They aren't wasted because you get Bitcoins for them.
Nope, that's just a neat way of distributing the currency.
It's neat, but not efficient. A miner is left on as long as the bitcoins it produces are worth more than the power cost of producing them. In other words, in a (plausible) worst-case scenario, each bitcoin mined will cost just a fraction below the power burned to mine it. If the FED was working on that kind of margin, people might be even moar pissed
All bills $50 and below cost more to print than their face value.
Wow, didn't know that. A link?
Edit: "Answer
The printing and reproduction of the dollar bill is a task that is reserved for the US government. Details on the procedure are not in the public domain for obvious reasons. However, the estimated cost of one dollar bill has been placed at around 8 to 9 cents per dollar bill." -- not authoritative, but unless you have some better sauce, i'm going with that.
You aren't counting the fact that they have to re-print the bill every period of time. I was looking for a source until I found this: http://advancedriskology.com/the-day-i-bought-15000/. Then I had a really good time and figured I'd find a source later.
I'm certain that they haven't considered the cost from when the cotton seed is placed in soil, nor for what that soil could otherwise be used.
Actually they sort of have. These costs are factored into the cost of the material from which the bill is made.