Necessity or Impulse?

Sometimes, we treat ourselves and buy something that might be a little out of our price range. The consequence is keeping up with something that we didn’t really need and a crying wallet.

Our nation’s wallet seems to be suffering from the same issue. America’s economy is headed downhill fast and it probably isn’t slowing down anytime soon. We are already $16.4 trillion in debt (and counting). On top of that, the Administration is underestimating the value of the dollar.

All of the media is convincing the public that our economy is ‘recovering’ and ‘flourishing’. In all reality, it is doing the complete opposite. To compensate for the free-falling state of our economy, artificially low interest rates are piled on the backs of our citizens, along with other disguise tactics.

Nevertheless, it is not too late to dig ourselves out of this pit. All our government has to do is control its spending. Maybe it’s not even how much it’s spending, but what the money is being spent on.

An example would be space travel. We know there’s a solar system with moons and stars. That’s great and all, but what’s the point of searching further? It’s about $10,000 to put a pound of anything into a near-earth orbit. It costs $500 to $700 million every time the shuttle flies. Billionaire space tourists have flown to the space station at a reputed price of $20 million per head.

Now that we’ve crunched the numbers, is it easy to see that space exploration should be a very limited activity? Think about it this way: What could we be doing with that money that is more important than seeing ‘the great beyond’ yet again?

Imagine how this country’s physical state would flourish if we used that money to build more homeless shelters or teen refuges? Do you even realize the amount of charity we could commit to with $500 million? Imagine how many animal shelters could be built. Or how about the number of homeless children that could look forward to a warm bed and a hot bowl of soup this winter?

My objective here is not to belittle curiosity, but to ignite the passion of spending our nation’s hard-earned money to better the prosperity of not just the middle and upper classes, but the less fortunate.

If our Administration is willing to spend millions, they should do it for the good of the people. And just to leave you with a thought: In the amount of time it took you to read this article, you owe the government another 3 cents. I know that doesn’t sound like a ton of money, but that adds up to 15 dollars a day. Now is it an unreasonably large amount from your wallet? What are your thoughts? I would love to hear your input via email.