I Thought We Graduated From High School!

As most of our nation realizes, the economic situation in our country is absolutely atrocious. Our government is scrambling to figure out methods in how to get our economy out of such a pitfall, and build it back up to the stable power it previously entailed. While I may not have a degree in economics and may just only be a student, I do know one full proof method that could potentially get our nation out of such debt. END THE WARS IN AFGHANISTAN AND IRAQ! While in previous blogs, I have emphasized how this war has negatively affected our military families and communities, but it also affects our entire nation.

Let's compare our wonderful nation to a female teenage high-schooler. It is that time to go back to school again, and what all teenagers look forward to is “back-to-school” shopping! Our female teenager, America, is an older sibling and has two little sisters who she has to shop for, too. Well, America gets all of her supplies for school, paper, pencils, notebooks, and now its time for her to look out for her little sisters, however, her friend, let's call her Francesca, is with her and really wants a new pair of shoes. Francesca doesn't have the money to buy shoes, and America really wants Francesca to be her friend, so America spends the money that she needed to use for her little sisters on a pair of shoes for Francesca.

So, how does this have ANYTHING to do with the current economic situation in our country?!? Well, our nation has almost spent $1,000,000,000,000 on the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. (Now that is A LOT of zeroes!) Yes, we as a nation have a priority to protect our nation and to put our country's needs first, however, when we begin to fight "pointless" wars and spend this much money on a war that is worthless, then that is when our nation begins to act like our irrational teenage female spending money on worthless items, just so she will be well-liked. Just like America did in the previous scenario, we spent money on something that we don't necessarily need, when we could have invested that money into something more important. America should have invested that money in taking care of her siblings; instead, she spent it on something useless. Our nation is at fault for doing the same exact thing, by spending money on a pointless war when we have our own citizens struggling for economic support.

The amount of money that we are spending in Iraq and Afghanistan increases every single second. Please click on this particular link to see just how rapidly we are throwing away our money. http://costofwar.com/ It is extremely eye-opening.

In North Carolina alone, taxpayers have spent $24.6 billion total for the wars in Iraq & Afghanistan since 2001. For the same amount of money, the following could be provided within our state:

5,259,652 People with Health Care for One Year OR19,483,457 Homes with Renewable Electricity for One Year OR628,708 Public Safety Officers for One year OR460,551 Music and Arts Teachers for One Year OR4,879,573 Scholarships for University Students for One Year OR4,590,447 Students receiving Pell Grants of $5350 OR232,429 Affordable Housing Units OR11,712,390 Children with Health Care for One Year OR3,332,731 Head Start Places for Children for One Year OR509,256 Elementary School Teachers for One Year OR375,806 Port Container Inspectors for One year

http://www.nationalpriorities.org/tradeoffs?location_type=1&state=37&program=577&submit_tradeoffs=from_costofwar&tradeoff_item_item=999

What our nation needs to do is make our citizen's well-being priority and focus on the domestic issues first. Our nation should not have the mentality of a teenager high school girl, however, some of the ideas they have are similar. I know our country want's to be popular, but I thought we left that need for popularity back in high schoool.