This is an opinion column.

The things Alabama spends money on are almost as telling as the things it won’t spend money on.

Billion dollar prisons. Sure. Children? Not so much. Help for the poor? Fuhgeddaboudit. Buckets for the rich. You bet your bottom dollar.

Alabama since 2000 has doled out about $4.5 billion in grants, tax credits and paybacks to lure companies to Alabama, according to data maintained by Good Jobs First. That includes massive deals to companies such as Thyssenkrupp and Toyota, which have more money than the whole state of Alabama.

In 2012, as just one of many examples, Alabama promised Airbus $158 million in incentives on a deal that would bring 1,000 jobs. That’s easy math. It comes to $158,000 per job.

Alabama loves jobs. Until it doesn’t. This year the state refused to extend a $30 million loan to save Birmingham-Southern, so a prestigious college closed down. And the state lost 1,481 jobs. That’s $20,300 per job.

We’ll gamble everything on economic development, when it suits us. Just don’t ask us to develop humans.

Alabama has one of the highest infant mortality rates in America. It ranks 45th overall in health and wellness for kids, and among the worst for working moms and for bringing a baby into the world.

Alabama is one of 10 states that didn’t expand Medicaid. Our excuse was that it was too expensive.

Wouldn’t be prudent, you know.

Even if hospitals are closing all over the state and thousands of families are left stranded without healthcare. That’s even though, as the non-partisan Public Affairs Research Council of Alabama put it, expanding Medicaid two years ago could have saved the state enough in six years to pay for the cost of expansion.

But then, Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey last year put the dent in the whole idea of prudent when she tried to ship $25 million in Education Trust Fund money to build a Montgomery water park. That’s readin’ and writin’ and ‘rithmaslick. But publicity made even legislators nervous, and sanity almost prevailed. Almost. They stripped $20 million out of the deal, and the water park only got $5 million.

I guess that’s a win with this legislature.

This year that bunch, always thinking about the children, agreed to use state money to pay parents who want to put their kids in private school. Which will take money out of the public school systems that need it the most and put it into schools that may or may not be better, but are certainly less transparent.

Alabama, of course, is a state that perpetually lags the nation in educating our children and historically thanked God for Mississippi for being kind enough to be worse than we were.

Thank you, Mississippi, and bless your heart..

The state ranks 45th in the U.S. in education, according to U.S. News and World Report. And – Oh no! – it can’t even thank God for Mississippi anymore, at least not in those rankings. Mississippi last year moved up to 30th.

Now that smarts.

Yeah, Alabama, with tons of money from the hated federal government (that has triggered a lot of the growth in Huntsville, Alabama’s trendiest metro – and the only one with healthy growth), will spend $5.5 billion on a boondoggle beltline around Birmingham that researchers recently panned as a “bridge to nowhere.”

We’ll gamble all that money on the hope it will bring jobs, which those researchers say is unlikely. We’ll bet it all and disregard warnings that it will probably hurt Birmingham more than it helps the communities north of it.

I can’t help but think of the money we have turned down because we can’t seem to get along, and because we’d rather spend money on greed than need.

There was a time, 25 years ago now, that U.S. Sen. Richard Shelby, a powerful Republican, secured $87 million for a new commuter plan in the Birmingham metro area, including light rail. It would be ours, if the area could come up with a 20% match. Just $17 million to get the ball rolling.

It didn’t matter where it came from. The city or the suburbs that would use it, the counties or the state or ALDOT. If they could just come up with 20 cents on the dollar it would open up billions in future federal funding and build a modern commuter system.

But of course the state wasn’t interested, and the city and county and suburbs could only agree that they don’t trust each other, so nobody came up with the cash.

And opportunity went away. Because money is always the excuse when Alabama wants to do nothing.

Look for the pattern. You’ll see it. Alabama looks at people with means, and gives them money to do what they want. It looks at people in need, and withholds it to teach them a lesson.

We pass by on the other side of the street. No, that’s not quite right. We spend billions to build a road around them.

John Archibald is a two-time Pulitzer winner at AL.com.