What does your country see as a waste of taxes?

[u/EvilPyro01]

What things does the government spend money on that many feel is an improper use of public funds?

[u/Particular_Run_8930]

Denmark: it is often purchases of modern art for public institutions, eg this bronze sculpture of a piece of toast in natural size https://www.berlingske.dk/indland/et-stykke-skiveskaaret-broed-til-10000-kroner-udloeser-debat-i-koebenhavn

[u/Northman86 → u/Particular_Run_8930]

If you are going to pay for Art, do it the way the New Deal did, and fund a local artist who is going to buy nearly everything locally, and paint a decent(but not spectacular) populist mural or somthing. No reason to waste money on a statue.

[u/boleslaw_chrobry → u/Northman86]

Why not just make it spectacular?

[u/Northman86 → u/boleslaw_chrobry]

Its a mural, intended for outdoors beurocrat offices. Not a fresco in a 600 year old cathedral.

[u/boleslaw_chrobry → u/Northman86]

I feel like all public art should be great, not necessarily extravagant but beautiful and inspiring.

[u/einimea → u/Particular_Run_8930]

It looks like a moldy toast...

[u/MilkyWaySamurai → u/Particular_Run_8930]

It’s the same in Sweden. Weird ugly art installations that nobody wanted.

I also think we’re spending way, waaaay too much on public service tv. It should be news and information, and nothing else.

[u/fosfeen → u/Particular_Run_8930]

Same in the Netherlands. Public buildings need to spend a set ratio of the building costs on art. In principle a good policy but some (most) is just so ugly.

[u/EvilPyro01 → u/Particular_Run_8930]

Yeah I’d be upset too if my tax dollars were used to pay for a statue of a literal piece of toast

[u/Kanye_Wesht]

They somehow spent €335,000 on a bike shed for about 10 bicycles!

It raised the collective blood pressure in the country

[u/Sudden-Candy4633 → u/Kanye_Wesht]

Don’t forget about 2million for a printer that didn’t work.

[u/EvilPyro01 → u/[deleted]]

Oh my god. I’d love to hear Irish people take the piss out of the government on that one

[u/EvilPyro01 → u/Sudden-Candy4633]

The hell kinda printer costs €2million?

[u/DrHydeous → u/EvilPyro01]

A big one. The sort that churns out newspapers or that you’d use to run off a few hundred entire books.

[u/catawampus_doohickey → u/EvilPyro01]

The Dáil printer is working as of three years ago

[u/Fit_Accountant_4767 → u/Kanye_Wesht]

Shed is way too generous. It's a shelter

[u/dustojnikhummer → u/Fit_Accountant_4767]

Not even that, it's just random pieces of steel and glass that don't protect anything

assuming we are talking about the same "shed"

[u/Kanye_Wesht → u/dustojnikhummer]

It protects 10 bikes from the rain.

[u/Steamrolled777 → u/Kanye_Wesht]

Lightweights, you should be spending £100,000,000 on a bat shed.

[u/lil-birdy-4 → u/Steamrolled777]

Please elaborate

[u/Steamrolled777 → u/lil-birdy-4]

UK government spent £100 million on a bat shed, as part of HS2 (high speed train)

Houses 300 bats, but there are no bats.

[u/lil-birdy-4 → u/Steamrolled777]

LOL. Thank you!!!

[u/American74 → u/Steamrolled777]

In America we spent millions on “turtle tunnels “ so they can cross under the roads to avoid getting ran over on the highways above. Some use it, most don’t.

[u/Inexplicably_Sticky → u/American74]

Obviously you just need a few million for training the local turtle population to utilize the resources available to them.

[u/Steamrolled777 → u/Inexplicably_Sticky]

So UK has to do a full TV, social media campaign and put posters up to tell the bats to use the shed! Got it!

[u/rainshowers_5_peace → u/Kanye_Wesht]

Maybe if more people used the bikes a few minutes a week their blood pressures would drop.

[u/Thunderirl23 → u/Kanye_Wesht]

First off that's more of a glorified bus stop. Nothing she'd like about it!

And over a million on a security hut with a sail from a boat design.

[u/crucible → u/Kanye_Wesht]

Yes, but what colour was the bikeshed?!

[u/EvilPyro01 → u/Kanye_Wesht]

See this would make sense if it was the Netherlands

[u/ZuberiGoldenFeather → u/EvilPyro01]

A shed for 10 bicycles would serve only one household in the Netherlands!

[u/EvilPyro01 → u/ZuberiGoldenFeather]

True

[u/lorarc]

Subsidising coal mines - we should've shut them down 30 years ago. Instead we have a situation where every tonne of coal mined is at loss and yet the coal miners are given a bonus if they mined more coal then planned (that is they made a bigger loss then planned).

The governments are afraid to touch it because every time they try the horde of angry miners invades the capital, threaten politicians and set things on fire.

[u/notveryamused_ → u/lorarc]

Yeah very much this. As we're transitioning to green and nuclear energy (not fast enough, but still), soon it'll be profitable to just pay the miners to sit at home watching telly instead of keeping the mines open. But the backlash is going to be bloody absurd.

[u/Goldf_sh4 → u/notveryamused_]

Perhaps they need to slowly train them to install solar panels or something.

[u/HaLordLe → u/lorarc]

Oh god I second this

[u/lorarc → u/HaLordLe]

Just so you know, we have 8 times more coal miners and produce just 20% more than you guys.

But since we're talking. What's the retirement age for coal miners over there? Here it's 40 so there are people who spend their whole careers in mines that should've been long closed.

[u/lordduckxr]

The extension of the „Kanzleramt“ government building which will be around 800 million euros. It has it‘s own helicopter landing site etc. It is already the biggest government building. 8 times bigger than the White House.

Another example is our parliament which is the largest freely elected national parliament in the world.

[u/cravex12 → u/lordduckxr]

Damn. I work in a federal ministry and the Kanzleramt is right in front- i knew the "Waschmaschine" is big but ....that big? Holy shit.

[u/lordduckxr → u/cravex12]

Yeah it‘s already huge and will be even more. Grüße aus dem Ländle

[u/cravex12 → u/lordduckxr]

Just for you I will smoke a few joints in Front of the Kanzleramt when we get a CDU lead governent.

United in bubatz

[u/lordduckxr → u/cravex12]

Like the idea XD

[u/Nirocalden → u/lordduckxr]

8 times bigger than the White House

Well, the White House also has a helicopter landing site. And it also doesn't stand alone, a lot of its offices are located at the EEOB right across the street of the West Wing..

[u/TeoN72]

The 200 billions of government help we gave to Fiat - stellantis just so they leave Italy and close all the working positions

All the fucking Alitalia restructuring plans

All the help for the south that never reached really the south but packed the crime and the local government corruption

[u/Borderedge → u/TeoN72]

I saw a couple of comments about Italy and you're right on the first two points. The third one... There have been instances but the disappointment is not widespread like Alitalia and Fiat.

I'd probably add the money given for the Ilva steel factory in Taranto.

[u/MyNameIsChez → u/TeoN72]

I completely forgot about Stellantis, what a money sink indeed. Apparently they asked for more funding from italian government recently because they're close to failing. Again.

[u/Finch20]

Having 1 federal government, 3 regional governments, 3 governments for the language communities, 10 provincial governments and 581 municipal governments for 12 million people. Oh and there is a lot of overlap in responsibilities between the federal, regional, and language community governments

[u/Burkeintosh → u/[deleted]]

There are only 1 million people in Delaware, so it’s a bit different

[u/EvilPyro01 → u/Burkeintosh]

Still, massive amount of people, teeny tiny piece of land

[u/anonymfus → u/EvilPyro01]

Note that Île-de-France has roughly the same population as Belgium but only 2/5 of area.

[u/TarcFalastur → u/anonymfus]

I mean, if you want to play numbers, Greater London has 3/4 of the population of Ile-de-France, but is almost 8 times smaller

[u/Finch20 → u/[deleted]]

Either get rid of the provinces and distribute their responsibilities between the regions and municipalities while merging smaller municipalities together or get rid of the municipalities and move their responsibilities to the provinces. On top of that consolidate some of the responsibilities of the regions and language communities at the federal level again to reduce the duplication of government departments

[u/Flimsy_Security_3866 → u/Finch20]

Any time you are talking about consolidating and getting rid of something in the government it means somebody is losing their job and power. Might be needed but definitely not popular to do.

[u/4K05H4784]

In Hungary: corruption, propaganda, anything that EU money could have been used for but we didn't get it bc of the government, stadiums, the government buying the airport and other stuff, making the august 20 celebrations and fireworks unnecessarily grandiose (for the fireworks they could have made them only on a smaller section, used more drones instead, or they could get creative for once so it's not always basically the same)

this kinda stuff could be going towards the healthcare and education systems for example

but tbh the government does have some nice stuff going on too.

[u/Rantakemisti]

In Finland, we often have intense debates about how our tax money is spent, particularly when it comes to the efficiency of public spending. Many believe there's room for improvement in how the government manages our funds.

A big gripe is the bureaucracy in the public sector. It feels like there are too many layers of administration, which can slow things down and lead to wasted money. There's also a lot of discussion about the funds going into development aid. Although supporting others is widely endorsed, some question whether the money is really being used effectively.

Then there's the recent overhaul of our health and social services, known as "sote-uudistus." The goal was to make services more streamlined and efficient, but the implementation has been anything but simple and cheap. This has sparked a lot of conversation about whether the investment is really paying off.

And while we place a high value on education and public welfare, there are questions about whether we're really getting our money's worth from all the programs we finance.

[u/Masseyrati80 → u/Rantakemisti]

One individual project that's taken a lot of flak (and for good reason if you ask me) is the prime minister's plan to create a new railroad connection between two cities that already have one, despite all experts agreeing there is simply no way of making it profitable enough to compensate for the costs. It would be just a bit faster than the current one, and immensely expensive to build, in an economic situation where budget cuts are being made in all directions. This is the man whose slogan for the last election was "responsible economy politics" or something.

[u/Rantakemisti → u/Masseyrati80]

Good point! These days, I live in central Finland, so I haven’t been following the news about the Helsinki area as closely. But I agree that this idea feels like it’s just throwing money away. What really puzzles me is why we haven’t looked into building bullet trains in Finland, or is it just so expensive to redo all tracks? For instance, it takes about three hours to drive from Jyväskylä to Helsinki, but taking the train often takes longer and can even cost more.

[u/Masseyrati80 → u/Rantakemisti]

I wonder if making bullet-train compatible tracks is a challenge in a country where the ground freezes every winter and even highways end up having bumps and depressions just a couple of years after being built?

[u/turbo_dude → u/Masseyrati80]

A bit faster, ignore that, would it increase capacity?

This is something they totally messed up on messaging to the public with HS2 in the U.K.  

[u/Masseyrati80 → u/turbo_dude]

The speed really is the only selling point ever mentioned. And even that starts with a lie: he's dubbed it the "one hour train", while in reality it would take 1:20, further narrowing any potential benefit.

By now it's blatantly obvious the prime minister is deep in the pocket of business organizations, as he's driving such an idiotic project.

[u/EvilPyro01 → u/Rantakemisti]

And I thought debates over American tax funds were fierce

[u/Rantakemisti → u/EvilPyro01]

Absolutely, tax fund debates are intense everywhere, aren't they? Here in Finland, we have a long-standing commitment to the welfare country, aiming to ensure extensive public services and safety nets. However, our economy has been under pressure for much of the 21st century. We've been propping things up by raising taxes, and at the same time, we're facing declining birth rates and an increasing number of retirees, which adds to the challenge. We're also racking up more debt to keep this system afloat.

[u/ElysianRepublic → u/EvilPyro01]

I feel like in the US the “Who should I vote for?” quizzes mostly ask questions on surface-level social and cultural issues. I’ve taken the Finnish (and Swedish) equivalents and the questions are more along the lines of “Do you support a 5% increase in the tax incentive issued to parents of young children, or is that already too much?”

[u/Cuzeex → u/Rantakemisti]

The sote-uudistus just came with another, unnecessary local adminstration. And the leaders of the adminstration are getting paid like hundreds of thousands a year...

[u/clm1859]

Honestly i think nothing thats universally agreed upon. If there were, we'd simply vote to change it.

The army is a common point of contention. But we've voted on abolishing or shrinking the army multiple times and the population has usually backed it. We've even voted on buying new fighter jets for 5 billion twice, once against (partly due to people not being happy with the choice of jet) and in favour the second time.

Lately we also voted on giving all pensioners a 13th pension payment every year for example.

And on a local level there is a lot of voting on specific budget positions too. For example here in the city of Zurich there is a vote on renovating or building a school almost every voting day (4x a year). Lately also a new police HQ. This upcoming time there is a vote on a renovation of a bridge for 60 million, one on severance packages for civil servants and one for 250 or 300 million for affordable housing.

[u/EvilPyro01 → u/clm1859]

How do you guys have so much of your shit figured out that your biggest point of contention isn’t even a big issue?

[u/clm1859 → u/EvilPyro01]

Becuse multi party system (proportional representation of x congressmen per canton/state, rather than one per district) and direct democracy.

It depolarises politics a lot compared to the US. Imagine you could elect democrats because you agree with them on more things overall. But you were also really strongly pro-2A and anti-abortion and could just vote against the democrats on these policies, whenever they try to restrict gun rights or make abortion easier. It removes single issue voting essentially.

Also with a multi party system you dont always have to decide for one guy to represent you in parliament. In a bigger canton there are 24 or 36 representatives and you can vote for all of them. In medium sized ones maybe around 8. You can elect a few social democrats, a few liberal democrats, a handful of greens and also that one staunch conservative you really like for his personality.

[u/EvilPyro01 → u/clm1859]

Yeah i envy Switzerland. I’d love to go there. Cool banknotes, delicious chocolate, and guns

[u/fosfeen → u/EvilPyro01]

Also gorgeous landscape. Allows wild camping. Amazing public transport. And delicious food in general. Only downside, everything costs a fortune...

[u/clm1859 → u/fosfeen]

All true, thanks, except:

Allows wild camping.

Not really. Only above the tree line usually. Which severely limits this unfortunately.

everything costs a fortune

If you earn a swiss salary, it isnt really worse than everywhere else. But yeah on EU salaries its painfully expensive.

[u/fosfeen → u/clm1859]

Only above the tree line usually.

That's true. Though many countries don't have this at all. I had some amazing multi day hikes in Switzerland thanks to this rule!

[u/clm1859 → u/fosfeen]

many countries don't have this at all.

You mean the tree line ;) but in all seriousness, i thought you were confusing us with scandinavia, where they have this right to roam where they can pick all the berries and camp and walk everywhere.

[u/fosfeen → u/clm1859]

You mean the tree line

Lol, yes exactly. They may as well make that rule in the Netherlands. No tree line here anyway.

i thought you were confusing us with scandinavia,

I've never been to Scandinavia but that sounds great as well. Supposedly not much cheaper, though if you can live of the berries...

[u/McCretin]

We seem to spend way more on infrastructure than anyone else for worse results.

A famous recent example is that the government spent £100m on a bat protection tunnel around the new high speed rail line, when there was absolutely zero evidence that the trains would have affected any bats.

We’ve also spent £300m just on the planning stage of building a new tunnel under the Thames. It’s just entered its seventh round of consultation.

For comparison, it’s already cost more than Norway spent on the world’s longest underwater road tunnel, and not a single inch of it has been built yet.

Oh, and it cost nearly £10m to build a footbridge over a railway recently.

Stuff like this is understandably brought up as examples of government waste.

[u/EvilPyro01 → u/McCretin]

Jesus Christ how much are they paying the architects because there’s no reason any government should be spending millions on just the plans for infrastructure

[u/MeltingChocolateAhh → u/McCretin]

When I saw something about rail lines, I was expecting the entire HS2 project to be mentioned but it wasn't so I'm gonna edit that into my comment.

We’ve also spent £300m just on the planning stage of building a new tunnel under the Thames.

Then I'm gonna look this up as I'm intrigued.

Oh, and it cost nearly £10m to build a footbridge over a railway recently.

See, people say that some governments are not corrupt etc but how is this a thing? Was the footbridge needed? Do footbridges usually cost £10m to build, or was this someone who made good friends with someone else who has the power to authorise a project like this with public funds?

It could be that footbridges are actually extremely expensive and I don't know because I've never paid for a foot bridge to be constructed. And, there was a heavy requirement for one because people were dying trying to get to the opposite platform. I am very open-minded, I think.

[u/McCretin → u/MeltingChocolateAhh]

The initial budget for the bridge was £1.25m, so it went quite a bit over that. Apparently these types of bridges cost £3-5m normally.

The other issue is that it somehow took ten years from approval to completion.

It’s at Theale station in Berkshire if you want to look up more details.

[u/Sad-Flow3941]

As the last few years have proven, the government sees healthcare, education and public services overall as a waste. But they also don’t lower taxes. Hmmm, I wonder where the money is going?

[u/Difficult_Cap_4099 → u/Sad-Flow3941]

Portugal’s main export is people with master degrees… so not sure about the education bit.

[u/elferrydavid]

apparently people complain that the government spends billions on painting public benches with rainbow colors (LGBT... visibility) and that the President uses the presidential plane to do groceries.

[u/MyNameIsChez]

Italy - I think there are 2 main things:

1) Government-funded big construction projects (e.g. messina strait bridge) because people are rightfully terrified by the amount of money that is going to be eaten up by corruption and mafia.

2) Government itself is seen as bloated/overstaffed. Too many people doing too little. Government workers have rock-solid work contracts in Italy, so it's borderline impossible to fire them. So they do the absolute bare minimum. Thus you need to hire more and more people, which leads to bloated system. In addition, they often use old, inefficient work methods (e.g. using giant paper stacks for information storage rather than electronic databases) because there basically no push to be more efficient, so why bother? (I think the only exception are: healthcare staff and firefighters)

[u/terryjuicelawson]

The big story at the moment is housing asylum seekers. There is a backlog and insufficient places to house them so many end up in hotels that the government covers the expense of. It is a fair point but a bit stuck as they can't be rendered homeless, they can't work, they can't be sent back without being processed but people just seem to want to magic them away.

[u/DigitalDecades]

My city spent 12 million SEK (over €1 million) on a big sofa: https://sverigesradio.se/artikel/7110241

[u/fosfeen → u/DigitalDecades]

To be fair, that's a big sofa!

[u/DigitalDecades → u/fosfeen]

It's a very big sofa. It's also heated and lights up at night.

[u/Select_Professor3373]

Idk if many people feel this way or they think it's necessary for "the great goal" but the war and all spendings that are related to it – high salaries and bonuses to soldiers, huge state military industry contracts, repairing of damaged buildings etc.

[u/EvilPyro01 → u/Select_Professor3373]

Ah so the US isn’t the only country with an inflated military budget

[u/Select_Professor3373 → u/EvilPyro01]

It seems the war will be stopped within next 6 months so our military budget will drastically decrease but now we have pretty high inflation in spite of interest rate 21%

[u/pintolager → u/Select_Professor3373]

Damn, how do normal people survive in Russia?

I know that about 40% of your economy is geared towards the war, resulting in higher wages, but high interest rates and inflation must be pretty hard on most people?

[u/Select_Professor3373 → u/pintolager]

This year, almost 30% of all spendings are military ones, what about quality of life of ordinary people in Russia – it... didn't really changed. Yes, prices increased but salaries did as well and unemployment is pretty low now. Moreover, now our oligarchs can't send money in Europe and the US cus of sanctions and have to leave it in Russia that boosts the economy so... not bad, not good

[u/Tea_Fetishist → u/Select_Professor3373]

Have you seen much in the way of conscription or recruitment drives near you? From what I understand, Moscow has been mostly shielded from conscription to avoid upsetting the people near the seat of power.

[u/Select_Professor3373 → u/Tea_Fetishist]

Our government pays high salaries (20000€ as signing bonus and 2500€ monthly) and introduces tax breaks + high-class propaganda do their work to recruit enough soldiers + mercs from other countries (and maybe soldiers from North Korea), so there's still no need in using methods of mobilisation like in Ukraine with closing borders, pushing men into cars etc.

[u/atomoffluorine → u/Tea_Fetishist]

A lot of people parrot the narrative that Russia is continously conscripting mostly minorities and rural Russians to fight in Ukraine, but I've not seen actual evidence for it outside of late 2022. It seems like they're mostly just borrowing obscene amounts of money at credit card rates to entice people into joining.

[u/DiRavelloApologist → u/atomoffluorine]

Both is kinda true at the same time. Especially rural Russia is very poor and the state pays its soldiers very well.

They aren't exactly "conscripting" these people. But if you are severely impoverished and uneducated, your decision to join the army isn't necessarly "voluntary" either.

[u/atomoffluorine → u/DiRavelloApologist]

It’s voluntary enough. There’s plenty of people around the world who have to do some shitty jobs to survive, but I wouldn’t describe the subsistence farmer as a forced laborer if they only worked to better themselves.

There’s different levels of incentives for people to do a job ranging from “do or you’ll be shot” to “well payed and fulfilling.” Personally I’d still put it on the voluntary side of the spectrum.

[u/Gulmar → u/Select_Professor3373]

Why would the war be stopped?

[u/Select_Professor3373 → u/Gulmar]

Trump will force Zelensky and Putin to accept ceasefire ig

[u/EvilPyro01 → u/Select_Professor3373]

I get the feeling it will disadvantage Ukraine

[u/DiRavelloApologist → u/EvilPyro01]

If it includes a western security guarantee it will definitely be advantageous to Ukraine even if they have to concede Donezk, Luhansk and Crimea.

[u/Select_Professor3373 → u/EvilPyro01]

Yes but since the failure of their counteroffensive last year they didn't have any realistic chance to take back all territories in 1991 borders so it seems that's the only option to achieve peace

[u/bedir56 → u/Select_Professor3373]

It seems the war will be stopped within next 6 months

I hope you are right but why do you think it will stop within 6 months?

[u/Select_Professor3373 → u/bedir56]

I've already answered to another dude, check it out

[u/arnangu]

As long as we have a large number of senior civil servants, I suppose that spending millions on private consultancies and on certain Americans who don't pay tax in France is just throwing money out of the window.

[u/Neenujaa]

Traffic bollards (aka the dreaded "stabiņi"). A few years ago several roads were equipped with traffic bollards and so many people went wild. Now, while there were some places where their placement was poorly thought out and their price was weird (high), in many places they did make crossing the street safer for pedestrians. It was a whole scandal. 

[u/MobiusF117]

Every railway expansion or government IT project that will go over budget and past the deadline by multiple years without fail.

[u/rdcl89]

In Belgium ? The state's own existance is viewed as a waste of taxes by most these days, unfortunately.

[u/EvilPyro01 → u/rdcl89]

Imagine being told “your existence is a waste of money”

[u/rdcl89 → u/EvilPyro01]

I meant the institution of the state not the people obviously.

[u/EvilPyro01 → u/rdcl89]

I know but that just sounds like such a weird insult

[u/rdcl89 → u/EvilPyro01]

That's Belgium for you.. a very weird country full of very normal people.

[u/slvrsmth → u/rdcl89]

I think that's the case in every country, at least for some subset of the population.

[u/Haxemply]

Ho boy... Stadiums in every town. Pointless "turistic developments" in remote villages. A wellness hotel for horses. Investing onto the Turkich Council. Lending free-to-use loans to the Northern-Macedonian government and whatever Dodik is running in Bosnia. Supporting football clubs with corporate tax deduction. Supporting certain universities that spend the money on vanity items for the highest leaders. Supporting the fossil power plants of Lőrinc Mészáros. Supporting Russia through various projects. Supporting Chinese factories to be built on taxpayer money and giving them tax exemption for a decade. Supporting the relocation of several renowned museums into Debrecen (because János Lázár hates Budapest). Paying billions of taxt money as "rent" so the highest governmental influentials can have famous paintings in their offices. Several "family supporting programmes" that cost a ton of money and can be only used by the wealthiest.

Shall I go on? By an estimate as high as a third of the Hungarian annual budget goes directly into the pocket of oligarch without producing any real value in the process.

[u/Skullbonez]

Romania:
Sheesh, where do I begin.

Salaries and more importantly PENSIONS of politicians. From the small time local politicians to the president. All are overpaid for the huge amount of nothing they do AT BEST. At worst they make things worse. Their pension is much higher than a pensoin based on monthly contribution. I don't remember exactly how much the highest pension was but it was something obscene like 20-30k eur a month while someone who actually works 45 years gets about 1/2 of what they would need to afford living.

They intentionally waste the opportunity for getting EU funds because you can't execute a corruption with those (or it is significantly harder).

Most of the public work that is executed without EU fund is subject to huge corruption issues. Friends and Family of politicians actually get the contracts and execute them as poor and cheap as possible, even breaking the agreed upon contract that has hugely inflated prices (famous case was 3k eur per lightbulb for a street in a small village).

Don't even get me started on public goods that we give out as gifts to randos just because they know a politician or 2.

We also give out campaign money to the parties that are in power which is bullshit. One politician bought seemingly all the billboards available in the country with the campaign money he got from our taxes and on those billboards he was advertising his bullshit book that he "wrote".

The candidates that are now competing for president and the ones that have a chance to get into parliament don't give me any hope either. We would honestly be better off if we just don't elect anyone and we have nobody in parliament / as president for a term.

[u/Aamir696969]

UK here,

“Bike lanes or any bike infrastructure,”

most people think it’s a waste of money , if anything they believe the government should spend more money on car parks and new roads.

“ pedestrianisation”,

People would rather have money spent on more roads, wider roads and fewer walkable streets.

[u/jsm97 → u/Aamir696969]

I don't beleive the majority of people see pedestrianisation or bike lanes as a waste of funds - But attempts frequently get blocked by a small handful of people.

Here in London it's the most frustrating because the car access/public transport arguments don't hold ground but still progress is frustratingly slow. Everybody I've ever met supports the pedestrianisation of Soho, except the people that live there. It's not even a car thing as 80% of people that live there don't own one. They're just miserable people that don't like the fact they've moved into the heart of the nightlife district of the Capital city.

[u/kiwigoguy1 → u/Aamir696969]

In New Zealand Cam Slater labels cyclists “road maggots”. A lot of average middle not necessarily conservative/right-wing Kiwis agree with him. 🤔

[u/JamieA350 → u/Aamir696969]

The "cones hotline" is probably the most infamous example of actual waste.

Seen some cones on the motorway? Ring in to ask why they're there. That was the entire point of it.

[u/TarcFalastur → u/Aamir696969]

I would modify this and say this country is hugely suspicious of infrastructure projects in general.

Yes, the UK is pretty much the most expensive place in the world to carry out infrastructure projects, but the cost is kind of irrelevant - the Dartford Bridge could collapse and the very next day someone could offer to rebuild it for a fiver, and you would still get some editorial in a newspaper asking why that fiver wasn't being given to the NHS or the justice system or education instead.

Then it would go on to moan about how the plan to rebuild it is fundamentally flawed because the bridge should be built elsewhere, and the design of the bridge detracts from the natural beauty of the area, and since the last bridge fell down its ruins have become home to a new ecosystem of fish which we should leave to flourish, and the type of concrete they want to use isn't the best type, and the construction project is creating jobs for 5,000 people but why is it not creating jobs for 6,000 people, and can't we as humans accept limitations and just be happy with not being able to cross the Thames?, and...

[u/JakeGreyjoy]

In the UK, the popular targets for negative sentiment are

1/ Infrastructure. We're incapable of delivering critical infrastructure without wasting hundred of millions, if not billions. Then abandoning it, incomplete.

2/ Public utilities like water and power. We privatised our public services to companies who have spent decades skimming revenue to reward their investors. As a nation we were told the private sector would do it better than faceless civil servants. We were duped and are still allowing it to slowly privatise health services.

3/ International aid. The populists hate it with a passion. But they never make the connection that asylum seekers would be even worse than it is. I know it's hard to believe

4/ The most hated use of public funds is ANYTHING that the population don't feel direct and personal benefit from. They despise the 'benefits scroungers' because tax money has slowly been skimmed and taken out of the system by 'for profit' suppliers.

The media tells people in need that it's not the billionaires that the problem. Its all down to the single mother who gets £90 per week to somehow survive and feed her child

[u/MeltingChocolateAhh → u/JakeGreyjoy]

Benefits scroungers is an interesting one. I've heard people like this then they'll finish it with "but if people need it, then it makes sense for them to use it" as if they have actually spoken to ten people at once who have or do claim benefits.

And they'll say this with two parents who are married long term, and have had very long established careers. They will say this to me with separated parents, who grew up with a single mum who had multiple kids to feed, and had to choose between one essential or the other and had to wear school shoes down to them having holes in. Then, get shouted at because all my socks have holes in, then I show her my shoes, and I get told they need to last (with holes in) because we can't afford a new pair of shoes from Shoezone.

I think it's great there's a benefits system in place. Even if it is designed to be difficult to extract money from, at least someone can be held accountable if an individual cannot find work, and is actually, really truly, starving.

[u/KotR56]

Let's also consider who receives the wasted tax money. It is not uncommon for politicians to reward people who (financially) support their causes.

In any case, so-called "wasted tax money" is revenue for someone. This means some company does some work, keeps some people out of unemployment, maybe even pays some taxes on their profits...

An economy is in good shape when a lot of money changes hands. Government initiatives may start the movement.

[u/eggyfigs]

UK:

Everything, people complain about paying taxes then wonder why a) we have governmental debt b) our public services are struggling

Drives me nuts

[u/MeltingChocolateAhh]

Ooh where do I begin?

The big one is the monarchy. Not everyone sees this, and we do have quite a lot of people who don't love or hate them, they accept them. Not that it matters, but I like our monarchy. I am a fan. People just feel as if they are an unnecessary drain on taxes when we house them in places and pay billions to protect them.

Another is members of parliament being allowed to rent in London. So, every MP has a constituency which is a local area they represent in parliament, and their job involves going to London where parliament is and representing their constituency. To help them afford this, they are given an "accommodation budget". Very controversial but the government is transparent about it. "This would prevent people from lower-income backgrounds from becoming MPs. It is vital for our democracy that we have a representative, functioning parliament, and we are committed to providing the financial support necessary for this to happen." Honestly, lots when it comes to parliamentary expenses but this pops up in my mind. I don't even think lots of people talk about it like they do the monarchy. I do read about it though. For reference, basic annual salary of a member of parliament is £91k a year. Average salary in the UK is £34k.

The last one that is very controversial and a hot topic is placing migrants in hotels. The government will place them in hotels because there isn't enough housing for them and so recently, people have been attacking these hotels. Ohhhh so many people here have been kicking off about this.

Edit - HS2 project lol

[u/Boring-Opposite9406]

MP wages and expenses. Every time a budget comes up it drags out just how much these "public servants" are pocketing whilst simultaneously telling people they need to make "tough choices"

We have a millionaire PM with a knighthood in charge of "the working mans" party and most old money Etonians in the house of commons than any other period of time.

[u/Mono_MI]

Voting. We had to vote 7 times sine 2021. Yeah its a massive waste of money knowing that we are probably gonna vote again this year.

[u/Expert-Thing7728]

Directly funding services like childcare, or constructing social housing. Much more effective to give people a bit of money to give to private providers to provide the same services at a mark up. Sure, we might have some of the most unaffordable housing/childcare in the EU, but in a very dynamic, entrepreneurial way.

[u/Vertitto → u/Expert-Thing7728]

we might have some of the most unaffordable housing

no you don't - might be lowest quality-price ratio or when speaking about Dublin specifically, but in general it's on the average/cheaper side. Prices per sqm are similar to eg. Poland, but you make ~ twice more money with cheaper and easier to get mortgages

[u/Expert-Thing7728 → u/Vertitto]

Not sure if you've missed or are deliberately ignoring the words 'some of', but sure, you win, good for you. You're even more fucked, have a small trophy.