[BigDaddyTX]

The concept is... how many lifetimes of average taxpayers have to work and pay taxes to fund any given government program? If a program takes 500 lifetimes of full time work to fund a program, people might realize that they don't even know 500 people and would relate that number to every person they have ever known will have all of the taxes of their lifetime labor dedicated to that one stupid project.

[kawhill]

Where: D = dollars funded to the project 1.104 = overall multiplier for government overhead/efficiency (IRS collection cost ≈ 0.36% + typical agency/program administrative overhead ≈ 8–10%) 2,960,000 = dollars of tax revenue that one average U.S. taxpayer generates over a full 40-year working lifetime (based on current data) I don’t have to worry about it I almost died in that motel in San Antonio.

[BigDaddyTX]

(D × 1.104) / 2,960,000

California High-Speed Rail estimated $126,000,000,000 equals about 46,994 lifetimes of total taxes contributions of average earning taxpayers.

[BenLurkin]

Is this like Body Mass Index?

[Libloather]

Minnisota

Grok needs a spellchecker. How much does the job pay?

[Paladin2]

This is a good metric.