$4m is nothing lol. Thats 80 researchers pay at 50k/year, for 1 year (or basically the pay of like 2 people for their career). An acre of land near here is at least 10k, so 400 acres. More realistically, its like 25k, so <200 acres. Its the price of a 'good' mansion + some land for ONE rich family. $4m is fairly reasonable for a "middle class" person in America to earn in a lifetime, or to have total in assests for a small business. It's nothing in the scale of a state (country or provence) level budget.

And that's not going into comparisons with mil-tech. Besides the cost of the planes that can't fly, there's like 200+ people on a carrier. If you're paying ALL of them minimum wage, you're nearly at $4m a year there. (84052*200=~3.3m)

Like, congrats, a dumbass like me could find as much waste off the top of my head for free, as you did over 4 months for unknown cost. These people should be locked up for the rest of the solar lifespan just for this butchery of reason. Again, not even accounting for the crimes against LGBT+ peoples, minorities, etc etc etc etc. The worst leftist (IE, me) could balance the budget, have every program they want, and be 10000x more 'efficient' then the best government these nerd could think of.

[–] spudnik@hexbear.net 6 points 3 days ago

like 200+ people on a carrier

I completely agree with the comment in total, but just because I'm a nerd and want to tell people: the Nimitz class carrier has ~5000 crew if you include flight personnel. It totally doesn't matter, but I think it's wild how big those fuckers are