Overhead

What's the difference between boosting the economy by paying the bread-and-butter needs of our senior citizen and building a grandiose theatre ?

The overhead.

By this poetic term I mean the amount that is spend on areas that are not for the support of local economy. It includes:

1. Imported material, such as (for Hong Kong) iron and other raw material for the flesh and blood of a white elephant.
2. Administrative charge, manifesting as the profit of those intermediate agency (say, the building contractors).

You may argue the profit of a company represents a plus for the economy. That's true - but that "economy" falls to the pocket of a different group of people...

... the group that could murmur at the side of our (retiring) government officials, so that the latter choose to buy fruits for some white elephants rather than elderly people.

PS. Right, money gives only fruit and flesh and blood to an elephant - not the soul of it.