Wonder if someone could do an estimate of the lost productivity (hours) caused by this stupidity. Even if we assume that this adds 30 minutes to the time spent for each traveler (highly optimistic, I know) - what is the impact in terms of non-value added time for the American workforce?

For those who are bound to reply that it adds value by enhancing security, thank you for your response. I respect your opinion but that's not my opinion and is not what I'm hoping to calculate.