One thing a professor told me years ago that stuck with me was that of course in government (and elsewhere!) there's some corruption, but there's a big difference between overpaying for services that aren't provided and overpaying for ones they are.
If the mayor's cousin gets rich because the local gov't is overpaying 40% for the trash removal contract, that's less of a big deal as long as my trash gets picked up every Tuesday. It's a pretty big deal if you overpay and the services are still shit!
"Why does it cost $5 billion to build 3 miles of subway?" is an important question to answer - and solve - but perhaps even more important is, "why does it cost $5 billion and then it still takes 17 years?"
