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.

I mean sure this administration doesn’t give a shit about anything up to and including self preservation, I’m talking actual normal politicians, not the freaks in the White House. But fair point all the same.

In the private sector, we are responsible for our money and that of our investors who are contributing it voluntarily. That ain't true of the government, and all that "care" and "budgeting" could just as easily be called administrative overhead and bloat.

Why do you bitch when people bitch when you can see how thoroughly and completely irresponsible they have been with our money going on what over 2 decades now - both parties, friend - ?

The point they’re making is that the public sector is often more efficient at doing X at a lower price.

People talk about competition driving the private sector into total efficiency but when you actually start working in it you start to notice how inefficient they actually do things (and how hard they try to avoid competition).

> In the private sector, we are responsible for our money and that of our investors who are contributing it voluntarily.

So how much is Zuckerberg personally responsible for after wasting what, 90 billion on the stupid metaverse?

> That ain't true of the government, and all that "care" and "budgeting" could just as easily be called administrative overhead and bloat.

So just to be clear; if the government tries to do accounting and budgeting, that’s administrative bloat, and if it doesn’t, that’s wasting money with no accountability?

Not that either scenario describes any part of the government I’ve ever seen I'm just illustrating clearly that you’re operating from the perspective of “the government spending money on anything is always waste” irrespective of what the money is being spent on.

They have no idea, ChatGPT is down ATM.