Another My government is crazy or I am bad at math scenario: US food stamp program: Washington Post claims that its overhead is 0.3%. Michelle Bachmann claims that its overhead is 70%. Both numbers very wrong. Simple math: Average benefit ~ $130 per month Number of people receiving benefit : 47 million people. Total amount distributed = 130 * 47 mil * 12 month = 73 billion. Total budget for this program = 112 billion Overhead = (112 - 73) / 112 = 35% Compare to American Red Cross which is not really a model of efficiency. The overhead of Red Cross is about 9%, (of which 5% is used in fund raising where our government does not need to do) So our government is about 3 to 10 times as inefficient as the Red Cross. I did all these research with about 15 minutes of googling - all government posted data from USDA. Can our journalists and our politicians spend 15 minutes checking their facts?
Posted on: Fri, 08 Nov 2013 08:33:25 +0000