…The federal government has spent over $80 billion on aviation security in the past 10 years. Yet “your chance of dying in a bathtub is about one in a million, and from terrorism is about one in 3.5 million,” says Ohio State political scientist John Mueller.
Mueller and his co-author Mark G. Stewart argue in their new book, “Terror, Security, and Money: Balancing the Risks, Benefits, and Costs of Homeland Security ,” that cost-benefit analysis needs to be applied to security expenditures. The authors calculate for current spending levels to be cost-effective, the U.S. government would “have to prevent four Time Square-type attacks every single day.” So why are we spending so much for so little added safety?..