Expenses & Costs

There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch - TANSTAAFL.

This American Tribunal is going to be expensive - and that expense will extend and continue over a span of several years.

What expenses and costs can we expect? And who will bear that burden?

Expenses

Costs

The costs of the Tribunal will not be inconsequential. Its staff will probably number in the hundreds, if not more (much of the staff will be in the investigatory arm.)

Investigatory and enforcement expenses will be considerable. And we can assume that the defendants will put up stiff defenses and will always try to appeal.

If we presume a staff of about 1,000 people, each being paid $200,000 USD per year, plus a typical 100% burden rate for benefits, office space, equipment, travel, etc we get:

#!python3

StaffSize = 1000
StaffPay = 200000
BurdenPcnt = 75.
StaffCost = StaffSize * StaffPay
Burden = StaffCost * (BurdenPcnt/100.)
YearlyCost = StaffCost + Burden
print(YearlyCost)

This gives us $350,000,000 a year. This feels significantly too low.

Under our Constitutional rules, funding should come via an appropriation by the US Congress and Presidential signature. However, there is a significant chance that either Congress or the President may be reluctant to provide such funding.

Funding - Who Pays?

Who is going to foot the bill?

The answer will certainly be "the taxpayers", perhaps levened a a bit by payment of fines or the recapture of ill-gains for which there is no clear party to receive them.