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Pentagon Lost Billions, Pennies At a Time
Hugh Pickens writes "MSNBC reports that in 1969, Walter T. Davey, an aeronautical engineer at North American Rockwell, discovered he was being overpaid by roughly 2 cents an hour, or one-third of 1 percent of his pay. Davey submitted the discovery to his superiors and suggested a simple fix. 'It was so simple to correct,' said Davey, a 79-year-old retired Air Force colonel, 'just change a few digits in the coding software.' The Project on Government Oversight, which reviewed Davey's findings last year, estimated the change could save taxpayers $270 million a year. Multiply by 40 years — the length of time since Davey made his discovery — and the figure grows to an astounding $10.8 billion. Legislators ignored Davey's letters, federal auditors deferred to Congress, and lobbyists 'descended on it and tore it into a piece of Swiss cheese' but legislators aren't eager to challenge the powerful defense lobby about a figure that's a relative pittance in the overall defense budget — even if it exceeds $100 million annually. 'A lot of people have taken advantage of the system to reap as much in taxpayer dollars as possible,' says Scott Amey, general counsel for the Project on Government Oversight. 'But when you're going up against the contractor lobby — whether you're an individual across the country or a public interest group or a government employee — it's a tough road.'"
My parents bought their first apartment for 6000 pounds back in 1966. Today, the same property is worth around 200,000 pounds. Salaries followed a similar path. $6/hour then would be like $20/hour now.
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
According to http://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl .. $6/hr in 1969 is equivalent to $34.78 today. I read it on the internet, so it must be true! :P
So not too shabby. Not omgwow!, but not exactly minimum wage either.
This was 1969. $6.00/hr (12,522/year) wasn't so bad. Equivalent in 2009 dollars is $34.87/hr (72,773/year).
You can get the official consumer price index, from 1913 up to now here. $6 in 1969 would translate to approximately $36 today.
For older historical data, plus many other interesting historical data about prices and economic indicators, this site is very interesting.
His salary was equivalent to about $70,000 today, which isn't too shabby (though hardly "overpaid"). Also, the article mentioned that there was a financial incentive for discovering ways to save money. Davey admitted that he was hoping to get some award from his discovery.
ich muß mehr Kuhglocke haben
Your parents did a very good business. After correcting for inflation, those 6000 pounds became 80000, which means your parents got 6.5% / year interest in real value plus free rent for over 40 years.