$200 billion for Katrina, and now NASA unveils its $104 billion program to land men on the moon in 2018, one year shy of the fiftieth anniversy of the 1969 moon landing, which is even more expensive than the $40 billion it cost the first time around.
This demonstrates that just because an activity is technologically possible doesn't mean it's possible to do it cheap. People like to say "if we can put a man on the moon, we can do (fill in the blank)," but in fact learning how to do something affordably is a much more difficult task than merely doing something if there's a near infinite amount of money to spend.
Pharoah built a huge pyramid, but it took another 4,500 years before it was actually economically practical to build tall buildilngs.
Hi Half Sigma
That is a very good point that I used to make when I taught ECON 1101 years ago. There is a big difference between what is impossible to do and what is impractical to do. When the government controls a big chunk of national spending, it can fund a lot of wasteful boondoggles. Crooked Timber calls the moon base a "Moondoggle"
What I find interesting is how quickly the Republicans, once they took over power, switched from being the party that decried boondoggles to the one that loved them.
Posted by: Michael H. | September 20, 2005 at 08:56 AM