36 Dumbest Things Government Spends Your Money On

Although they carry the responsibility of meeting the needs of millions of people, governments don’t always make the wisest decisions when it comes to spending the taxpayers’ money. Actually, some of the things that the governments spend money on are rather silly, especially when compared to the real, urgent problems of our world. It is alarming to see how much money is wasted. Here are some of the dumbest things that the government spent your money on.

1. The U.S. government spent the meager sum of $750,000 for building a new soccer field at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp as if possibilities for entertainment were the biggest issues there.

2. The U.S. government run a $200,000 tattoo removal program in Mission Hills, California.

3. The Defense Department purchased and never used approximately 270,000 commercial airline tickets at a total cost of $100 million during a six-year time span. Even though the tickets were fully refundable, no one bothered to get a refund.

4. Researchers at the University of California received $3 million funding from the federal government to study video games such as World of Warcraft.

5. The federal government ran a $30 million agricultural program to help Pakistani farmers increase their production of mangos.

6. The National Institute of Aging sponsored a $610, 908 survey by RAND Institute, which was meant to find the determinants of life satisfaction in 120 countries around the world. Although the survey may be interesting, there have been similar studies with remarkable results that did not require that much money.

7. Researchers at the University of New Hampshire received $700, 000 in funding from the U.S. Department of Agriculture to investigate the effects of methane gas emissions from dairy cows. The relevance of the study is yet to be uncovered.

8. The U.S. government spent $2.6 million on a social-inclusion program meant to teach Chinese sex workers to drink responsibly.

9. A professor at Stanford University conducted a study to discover what methods Americans use to find the love of their lives on the Internet. The study was made possible by a $230,100 research grant from the government.

10. The National Science Foundation spent $1.5 million on studies about the behavior of fish on treadmills. The studies focused on mudskipper fish to check its resistance under effort and on bluegill fish and rockfish to establish how they escape predators.

11. The National Science Foundation ran a $216,000 study to discover whether the support for politicians changes when they assume ambiguous positions.

12. A “museum of neon signs” in Las Vegas, Nevada is an investment that the government found worthy of $1.8 million.

13. $25 billion are spent each year for the maintenance of federal buildings that no one uses.

14. A library in Tennessee received $5,000 from the U.S. government to host a series of video game parties.

15. The government offered a $137, 530 grant to a professor at Dartmouth University to develop a video game about recession, which was ingeniously entitled “Layoff”.

16. The government spent $200 million to build and upgrade the St. Louis Airport in Mascoutah, Illinois, where only a single airline is operating.

17. The U.S. military once spent a staggering $998, 798 to ship two 19-cent washers from South Carolina to Texas and then another $293,451 to send an 89-cent washer from South Carolina to Florida.

18. The National Institutes of Health spent $400,000 on a study aimed at deciphering why Argentinian gay men accept to get involved in risky sexual encounters when they are drunk.

19. The National Institutes of Health also spent $442, 340 to study the lifestyle of male sex workers in Vietnam.

20. Alaska Airlines received $500,000 from the government to paint a symbolic Chinook salmon on a Boeing 737.

21. Brown University received a $5million grant from the National Institutes of Health to study if fraternities and sororities consume more alcohol than the rest of college students and why people are most likely to drink at fraternity and sorority parties.

22. The National Institutes of Health issued a $3.4 million grant to Northeastern University in Boston to determine anxiety and aggression in hamsters by having them fight each in cage matches.

23. The National Traffic Highway Safety Administration spent $35,000 on a billboard of a large marijuana joint that glows in the dark, which was meant to discourage people from driving under the influence of weed.

24. The National Institutes of Health spent $300,000 on a study aimed at determining which gender enjoys more playing with Barbie dolls. The conclusion was that girls play with Barbie dolls more often than boys do.

25. The government spent $21.8 million to purchase surplus cheese and to provide incentives for companies willing to enter the cheese industry.

26. The National Institutes of Health offered a $48,500 grant to a graduate student for a study on the history of smoking in Russia over the past 130 years.

27. The National Science Foundation gave Massachusetts Institute of Technology a $406, 419 grant to study whether media choice causes polarization or polarization causes media choice.

28. Five federal agencies spent $3.1 billion in two years on vacation for federal employees placed on administrative leave due to being under investigation for misconduct.

29. The National Science Foundation sponsored a $150,000 study on the reasons why debating politics creates stress in relationships.

30. The National Park Service conducted a study to learn what happens when insects used to dark, rural environments encounter a light. The cost of the study was just $65, 473.

31. The Department of Agriculture paid $35,000 to install solar panels at breweries in Michigan and Wyoming.

32. The National Science Foundation and Department of Defense’s Office of Naval Research collaborated on a research project aimed at building an algorithm that could predict when characters from popular TV shows would kiss, hug, or shake hands. The project’s cost was $460,000 and all it took was making several computers binge watch 600 hours of TV shows and 400 hours of online videos.

33. University of California at Santa Cruz used $615,000 from the government only to digitize photos, concert tickets, and T-shirts of the band Grateful Dead.

34. The IRS pays $862,000 per year to keep 22,486 items of office furniture and equipment in storage. The worst is that none of the items had any activity for the previous 18 months from the moment information came out.

35. University of Kentucky received $175, 597 to research the effects on cocaine on the sexual behavior of Japanese quails.

36. The government offered a $198,000 grant to the University of California at Riverside to research if social media can make people happy and if social media behavior is genuine.