>I'm thinking to myself, I know the government pays people to come up with these schemes and can make themselves a supplier - provide a program, outcomes, and get paid per student to teach them.
Unemployment/retraining and social services type programs are child's play when it comes to state sanctioned wastes of money. The real money is in the programs judges force people to attend. The people who are really smart (or devious, depending on your viewpoint) make up programs that sound like they screwing people who deserve to be screwed (if you ask the people who take everything at face value) out of their money but are really a much broader dragnet. Traffic school and anything having to do with DUI are the best examples that come to mind but all sorts of "failure to respect the rules set by the government" civil infraction and misdemeanors have accompanying privately run programs that the judges will require people to attend in lieu of jail time or longer probation (both of which cost the state money). These programs can fly under the radar basically forever because a large chunk of the population will turn a blind eye to anything bad as long as you can do some mental gymnastics and make it seem like the bad thing is happening to "criminals".
Unemployment/retraining and social services type programs are child's play when it comes to state sanctioned wastes of money. The real money is in the programs judges force people to attend. The people who are really smart (or devious, depending on your viewpoint) make up programs that sound like they screwing people who deserve to be screwed (if you ask the people who take everything at face value) out of their money but are really a much broader dragnet. Traffic school and anything having to do with DUI are the best examples that come to mind but all sorts of "failure to respect the rules set by the government" civil infraction and misdemeanors have accompanying privately run programs that the judges will require people to attend in lieu of jail time or longer probation (both of which cost the state money). These programs can fly under the radar basically forever because a large chunk of the population will turn a blind eye to anything bad as long as you can do some mental gymnastics and make it seem like the bad thing is happening to "criminals".