Guan Yu Statue
Every item on this list is a massive waste of money, but at least the other four have the honor of an actual stated use. The final item on this list was built to attract tourism to the city of Jingzhou in Hubei Province, China. The creation in question is a massive bronze statue of famous Chinese military figure, Guan Yu. Weighing in at 1,200 tons and 190 feet tall, the statue is, undeniably, impressive. And all for the low, low price of 25 million dollars! Unfortunately, the ratio of expense to actual benefit here comes out somewhere around that of a solid gold toilet. Well, the toilet might win, because it’s probably illegal to piss on the statue.
The giant statue hasn’t achieved much in the way of tourism, either, most frequently being admired via regular reddit posts or scattered internet jpegs. In terms of actual tourism activity, it’s brought in the lowly estimate of only 2 mil. The thing pushing this statue over the top, and bringing it to the cream of the unfortunate crop in this article, is some recent news. The city of Jingzhou hates the statue so much that the government is now spending an additional 24 MILLION DOLLARS to move it. In terms of return on investment, you’d probably be better off shorting Exxon.