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It doesn't cost $42M to make a CSV file available.

Is your argument that a CSV file of everyone's data should be publicly accessible? Because that's not what I understand the fee to cover; it covers extra personnel to field and review the requests, computer systems to process it, paper to print it out. It probably also covers supervisors time, office space, printers.

Like most government spending, I'm sure it's excessive. However, I'm not clear what your counter-point was. Yes, producing a CSV costs less than $42M. No, producing a CSV file is not what this service entails.

No, I was being a bit facetious. My counterpoint was simply that as you just stated it's clearly excessive and that you know it is a lot even without additional context and so by extension it's not accurate to say that the number is "meaningless".

Ah, I understand what you're saying. You are right - meaningless is too strong of a statement.

If I could edit my comment, I might say something more accurate, like "trying to evaluate this number without more context is not useful."

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