Not sure that TV food shows actually teach people anything. All I see is a lot of people going from fad to fad, not really understanding the core principles.
a "noble excuse" like "I don't want the goverment to spend over a third of what it gets in taxes on a massive ponzi scheme"?
I'm going to assume you are french, and invite you to come to Spain, where we have a flamboyant highspeed railroad service in which there's not a single line that covers costs (not even Madrid-Barcelona). And guess what, we keep throwing money to that thing.
As for "money not disappearing", you are falling for the "parable of the broken window". Wikipedia has a much better explanation for it.
Once you're done with that, I suggest you to look at how 10 years ago Spain redid all it's public walkways (that were mostly ok) to "improve the economy". It was a massive waste of resources.