Just for fun, let's take a whack at what President Reagan's funeral cost the federal government, shall we? Not the funeral itself, but the National Day of Mourning that sent federal workers to swimming pools and shopping malls in a show of respect for the former Commander-in-Chief.
The math on this will be a little rough, but in honor of President Reagan I'm going to shade all the numbers toward the conservative. Everything will be low-end estimates, supported by facts. In contrast to President Bush's budgeting proceedures, I'm going to show my math, so you can argue with me if you like.
OK, there are 1.8 million non-military, non-postal federal employees, most of whom were given the day off. Security people, border guards, and others like that stayed on the job. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics -- which took Friday off, by the way -- 60% of all federal employees hold "managerial, business, financial, or professional jobs," which means they're probably not cops. So we'll use that number -- 60% -- for how many of the federal government's 1.8 million non-military, non-postal workers got the day off. Call it a million workers, though the real number is a bit higher than that.
The daily federal payroll, according to the Dallas Morning News, is $423 million. Assume everyone in the federal government makes the same amount of money. It's not a fair assumption, but it makes the math easier. Also, it's a good bet that the security people who had to stay on the job were at the low end of the pay scale, while the various undersecretaries and assistants-to who got the day off trended toward the high. But what the hell: We'll use the average.
Divide $423 million by 1.8 million and you end up with the average per-day pay for federal workers: $243. Now, I'm guessing this doesn't include benefits, which add 30% in the private sector where health insurance coverage sucks, and probably 40% at the federal level where health insurance is awesome. But let's not quibble. The bennies are a fixed cost; we'd have had to pay them anyway, so we'll leave them out of the calculation. Still, at the non-postal, non-military level, the day off cost $243 million.
The post office, of course, took the day off, too. The post office likes to do that, but then who doesn't? I blew-off my afternoon appointments and went to the pool with the kids. You didn't have to pay me to do that, but I still enjoyed myself, and the point is we can't blame the postal employees for taking a day off when it's offered.
The United States Postal Service employs, again according to the BLS, a total of 654,000 people. For our purposes, we'll say 5% of them worked Friday, keeping the furnaces stoked with coal and making sure no one broke into post offices to swipe the stamps. So that's roughly 620,000 postal employees given the day off, with pay. According to the USPS Annual Report, postal payroll last year was $50.4 billion. We'll assume postal workers work six days a week, which they don't. But I get my mail six days a week, and somebody has to deliver it, so six days it is. So 654,000 postal workers make $50.4 billion, which means the average postal worker makes, including benefits, $77,000 a year. Which explain a lot about why stamps cost so much.
Now, because we're assuming a six day week, that means the average postal worker makes -- hey presto! -- $247 a day. This is remarkably similar to the federal employee average of $243 a day. In the land of rough-and-ready budgeting, alignment like this is good news; it means we're probably not far off in our calculations.
So we gave 620,000 postal workers a day off at $247 a day, which comes to $153 million and change.
That means, at the federal level, that Friday's National Day of Mourning cost us $396 million, using conservative numbers and not including any of the real costs associated with staging a state funeral.
So call it $400 million. Did everyone have fun?
I believe all the federal employees who worked will be paid double time for working on a holiday.
Posted by: NewMexiKen | 06/12/2004 at 01:23 PM
And this differs from every other Federal holiday how?
What's our response supposed to be: too bad a Democrat didn't die to even things up?
A**h**e
Posted by: Conservative_Since_63 | 06/13/2004 at 07:48 AM
This differs from Martin Luther King Day in what way? Apart form the fact that it is once, not once each year?
Posted by: Tim Worstall | 06/13/2004 at 09:00 AM
Conservative Since 63:
Unfortunately, some of us see a scenario like this arising:
When a Democrat does die, you won't want a state funeral because of the cost.
And you'll probably cite this post as justification for your reasoning!
The use of invective at the end of your comment lends that special gravitas to your statements. Thank you for an entertaining time on a Sunday morning.
By the way, it differs from every other holiday in that we generally don't celebrate those who lie to get the job, lie while they do the job, lie about the job they do, and then pardon each other for the lies. That crap all started with Tricky Dick, but Ronnie Ray-Gun was the first sock puppet for the machine when it got major league control of the national agenda. As far as he was capable of knowing, Ray-Gun actually enjoyed fanning the flames of divisive partisan politics in this country.
And that's just one facet of Re-Ron that conservatives will try to suppress knowledge about - he tripled the national debt, widened the gap between the rich and the poor, put the tax burden on the middle class, started reintegrating the Church into the State, and created Saddam and Osama as well as giving them WMD.
And we spent 400 million on it. This year.
There's no evening things up - I don't want to toss any more money down the drain to fraudulently canonize one of the politicians who managed to front the organization in charge of the country for a while.
Posted by: (: Tom :) | 06/13/2004 at 12:33 PM
To be completely fair, you would have to subtract all the money that was saved by having all those offices closed for one day. No lights on, no computers running, no gas for the mail trucks, etc.
And if all you're counting is salary for just a portion of federal employees, then $400 million is obviously a drop in the bucket for the full daily budget of the USA.
And if those folks had gone to work, we would have spent the money anyway and they would have sat on their bums playing minesweeper all day. So who cares?
Unfortunately, the trackback seems to show that people are misinterpreting your post to say that the "funeral" cost us $400M.
And I'm a state employee so I just cost Michigan 5 bucks to write this stupid post. Shucks...
Posted by: ZMoD | 06/14/2004 at 02:37 PM
Ronald Reagan's great and terrific service to this wonderful country, $400 was a bargain!
Posted by: Mike | 06/18/2004 at 11:23 AM