Spending Tax-Payers Money Wisely

Amit Varma in his weekly column Thinking it Through for the newspaper Mint brings up a very important point about "How should the tax-payers money be spent?". When we pay our taxes, whether it is through our work or when we buy something, we are contributing to the government coffers in the hope that, our contribution is going to be used wisely for the benefit of us as well as the community that we live in. Roads that we drive on, parks that we go to are all paid for by the taxpayers money. Some of this spending is necessary and some of it is not. Examples of unnecessary spending of taxpayers money abound, including the The Bridge to No-Where , the 6373 pet projects that were attached to the highway transportation bill that was passed in August 2005 by the US Congress (About 10% of the highway transportation bill spending of $286 billion was earmarked for these pet projects. ), or the billions spent on the war in Iraq.
I wonder if these senators or congressmen would have spent even 1% of their hard earned money on projects that were important to others and not themselves. I would have to say the answer will be a resounding no.

Read Amit Varma's blog at India Uncut