Quote Originally Posted by acelockco View Post
The problem is it does not cost $5,000 that is the point, it costs a lot more. And does it really make anything less risky? I don't really think so, but again that is not really the point I was originally trying to make, I was saying it is way too expensive for the general public.




The one on my toilet cost under $30, it took me about 15 minutes to drive to the store, 10 minutes to find and pick out the seat, 10 minutes in line and 15 minutes home. It took about 5 minutes to install it. I suppose at the rate of $.45/mile, it cost me about $10 in vehicle expenses. So $40 of actual expenses and about an hour of my time, even at $40 an hour that is still under $100, so we still have $9,900 unaccounted for. The REAL reason for the insanely high prices in political BS. Remember that some of the suppliers to the military are owned by the politicians, so of course it is in their best interest to overcharge, and again in their best interest to make sure the government pays for it. Think about it, they are the ones with all of the money and a retirement plan that would make ours seem like a joke.
No, you failed to add in overhead. Assume that you bought 100 things to fix the house last year. To account for overhead you need to take everything that you paid to live in the house including rent or mortgage, taxes, utilities, food, heat, water, electricity, laundry, etc. and divide that by 100 and add that quotient to the toilet seat. That's the way the accounting works.

It's real easy for the populist, know-nothing politicos to make a big deal about it, they don't understand the basic assumptions of the system, they take a myopic, microeconomic view and use that misinterpretation to crank good people like you up over the mythical $10,000 toilet seat. That keeps you distracted and focused on the evil contractor; rather than the pork barrel set asides that your not supposed to notice.