So today I got an email from my state senator in GA, Chip Rogers. This issue at present is whether the GA constitution should be amended to allow to multi-year rentals by the state of GA. The idea behind the state can save money by entering into multi-year rentals at lower rates. The state Majority Leader, who is in favor of it, claims it will save $66 million over 10 years. A counter-argument can found here.
My issue is this piece of terrible mathematics by my state senator Chip Rogers:
“A conservative estimate prepared by the State Properties Commission estimates over $66 million in savings will result over ten years, with the potential of even more future savings. $66 million could pay the average salaries for over 1,300 teachers or police officers in Georgia.” …Yeah if we ignore the math by a factor of 10.
The problem with this and other ‘savings’ purported by our government officials is this ‘over 10 years’ crap. It is a ploy to inflate their numbers and make mathematical deception much easier. In reality the plan would only annually save 130 jobs IN THE ENTIRE STATE OF GA, which for you out-of-staters, has a population of ~9.8 million. Basically they have to multiply their achievement by 10 because they’re not doing jack squat to help us.
$66,000,000 over 10 years = $6,600,000 average per year savings. $6,600,000 / 130 jobs is ~$50 k a year.
I have a hard time believing this is an ‘honest mistake’. I mean we are in freaking 2012. If you had a question about the whole thing, just type the crap directly into Wolfrum Mathematica and see what it says!
Wrong:
Right:
Also, this amount is truly trivial in the entire scope of things:
$19,300,000,000 – 2012 State Budget
$6,600,000 – Average 1 year savings
0.03% Of Budget saved!
Politicians, please don’t make me barf and insult my intelligence. This small of a savings shouldn’t be touted as a great savings for the people and insist we vote for it. It’s absurd. Hey look at me! I saved .03% of the budget over 1 year… that’s .3% over 10 years! Or 3% over 100 years! What is really happening is this is a give-away to the politically connected. Their friends will likely get nice sweet deals, probably multi-year leases with big penalties for early cancelation. THIS IS CRONY CAPITALISM! I voted no on the amendment by the way, if it were 2 or 3 years I would have voted yes regardless of the terrible political math. Frankly vote no so we can “limit the amount of money that can be stolen from taxpayers at one sitting.” to quote Charlie from PeachPundit.
Note just to be fair here is the 2012 donation cycle for Chip Rodgers: http://votesmart.org/candidate/campaign-finance/31392/chip-rogers He has some Real estate donations but it appears most of the campaign money comes from health-care companies.
