From Trump's Wall To Jazz-Playing Robots: 32 Ways Taxpayers' Money Is Wasted

What a waste

As governments around the world are tightening the public purse strings after years of economic turmoil, you might be shocked at some of the ways authorities have spent taxpayers' cash in recent years. From an experiment where researchers watched hamsters fighting to spending millions of dollars on faulty face masks to a giant squid, read on to see the astounding ways governments have blown public money.

All dollar values in US dollars unless otherwise stated.

Australia: Yoga classes for MPs – $8,300

Government figures live a pretty stressful lifestyle, so it probably doesn’t come as much surprise that they’re in need of a little wind-down from time to time. In 2016, it was reported by the Sydney Morning Herald that the Department of Parliamentary Services had been paying a yoga teacher AU$11,300 ($8.3k) to teach free yoga classes to MPs, which had been operating since 2012. Clearly, it's not just the federal budget that was being stretched. 

Canada: Surveys on Canadian views of the Senate – $11,400

Earning an honourable mention in Canada's annual Teddy Awards, a set of awards created by the non-profit group group the Canadian Taxpayers Federation (CTF) to highlight wasted taxes and advocate for accountable government, an independent senator from Ontario spent CA$15,000 ($11.4k) on surveys to find out what Canadians thought of the Senate. The result? That they found it pointless and a waste of money.

Canada: Flying a Canadian chef to India for the Prime Minister – $12,900

In 2018, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau shelled out CA$17,000 ($12.9k) of taxpayers' money to pay for a Canadian chef to be flown out to India, in order to cook Indian food for him during his visit there.

UK: A hologram for London Brent Council’s HQ – $16,000

In the UK, London’s Brent Council spent £12,000 ($16k) on a hologram at its HQ, simply to direct people in the right direction. In an article for the Guardian, Brent Council member James Denselow hit back at negative press coverage, saying the hologram was "a great example of how technology and innovation can save money", as the hologram cost was far lower than the cost of hiring a human receptionist.

US: Synchronized swimming for sea monkeys – $50,000

America's National Science Foundation spent over $50,000 to study the effects of sea monkeys’ swimming patterns on water movements. However, scientist John Dabiri said that the research showed the role that these animals play in mixing up layers of ocean minerals, arguing that these conclusions might have wider implications on understanding how animals get key nutrients. 

Canada: Signal Hill Fence – $50,000

In a colossal waste of federal cash, Parks Canada splashed CA$65,000 ($50k) on putting up a large fence halfway up Signal Hill in St. John's, Newfoundland, only for it to be taken down a week after the panels had first gone up. Residents said that the fence obscured views of the city, while the federal agency, which said the fence had been put up to improve visitor safety, admitted the plan had misfired.

Canada: Giant rubber duck – $92,000

Spending thousands to celebrate Canada's 150th anniversary was like water off a duck's back to some budget holders. The province of Ontario gave The Redpath Waterfront Festival in Toronto a CA$120,000 ($92k) grant to bring in a six-story, 13.4-ton rubber duck. The federal government also contributed CA$250,000 ($192k) to take what was claimed to be the world's largest rubber duck on a six-city tour. Organizers later estimated the festival brought millions of dollars into the city.

Canada: Putting gold into a creek – $106,000

Yukon's Department of Tourism spent CA$139,000 ($106k) on putting gold into a creek and paying social media influencers to pan for gold there. The move, as part of an initiative to promote tourism, was originally intended to attract CA$100,000 ($76.1k) of private investment but only attracted a fraction of that, and so the taxpayer had to foot the bill.

Sweden: A replica of a Swedish town inside Second Life – $118,000

For those of you who remember the online world of Second Life, launched in the early 2000s, you'll remember how companies paid for a space there. Even TV show The Office was present. And the Swedish Government got in on the action too, paying for the Swedish town of Malmö to create an exact replica of itself inside the world for a reported $118,000.

Canada: Red Couch Tour – $119,000

Another part of the Canada 150 celebrations that raised some eyebrows was the Red Couch Tour. The CA$155,000 ($119k) federally-funded project did what its name suggested and saw a scarlet couch, pictured here in Yellowknife, travel the country to encourage Canadians to sit down and tell their stories. Artist Ela Kinowska said the tour allowed Canadians to have a valuable conversation about what unites them, while the Canadian Taxpayers Federation deemed it a waste of money.

US: A study into the gambling habits of monkeys – $171,000

The US National Science Foundation decided it was going to look into the gambling habits of monkeys because, well, why not. The aim was to look at the ‘hot-hand bias’ of monkeys and see if they had the same problem as human gamblers. Around $171,000 later, the research found monkeys do in fact “love to gamble”. 

Japan: A squid statue – $230,000

Noto, a coastal town in Japan's Ishikawa prefecture, has spent ¥25 million ($230k) on a 42-foot-long squid statue. The money used to pay for the unusual statue came from the ¥800 million ($7.3m) emergency funds granted to the town for coronavirus measures. Many have criticized the amount spent on the squid, when it could have gone towards medical care services. That said, the Japanese government hadn't said that the funds had to go directly towards coronavirus relief and local authorities made the decision to invest in the statue in an attempt to boost tourism in the area, an industry that has been greatly impacted by COVID-19.

US: Studying how many times ‘hangry’ people stab a voodoo doll – $331,000

After the NCF had finished studying monkeys, it also decided to plough $331,000 into a study which looked at whether hungry people tend to be angrier and more aggressive. This was tested by allowing people to poke pins into voodoo dolls as they become hungrier. If you’ve ever suffered from ‘hanger’, you can probably guess what the conclusion was. Poor voodoo dolls. 

US: Swedish massages for rabbits – $387,000

The US National Institutes of Health paid $387,000 to the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine to fund a series of Swedish massages for rabbits to discern whether Swedish massages are helpful in recovering from an illness. The scientists found that rabbits that received 30-minute massages immediately after exercise recovered fastest, althought senator Tom Coburn wasn't impressed with the findings, including the example in his 2014 "wastebook" spending report. 

US: Gas emissions from dairy cows – $700,000

The US Department of Agriculture gave the University of New Hampshire $700,000 to study methane gas emissions from dairy cows. The conclusion? Cows emit most of their methane through belching, and a small fraction from flatulence. After including the study in his "wastebook" report of wasteful spending in 2010, scientists hit back at Republican senator Tom Coburn. John Aber, a scientist involved in the study, said: "This is a caricature of the research based on a few words or phrases for political gain. It was competitive. Much of the research was about how nitrogen, in particular, affects groundwater."

US: Teaching mountain lions to run on a treadmill? – $856,000

On the subject of animals, the National Science Foundation once spent almost $856,000 to put mountain lions on treadmills, according to Ted Coburn's 2014 wastebook. However, in an article published on Live Science, the scientific community hit back at the experiment's inclusion, saying that the report over-simplified experiments and lacked nuance. In fact, the experiment didn't involve treadmills but involved attaching GPS-tracking collars to mountain lions in the wild. "NSF represents the only basic biological agency to conduct this work. I give them credit for supporting creative thinking to solve problems and taking risks in the face of politicians," said Terrie Williams, a biologist who conducted the research. 

Hong Kong: Buildings' feng shui – at least $1.3 million

Feng Shui is taken very seriously in Hong Kong, so much so that buildings are specifically constructed to allow qi (also known as ‘life force’) to flow through them. Every time a construction project ends, Hong Kong residents can apply for compensation if they think it damaged their qi. As you’d expect, this happens quite a lot, costing the government a fortune. For example, in the past decade indigenous villages in the New Territories region have received HK$10 million ($1.3m) in public funding for feng shui rituals in their new homes. 

Italy: An elevator that goes nowhere – $2.4 million

The Italian Government was accused of throwing EU money down the drain when it spent €2 million ($2.4m) on an elevator in the Sicilian village of Sutera. But that wasn’t the worst part. Projected operating costs were reported to be around €84,000 ($100k), according to the Tax Payers' Alliance, and the council refused to operate it, so the elevator doesn’t actually go anywhere.

US: Jazz-playing robots – $2 million

In 2015, it was reported that the US Department of Defense gave a $2 million grant to a team of musicians and researchers to develop robotic music computers which could perform a trumpet solo and play along with human musicians. It came shortly after the department complained it needed more operating funds, so you can imagine how well received the robots were. 

US: Hamster fights – $3 million

In a somewhat unorthodox experiment, researchers from Northwestern University in Illinois received more than $3 million in government funding in order to watch hamsters fighting. The high cost wasn't the only thing that was controversial about the experiment though, as some of the hamsters were injected with steroids to see if drugged hamsters were more aggressive against those who hadn't been drugged. The research was put to an end in 2017 after pressure from animal rights group PETA.

The EU: A blogging donkey – $9.5 million

In 2009, the EU paid €7 million ($8.8m) for a real-life donkey to travel around Europe and blog about its experiences as it went. The project, which was meant to promote a "year of intercultural dialogue", was listed by the eurosceptic thinktank Open Europe as one of the top 50 most wasteful EU projects.

Australia: Foxtel subscriptions – $22 million

In 2017, the Australian federal government allocated an enormous AU$30 million ($22m) to television company Foxtel to boost its sports broadcasting, attracting backlash for the decision to bankroll a News Corp-owned pay TV company. The government refused to explain the move even after a freedom of information request from ABC News, while a spokeswoman for the government told Guardian Australia: "This was a decision of government, announced in the budget as part of the media reform package."

Venezuela: A film that never went into production – $22.4 million

In 2007, Hugo Chávez, then president of Venezuela, had an ambition to “combat American cultural hegemony”, leading him to pay out $17.8 million to fund a film project led by American actor Danny Glover about an uprising of enslaved people in Haiti. Almost inevitably, the film never actually went into production. 

US: Camouflage that stuck out – $28 million

In 2017, the US government came under fire when it emerged it had spent $28 million more than it had needed to on uniforms for the Afghan National Army. According to a report by Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, the Pentagon needlessly spent the money on creating uniforms in a forest-green pattern due to one Afghan official's preference – despite the fact that the country is 98% desert. In fact, the US had uniforms suited to desert landscapes which it could have used for free.

UK: 50 million face masks that went unused – $329 million

The UK government has been criticized over failures to provide PPE to medical staff at the height of the coronavirus pandemic. Yet it emerged in August 2020 that the government also spent £252 million ($329m) on 50 million face masks for the National Health Service (NHS), only for the masks to go unused because they featured the incorrect type of fastening. The masks, bought from a Chinese supplier as part of a deal with investment firm Ayanda Capital, were abandoned because they use ear loops instead of head loops.

Italy: A Mafia highway – $434 million

In 2012, the Italian Government had to pay a staggering €381 million ($434m) to the EU after it was discovered that a highway scheme the body was funding was seeing money go into the pockets of the Mafia through fraud, fake contracts and invented 'roadworks'.

Japan: A ring road that’s barely used – $2 billion

In the 1990s alone, the Japanese Government splashed out around $2 trillion on building new infrastructure, such as highways, bridges and tunnels. But arguably one of its least successful projects is Tokyo’s grandest ring road, which plunges through green mountains in a series of tunnels spread over 1.25 miles (2km) and cost rearly $1 million per meter. It was designed to carry 50,000 vehicles every day, but in 2012 it was estimated to carry just 10,000.

US: Farm subsidies – $2.4 billion

The US Government introduced two income entitlement programs as part of the 2014-2018 farm bill to protect farmers from dramatic hikes in prices. However, the programs proved to be far costlier than anticipated and ended up costing the taxpayer $2.4 billion more than the subsidies they replaced. 

UK: Health service IT system – $13.3 billion

IT mistakes have cost governments big money, and the UK government was guilty of a big one when it spent almost £10 billion ($13.3bn) on a new records system for the state-run National Health Service. The now-abandoned system was originally projected to cost £6.4 billion ($8.5bn).

Dubai: The World – $14 billion

Dubai is famous for its extravagant spending and one of its most infamous projects is The World – a man-made archipelago that quite literally depicts ‘the world’ through 300 islands laid out in the shape of the earth’s continents. Construction started on the project in 2003, but halted in 2009 when Dubai was hit by the global financial crisis, at which point the islands had already cost an estimated $14 billion. Construction restarted in 2014, but the jury's out on whether they will ever be cost-effective.

US: Mexico-US border wall – $15 billion

A boundary between the US and Mexico has existed since 1853, but the controversial issue came into the spotlight following the election of President Donald Trump in 2016. Trump promised to build a 1,000-mile-long wall as part of his anti-immigration policy, and insisted that Mexico would be the ones to foot the $8-12 billion bill. By the end of Trump's term in office the project was not only overbudget, but the $15 billion eventually allocated to construction was taken from counter-drug budgets and military construction funding – Mexico did not contribute a single dollar to the work.

And what's worse? The wall was never completed. As of January 2021, the Trump administration had installed just 452 miles of wall, but only 47 miles of that stretch were built from scratch – the rest was reconstruction of previously existing barriers. President Biden will not be picking up from where the Trump administration left off, having promised not to construct “another foot” of the wall while in office.

US: The F-35 Lightning II Joint Strike Fighter – $1.5 trillion

The US's F-35 aircraft have one of the most expensive weapons systems in history and their costs continue to rise. Despite being manufactured and flown in 2006, the F-35 wasn't used in combat until 2018 and, since then, it has rarely been used. That's despite the fact the total project cost a whopping $1.5 trillion, almost matching what the US government spent on the entire Iraq war.

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