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TSA Budget in 2011: $8.1 Billion [1] US air travelers in 2011: 730 million [2] Cost per screening $11.09 [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transportation_Secur

TSA Budget in 2011: $8.1 Billion [1] US air travelers in 2011: 730 million [2] Cost per screening $11.09 [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transportation_Security_Administration http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transportation_Security_Adminis... [2] http://www.nbcnews.com/travel/number-air-passengers-increased-2011-523879 http://www.nbcnews.com/travel/number-air-passengers-increase...

kevin_morrill 14y ago
Not counting the opportunity cost of what those 58,0000 employees could be doing elsewhere in the economy, not to mention the tax money out doing real work.
- thetrb 14y ago
  Hmmm? With a unemployment rate at ~8% why would you factor that in?
  - white_devil 14y ago
    Because that 8% is bullshit propaganda and things are actually much worse?
    - lostlogin 14y ago
      How on earth does one calculate unemployment? On social welfare cheque? Easy. Medical doctor forced to work as a taxi driver for 4 days a week as he/she can't get work as a doctor 5 days a week? Student who wants holiday work but can't find it? Stay at home mother who had a child a few years earlier as the plan to work for 2 years then have a child didn't work out as there was no work? Not so easy.
      - white_devil 14y ago
        Your examples and much more have been swept under the rug of "Not In The Workforce". The more people you disregard, the lower your unemployment percentage becomes.
- bo1024 14y ago
  Don't forget the passengers waiting in line. Suppose each person being screened waits 15 minutes, and makes $5 per hour at their job. That would be one billion dollars in lost productivity per year.
  - codex 14y ago
    Interestingly, given that the US has a fifteen trillion dollar economy, that's only 0.006% (or 6e-05) of U.S. GDP. I suspect that the economic cost of an successful terrorist attack on a U.S. aircraft would cost the U.S. economy more than one part in fifteen thousand.
    - jlgreco 14y ago
      > I suspect that the economic cost of an successful terrorist attack on a U.S. aircraft would cost the U.S. economy more than one part in fifteen thousand. Now include the probability of such an event actually taking place, and the probability that the TSA could prevent it... A comet strike would cause many trillions of dollars worth of damages. How much money are we spending right now on a pea-shooter based comet defense system?
      - mctx 14y ago
        > pea-shooter based comet defense system? I'm pretty sure the state of art of this field is deep core drilling (as of 1998, anyway)
        dredmorbius 14y ago
        The point isn't "pea shooter" as a description of state of the art, but of its effectiveness. There's nothing we have available to us in technology that would be able to divert a mass-extinction class meteor (or even just a really-bad-day meteor) on short notice. Given a decade or more we might be able to launch a mission to moderately divert an orbit, but at very high expense. It's the cost-to-effectiveness ratio I believe TSA is being compared.
    - 14y ago
- gizmo686 14y ago
  As it is, we have a surplus in our labor force, so I suspect the opportunity cost is minor, and outweighed by the benefits of having 58,000 jobs. Of course, I suspect that those jobs do not justify the opportunity cost of their paycheck.
thetrb 14y ago
Your second link doesn't show the total number of US air travelers, only passengers on US airlines. There are also non-US airlines serving the US. I'm not saying that this makes a very big difference, but it probably brings down the cost per screening to something around $10. Edit: Found this number: "803.5 million scheduled passengers" From: http://www.travelpulse.com/dot-reports-17-percent-increase-in-us-airline-passengers.html http://www.travelpulse.com/dot-reports-17-percent-increase-i... 2nd Edit: Your first source already shows that "Aviation Security" only makes up 71% of the TSA budget, so that brings the cost per screening down further.
codex 14y ago
The cost is a little higher than that, because many passengers don't fly non-stop--they may take two flights though a hub, for example, but there's only been one screening. However, if you assume one screening per flight, and a one-way flight cost of $200, that's 5% of the flight's cost. As TSA employees only make $12-15 an hour, I presume that most of that cost goes into paying for expensive screening machines and bomb-detection sensors, but that's pure speculation.
- jes 14y ago
  Well, you have a whole bureaucracy on top of the TSA employees that you actually see at the airport. I'd expect that consumes a bunch of our money too.

kevin_morrill 14y ago

Not counting the opportunity cost of what those 58,0000 employees could be doing elsewhere in the economy, not to mention the tax money out doing real work.

thetrb 14y ago
Hmmm? With a unemployment rate at ~8% why would you factor that in?
- white_devil 14y ago
  Because that 8% is bullshit propaganda and things are actually much worse?
  - lostlogin 14y ago
    How on earth does one calculate unemployment? On social welfare cheque? Easy. Medical doctor forced to work as a taxi driver for 4 days a week as he/she can't get work as a doctor 5 days a week? Student who wants holiday work but can't find it? Stay at home mother who had a child a few years earlier as the plan to work for 2 years then have a child didn't work out as there was no work? Not so easy.
    - white_devil 14y ago
      Your examples and much more have been swept under the rug of "Not In The Workforce". The more people you disregard, the lower your unemployment percentage becomes.
bo1024 14y ago
Don't forget the passengers waiting in line. Suppose each person being screened waits 15 minutes, and makes $5 per hour at their job. That would be one billion dollars in lost productivity per year.
- codex 14y ago
  Interestingly, given that the US has a fifteen trillion dollar economy, that's only 0.006% (or 6e-05) of U.S. GDP. I suspect that the economic cost of an successful terrorist attack on a U.S. aircraft would cost the U.S. economy more than one part in fifteen thousand.
  - jlgreco 14y ago
    > I suspect that the economic cost of an successful terrorist attack on a U.S. aircraft would cost the U.S. economy more than one part in fifteen thousand. Now include the probability of such an event actually taking place, and the probability that the TSA could prevent it... A comet strike would cause many trillions of dollars worth of damages. How much money are we spending right now on a pea-shooter based comet defense system?
    - mctx 14y ago
      > pea-shooter based comet defense system? I'm pretty sure the state of art of this field is deep core drilling (as of 1998, anyway)
      - dredmorbius 14y ago
        The point isn't "pea shooter" as a description of state of the art, but of its effectiveness. There's nothing we have available to us in technology that would be able to divert a mass-extinction class meteor (or even just a really-bad-day meteor) on short notice. Given a decade or more we might be able to launch a mission to moderately divert an orbit, but at very high expense. It's the cost-to-effectiveness ratio I believe TSA is being compared.
  - 14y ago
gizmo686 14y ago
As it is, we have a surplus in our labor force, so I suspect the opportunity cost is minor, and outweighed by the benefits of having 58,000 jobs. Of course, I suspect that those jobs do not justify the opportunity cost of their paycheck.

thetrb 14y ago

Your second link doesn't show the total number of US air travelers, only passengers on US airlines. There are also non-US airlines serving the US. I'm not saying that this makes a very big difference, but it probably brings down the cost per screening to something around $10. Edit: Found this number: "803.5 million scheduled passengers" From: http://www.travelpulse.com/dot-reports-17-percent-increase-in-us-airline-passengers.html http://www.travelpulse.com/dot-reports-17-percent-increase-i... 2nd Edit: Your first source already shows that "Aviation Security" only makes up 71% of the TSA budget, so that brings the cost per screening down further.

codex 14y ago

The cost is a little higher than that, because many passengers don't fly non-stop--they may take two flights though a hub, for example, but there's only been one screening. However, if you assume one screening per flight, and a one-way flight cost of $200, that's 5% of the flight's cost. As TSA employees only make $12-15 an hour, I presume that most of that cost goes into paying for expensive screening machines and bomb-detection sensors, but that's pure speculation.

jes 14y ago
Well, you have a whole bureaucracy on top of the TSA employees that you actually see at the airport. I'd expect that consumes a bunch of our money too.