so much more waste, and with FAR less justification, in the private sector. Especially justification which so often is “someone in the C-suite wanted to do some shit” which ended up costing us millions of dollars.

Not so sure this administration cares about ROI in the same way previous administrations did, though.

They have no idea, ChatGPT is down ATM.