Tuesday, December 21, 2010

20 crazy things the U.S. government spends OUR money on: Grateful Dead memorabilia, WORLD OF WARCRAFT and more

It's fiscal criminal insanity: more than $440,000 to study Vietnamese male prostitutes. How about roughly a million dollars spent to compose poetry for zoos? Then there is more than a hundred grand used to construct a "critter crossing" for salamanders in Vermont. The University of California at Irvine received a grant of $3 million to study the online video game World of Warcraft. And over $600,000 was given to another California university to digitize Grateful Dead concert tickets and T-shirts.

Those are just some of the examples of horrid waste - funded by our tax dollars - by the federal government documented by The Economic Collapse blog. Also on the list of 20 craziest things that the United States government directs expenditure from the public treasury for: studying flatulence from dairy cows and the renovation of a pizzeria's store front to give it a "more inviting" feel.

Ya see, this is part of the reason why I have no faith at all in temporal politics, regardless of who or what party winds up "in charge" in Washington. This kind of irresponsible spending has been going on for as long as I can remember and darned FEW seem to be serious at all about slashing it.

Meanwhile, our Republic dies a death by a thousand cuts...

at December 21, 2010

2 comments:

  1. PK5:12 PM, December 21, 2010

    In fairness, the study of World of Warcraft was a look into human politics and the psychology of anonymous communication versus friendships and relations between people who met in-game; as well as a good rundown of the in-game economy and how it relates to real-world economy as a microcosm.

    Don't write it off just cause it's a game, Chris. ~_^

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  2. Chris Knight5:24 PM, December 21, 2010

    If a grad student wants to make this the subject of a doctoral thesis, or if RAND Corporation feels a compelling need to research this, then I'm all for it. In all seriousness I do see how this would make for legitimate subject of study. But to spend three million dollars of our money on it?

    Government - ALL government - needs to expend no more than what is absolutely necessary. And there is no more sacred trust between citizens and their government than the public treasury. It must be wisely managed.

    I don't see how taking money from that to study the economics of an MMO is anything like sound policy.

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