Terrorism as a Tax

There are eleven million commercial flights each year. [1] Each one gets taxed $5 after 9/11 for "extra security measures" (just look on your plane ticket receipt). That's already $66 million each year for pointless security considerations that any Redditor or Digger will reasonable explain to you are useless.

[1] http://www.answerbag.com/q_view/34532

By the way, it would be nice to avoid politics on HN.

That's a very good viewpoint. Kudos to the author and poster.

"More respondents were worried about U.S. immigration officials (70 percent) than about crime or terrorism (54 percent) when considering a trip to the country."

Agreed, the US seems to be an exceptionally safe country - especially if you happen to come from countries outside of N/W Europe. And I think the average US immigration official would also be considered substantially friendlier than the average consular officer in those countries.

Did he forget the cost of the war? At $1-2 trillion estimated total, it dwarfs everything he mentioned.

The best thing to do after Sept. 11th would have been to mourn, then smile and pretend it never happened. A lot less would have been lost.

It's quite interesting but seems to lack any actual conclusion. Security costs money, so what?