🔨 1984The Pentagon’s $436 hammer
$436 · one hammer
An ordinary claw hammer. On a 1980s spare-parts invoice.
Your tax dollars paid for what?!
A $436 hammer. A $1,280 coffee cup. A treadmill for shrimp. Real, sourced US government spending, plus where your state taxes actually go.
The greatest hits of US government spending
Every item links to its original source, with context on what the headline leaves out.
🔨 1984
☕ 2018An Air Force reheating coffee cup
$1,280 · per cup
One cup. Reheats coffee on planes. The handle breaks if you drop it.
🦐 2011The shrimp treadmill itself
$47 · the actual treadmill
Political “waste” lists linked it to $3 million. The treadmill itself cost…
🔮 2010A Vegas conference with a mind reader and a clown
$823,000 · one conference
About 300 federal employees. Las Vegas. A hired mind reader.
🚽 2018An Air Force toilet seat cover
$10,000 · per cover
One plastic lid. For a toilet. On a plane.
🌁 2007Alaska’s “Bridge to Nowhere” (never built)
$398 million · projected cost
A huge bridge to a small island. Mostly serving an airport. Never built.
🩺 2014HealthCare.gov
$1.7 billion · contracts by 2014
A website to shop for health insurance. It crashed on launch day in 2013.
🐐 2016Italian goats flown to Afghanistan
$6.0 million · cashmere project
Rare Italian goats, flown in to boost Afghan cashmere. Guess the project cost.
Where do your state taxes go?
Actual FY2024 spending for all 50 states and DC, from the U.S. Census Bureau. Here are four of the biggest.
New York
$253 billion state spending, FY2024
- Medicaid & public assistance · 45%
- K–12 schools · 18%
- Hospitals & public health · 9%
Has a state income tax on wages
See where your New York taxes go →California
$519 billion state spending, FY2024
- Medicaid & public assistance · 43%
- K–12 schools · 15%
- Colleges & universities · 11%
Has a state income tax on wages
See where your California taxes go →Texas
$211 billion state spending, FY2024
- Medicaid & public assistance · 28%
- K–12 schools · 20%
- Colleges & universities · 19%
No state income tax on wages
See where your Texas taxes go →Florida
$130 billion state spending, FY2024
- Medicaid & public assistance · 31%
- K–12 schools · 15%
- Colleges & universities · 11%
No state income tax on wages
See where your Florida taxes go →Shares are of each state’s total general expenditure, including federal grants passed through to the state. How we calculate this
US stories
CaliforniaSan Francisco’s $1.7-million toilet: the headline, the donation and the actual city cost
One public restroom became a symbol of expensive bureaucracy. But the famous estimate and the reported city bill tell different stories.