Another Very Telling Post 911 Fact

I was driving home and listening to a British radio program that looks every week at the US Political topics and some 'American Pie' News. They were interviewing the guy from Hapers magazine that puts together a list of 48 numerical facts every edition. The British presenter asked for one of his more startling facts to finish the piece. And his staggering fact was that since 2001 (to present) when the Fed's introduced their airline presence let’s say, across every single carrier they had only arrested 4 people.

And how much did this piece of homeland security cost you all over there?

200 million dollars per arrest!

I know it’s been said over and over, well one more is certainly needed. Who benefited from the 'box cutters' incident?

reply to post by mlmijyd


I am figuring with the calculator that 4 arrests, with each arrest having the potential of ending 300 lives on a plane, which makes 1200 potentially lost lives.

200,000,000 times 4 divided into 1200 people equals 666,666 dollars spent per each life potentially saved so far with 4 arrests.

With the average American producing approximately 1 million dollars worth of value to society in a lifetime, spending 666,666 dollars per potential life to save 1200 lives total, actually saved our economy and society 400,000,800 US dollars. Being that 1,000,000 minus 666,666 equals 333,334. And 333,334 times 1200 equals 400,000,800.

The only flaw in my equation is average life of individuals could account for half of their lives value has already been earned so it could actually cut the total number in half to 200,000,400 dollars saved by arresting 4 potential airplane terrorists.

The next question I would ask is kind of like your question, was all this hassle worth 200 million dollars.

Thanks OP for getting me thinking about the money value here.



[edit on 14-3-2010 by wiredamerican]

[edit on 14-3-2010 by wiredamerican]

reply to post by wiredamerican


You are assuming all of those people would have lost their lives without an arrest based on nothing.

You are assuming those arrests would have not been made even without all that spending, based on nothing.