Why Do Americans Complain About Paying Welfare, but Not on How the Govt. Is Misusing Out Taxes?
Question by Mike Zavala: Why do Americans complain about paying welfare, but not on how the Govt. is misusing out taxes?
The following are 30 incredibly stupid things that the federal government is spending money on….
#1 The U.S. government is spending $ 750,000 on a new soccer field for detainees held at Guantanamo Bay.
#2 The Obama administration plans to spend between 16 and 20 helping students from Indonesia get master’s degrees.
#3 If you can believe it, the U.S. government has spent $ 175,587 “to determine if cocaine makes Japanese quail engage in sexually risky behavior”.
#4 The U.S. government spent $ 200,000 on “a tattoo removal program” in Mission Hills, California.
#5 The federal government has shelled out $ 3 million to researchers at the University of California at Irvine to fund their research on video games such as World of Warcraft. Wouldn’t we all love to have a “research job” like that?
#6 The Department of Health and Human Services plans to spend $ 500 million on a program that will, among other things, seek to solve the problem of 5-year-old children that “can’t sit still” in a kindergarten classroom.
#7 Fannie Mae is about to ask the federal government for another $ 4.6 billion bailout, and it will almost certainly get it.
#8 The federal government once spent 30 million dollars on a program that was designed to help Pakistani farmers produce more mangos.
#9 The U.S. Department of Agriculture once gave researchers at the University of New Hampshire $ 700,000 to study methane gas emissions from dairy cows.
#10 According to USA Today, 13 different government agencies “fund 209 different science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) education programs — and 173 of those programs overlap with at least one other program.”
#11 A total of $ 615,000 was given to the University of California at Santa Cruz to digitize photos, T-shirts and concert tickets belonging to the Grateful Dead.
#12 China lends us more money than any other foreign nation, but that didn’t stop our government from spending 17.8 million dollars on social and environmental programs for China.
#13 The U.S. government once spent 2.6 million dollars to train Chinese prostitutes to drink responsibly.
#14 One professor at Stanford University was given $ 239,100 to study how Americans use the Internet to find love.
#15 The U.S. Postal Service spent $ 13,500 on a single dinner at Ruth’s Chris Steakhouse.
#16 The National Science Foundation once spent $ 216,000 to study whether or not politicians “gain or lose support by taking ambiguous positions”.
#17 A total of $ 1.8 million was spent on a “museum of neon signs” in Las Vegas, Nevada.
#18 The federal government spends 25 billion dollars a year maintaining federal buildings that are either unused or totally vacant.
#19 U.S. farmers are given a total of $ 2 billion each year for not farming their land.
#20 The U.S. government handed one Tennessee library $ 5,000 for the purpose of hosting a series of video game parties.
#21 A few years ago the government spent $ 123,050 on a Mother’s Day Shrine in Grafton, West Virginia. It turns out that Grafton only has a population of a little more than 5,000 people.
#22 One professor at Dartmouth University was given $ 137,530 to create a “recession-themed” video game entitled “Layoff”.
#23 According to the Heritage Foundation, the U.S. military spent “$ 998,798 shipping two 19-cent washers from South Carolina to Texas and $ 293,451 sending an 89-cent washer from South Carolina to Florida”.
#24 The U.S. Department of Agriculture once shelled out $ 30,000 to a group of farmers to develop a tourist-friendly database of farms that host guests for overnight “haycations”.
#25 The National Institutes of Health paid researchers $ 400,000 to find out why gay men in Argentina engage in risky sexual behavior when they are drunk.
#26 The National Institutes of Health also once spent $ 442,340 to study the behavior of male prostitutes in Vietnam.
#27 The National Institutes of Health loves to spend our tax money on really bizarre things. The NIH once spent $ 800,000 in “stimulus funds” to study the impact of a “genital-washing program” on men in South Africa.
#28 According to the Washington Post, 1,271 different government organizations work on government programs related to counterterrorism and homeland security.
#29 The U.S. government spent $ 100,000 on a “Celebrity Chef Fruit Promotion Road Show in Indonesia”.
#30 The feds once gave Alaska Airlines $ 500,000 “to paint a Chinook salmon” on the side of a Boeing 737.
Best answer:
Answer by The Eagle Keeper
This is the “pork” that many politicians attach to bills so that they get passed. All you can do is vote them out. Of course, all it does is get someone else in there who will do the same.
Answer by Tony R
They more taxes the government gets, the more they can find to spend that money on. The more they can find to spend the money on, the more taxes they need. It is a never ending cycle.
Know better? Leave your own answer in the comments!