The Pentagon’s $52k trash can
This is a reducto ad absurdum example of how the US government is paying out the nose to keep a bunch of manufacturing and development work on-shore in the USA.Yeah, sure, it's a trash can, there's no reason it should cost $50k. We're all agreed that's an absurd amount to pay for a trash container.The government isn't just paying for the trash can.They're paying for people to design, tool, and maintain that design. It's economic investment in people and skills, not necessarily just the finished product.The reason you can buy an OXO trash can for $30 on Amazon are the scale and volume at which they're produced. Development costs for that can are probably not dissimilar from those in this example, as far as paying for human time and effort to make the thing reality.The problematic element of it is when companies charge these sorts of absurd fees for a design that was produced decades ago (the E-3 is not a new aircraft by any means) and not adding meaningful value on top of it.It's a pretty interesting tradeoff. Should we pay outrageous amounts of money for stuff like this? It keeps people employed, which generates other positive economic effects, like buying houses and groceries. It also creates handy design and manufacturing know how, which is a useful thing to have if our current cold war with China ever heats up in the South China Sea. It's a lot harder to buy war materiel from your adversary when lead is flying.