Tuesday 15 June 2010

Where your money went: part 94

After setting up the system - cost £93 million - and running it three years - cost £30 million per year - the government's clamp-down on fraudulent passport applications has resulted in a number of potentially-fraudulent applications being turned down. The number in question is four. That's right; four. Or, to put it another way, for every £45 million spent, the government stopped one person getting a dodgy passport. None of the four had any legal action taken against them, so they probably just forgot to get their photos signed or used blue ink or something.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Wow... that can't be right??

Trooper Thompson said...

I hope you check out the link before forming an opinion - I don't always attempt to cover all the angles!

But, this is the kind of thing that happens when socialists run things. As von Mises said:

"Economic calculation can only take place by means of money prices established in the market for production goods in a society resting on private property in the means of production."

Unfortunately, economic calculation being impossible under socialism, they have no means of judging if the expenditure in this article represents money wisely spent - they simply don't know. Economics to a socialist is like a card trick to a dog.