Spending Other People's $$$
When the government "helps," it costs more than it should
Movies as therapy for those in recovery is questionable, as Barbara Laker and Wendy Ruderman report, http://www.philly.com/philly/news/20141203__quot_Caddyshack_quot__is_therapy_for_drug_abusers_.html#disqus_thread and the tip of the spear are the movies that are estimated to cost $50 per head.
And I thought ticket prices here were high at the Ritz. Fifty bucks is more than an Imax ticket.
How can it cost so much?
I asked myself the same question during the early reporting on the crisis on the southern border as tens of thousands of unescorted children came pouring across, right into the kind hands of the border patrol.
Unlike others crossing illegally, these kids didn't try to avoid authorities, they walked right up to them and "surrendered," awaiting food, medicine and lodging, with no fear of being sent back.
Here was my column: http://www.philly.com/philly/columnists/stu_bykofsky/20140615_The_minor_problem_that_costs__252_a_day.html
The reported daily cost of handling one kid was placed at $252. How could it be so much?, I asked myself.
Not just myself, I asked the government to explain how it could spend that much each on each child, but the government never responded.
The kids were being stuffed into any place that could take them, and none of those places were the Four Seasons. They flooded in so fast many were sleeping on police station and school floors. The lodging can't cost much.
The kids were fed, and I doubt it was steak. Many were put in classes, so there are teachers' salaries and pay for health workers, who I would have thought were already on salary.
Do you have a child? Does it take $252 daily to care for him or her or them? Probably not, because that comes to just under $92,000 a year.
The point is, when spending money, your money, the government just isn't all that careful because there are rarely any consequences for waste.