Klarinet Archive - Posting 000462.txt from 1998/06
From: "Kevin Fay (LCA)" <kevinfay@-----.com>
Subj: RE: Re: [kl] Plastic Clarinets (way off topic now)
Date: Sat, 13 Jun 1998 00:31:15 -0400
Sigh again--the ubiquitous $200 toilet seat.
This is a classic in "how to lie with statistics." It sounds ludicrous,
unless you have an understanding of government accounting--which is very
much unlike commercial accounting.
Here's the thumbnail. Most gov't procurement is done on a cost plus basis.
They buy a list of stuff at cost, plus a percentage profit. If you have a
list like this (vastly shortened for illustration purposes):
1 aviation toilet seat.
1 aviation coffee maker.
1 Boeing 707 AWACs aircraft.
The total cost is added up, and a percentage added to the overall purchase
order. When the supplier cuts the invoice, an equal allocation of profit is
often put on each item--so the toilet seat appears to be a stupid deal at
$200 ($14 plus $186 profit). No one ever mentions that the 707 was
purchased for $186 over cost, though. In fact, Boeing has made their %
profit on the overall deal, which usually turns out to be a pretty good deal
for the gov't--they are the biggest customer around.
I sell software for a living--used to sell trucks (big ones). Having
negotiated billions of dollars of sales contracts over the years with all
kinds of customers, I don't see that the gov't does so bad on the purchasing
end. They are quite often the customer who gets the very largest discount.
kjf
-----Original Message-----
From: Mark Charette [mailto:charette@-----.org]
Subject: Re: Re: [kl] Plastic Clarinets (off topic now)
From: Jason Hsien <jasonavhs@-----. Lacy
+ADw-el2+AEA-evansville.edu+AD4-
>
>+AHw-On Wed, 10 Jun 1998 Clarbobbi+AEA-aol.com wrote:
>+AHwAPg- I'm in the Army band and I think that your clarinet players were
insane
>+AHwAPg- to bring out their R13 and their Commander was even more crazy to
let
>+AHwAPg- them if they were his instruments.
>+AHw-Actually, more than likely they didn't belong to the clarinet players
and
>+AHw-they certainly didn't belong to the conductor. They probably belonged
to
>+AHw-you, and me, and every other American citizen. In other words, they
would
>+AHw-have been bought by the government using public money rasied from
taxes.
>
>::sigh::
>
>The same government who bought that +ACQ-5000 toilet seat cover? (or
something
>like that, or was it just a joke/rumor?)
Yes. However, next time you take a shuttle trip and the off-the-counter $20
toilet seat cover breaks loose, causing havoc and an abort of the launch,
please tell me about all the money you saved. I have an acquaintance who
decided to save $250 and put a car alternator on his boat instead of a
marine alternator (they look the same; he didn't feel he needed to spend the
extra dough). Cost him $60,000, and no insurance money to boot when his boat
exploded and burned. Luckily only minor injuries ...
We need watchdogs, but Proxmire was sometimes an idiot.
----
Mark Charette, Webmaster, http://www.sneezy.org/clarinet
charette@-----.org
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