Over the past couple decades America has become so rich that it expanded the amount of things it spends money on. Government spending includes spending taxpayer money on social security, defense programs, education, public safety, and many more realistic social needs. However, the government, even wealthier as it entered the 21st century, has began to spend its money on random and irrelevant things, some that completely have nothing to do with healing our broken economy, protecting our citizens, and improving life and education in the cities. Now, much of the taxpayer dollars go to the government to waste on various idiotic things, some of which I will list. No wonder our debt does not decrease.


Some things are vital for the human populace in America. Some things, like education, safety, military and defense, Social Security, welfare, unemployment insurance, disability payments, etc. These are important for the people that live in America, important for the safety of America, and important to uphold the legacy of America. Our defense is especially crucial because of the protection of another 9/11. Our education is critical to raise new wonders that will solve the problems of the modern world. Public safety deals with things in the neighborhood. These things are all very important.


However, a new study shows what other things the government is spending the precious money on. Some things are completely irrelevant; others are just stupid.

About $3 million was given to the University of California at Irvine to allow students to play World of Warcraft. Apparently, the goal of this “video-game research” is to allow students to study how “emerging forms of communication, including multiplayer computer games and online virtual worlds such as World of Warcraft and Second Life can help organizations collaborate and compete more effectively in the global marketplace.” Actually, I cannot draw a connect between World of Warcraft and the global marketplace. Our money, given to the government, is being used to study this? With our debt above $14 trillion dollars, is this what we need?

One million dollars was given to zoos in New Orleans, Little Rock, Chicago, and Milwaukee zoos to create “poetry”, which supposedly is supposed to make the public aware of environmental issues. Almost $500,000 was spent to study the behavior of male prostitutes in faraway Vietnam. The U.S. Department of Veteran Affairs spent $175 million to maintain hundreds of houses it does not even use (one of which includes a pink, octagonal monkey house in Dayton, Ohio). Almost $2 million of taxpayer money went to a museum of neon signs in Las Vegas. $35 million was given to “phantom” medical clinics that don’t exist; later, the government found out that these “phantom” clinics were established by criminal gangs to defraud the U.S. government.

Approximately, one million dollars was spent to study the impact of a "genital-washing program" on men in South Africa. The government spent $2.5 million dollars on a commercial during the Super Bowl that was apparently “horrendous.” A little more than $800,000 was given to various sources around America to create and promote video games. These sources include a library in Tennessee, a professor at Dartmouth University, and a zoo in Minnesota.


This list goes on and on, ranging from $5,000 to $5 billion. This is the extent of our government’s unnecessary waste. When families are struggling to uphold their jobs and parents are working whole days to purchase food, our government has the nerve, the impudence, the bravado to spend money on promoting video games, studying behavior of people across the world, and building houses that have no use. They have the nerve to use our money that we struggle to earn and spend it on neon museums, Super Bowl commercials, and zoos. They have the nerve to ignore all of us who are worrying about today’s damaged state, while they are worrying about how “emerging forms of communication, including multiplayer computer games and online virtual worlds such as World of Warcraft and Second Life can help organizations collaborate and compete more effectively in the global marketplace.”



When, in the future, Europeans look back and read about America, they will not read about the mighty military that defeated the Germans in World War II. The feeble militia that fought and won its independence from the British Empire. The nation that created the 21st century by creating the UN surviving the Cold War. They will read about a government of corruption that depended on taxpayer money in order to spend money on whatever they felt like. They will read about a government that did not care about the fragile economy that held 300 million people in terror, instead spending money out of curiosity. The government needs to stop useless and unnecessary spending, some of which are listed. Some are necessary, like the military and the defense, Social Security, health care, and education, but the people must realize that the government is spending our money, our taxpayer dollars, on things that do not benefit our nation, our interests, and our economy.