Post by PamelaYou have only to go back to before 1972 to know what customs checks involve.
We didn't have ships transporting many thousands of containers in
1972; and we're not here discussing customs checks but the form-
filling required to import/export goods. How much we spend on
checking is entirely in our hands. For a long time now, it has been
"intelligence led"; the vast majority of imports/exports go through
reputable companies and are subject only to random checks, and it's
up to us whether we check 10%, 1%, 0.1% or 0.01%. It's different if
you've been told that *that* container is being used to ship
cocaine, or arms, or refugees; but there's no reason to suppose
that we will be swamped by such intelligence as a consequence of
Brexit.
[...]
Post by PamelaJust to remind you -- £20bnpa is enough to employ 200000 people
on a salary of £50Kpa on the assumption usual to that sort of
post that the basic cost is doubled when you account for office
space, IT support, secretarial support, cleaners, etc.
Doubling for office overheads is unrealistic. Typically they are
1.25 to 1.4 times salary and in this case may be less because a
portion of the work is done outdoors. Also your assumption of an
average salary of £50,000 is remarkably high, as the average
salary of a UK customs officer is currently less than £25,000.
As JN points out, you are going in the wrong direction with these
"corrections". Halving the salary doubles the number of people
involved, given the same total estimate. However, we are not
talking about "customs officers" but about the cost of employing
people to create customs declarations. As previously noted, this is
the sort of cost that simply doesn't scale. It costs a lot to do it
"one off", but you can copy the form, apart from date and serial
number, for the next 1000 parcels or containers or whatever that you
send containing the same things and going to the same places.
Post by Pamela[...] For example the UK spends £250 bn on "social protection"
which, taking your view, comes to an unaffordable £12,500 per
family. And then there's the NHS, education and police to add.
In UBI threads, I have pointed out that to very crude approximation,
the UK benefits system consists of half of us paying £5Kpa to the
other half. Scaling up from individuals to families indeed gives
roughly ã12.5Kpa. But that is not a cost to the UK, it's an
internal transfer from wealthy people to poor people. We indeed
also have the NHS, education and police to add; but these
facilities bring benefits [and it's a matter of politics whether we
should pay more or less for them], unlike the proposed army of
expensive form-fillers for customs checks. I understand why we might
need 2-300000 doctors or nurses or teachers or policemen or ....
Tell us again why we need that number of customs form fillers, and
why this does not fly in the face of common sense.
translated into customs staffing.