Did you know that the 2020 election cost a record-breaking $14 billion dollars and that doesn’t even include the countless millions being spent now on all these recounts?
$14 billion!!!
When I learned of this staggering number, it greatly saddened and troubled me. It is so devastating to learn how much money went towards getting a single position in the government, given how much our country, and places around the world for that matter, could have benefited from even a portion of that to help make a dent in some of our worst crises that only continue to grow.
Hunger and homelessness for example are probably two of the top crises our country and many others continue to face. Estimates of how much money would be required to end world hunger start at around $7 billion. As for homelessness, it’s been estimated it would cost around $12.7 billion to resolve, at least for here in America.
As I ponder these two simple statistics, I’m baffled at why so much money has to be spent on something like Presidential campaigning instead. I often wonder what would happen in our country if there was no campaigning whatsoever and all funds normally spend on it were diverted into helping resolve some of our major problems instead.
I mean honestly, is the endless campaigning and all the costs associated with it, including all that negative smear advertising, worth having mouths go empty and homeless die on the streets? These are questions that continue to frustrate me as I ponder them. Why the race for the Presidential seat is far more important than feeding empty stomachs and helping the homeless makes no sense to me. With so much money being wasted in our government that on the grand scheme of things continues to only leave us with the very same problems over and over again, I wonder if anything will ever change this.
Let me present this on a much simpler scale from a page from my own life. There once was a time when I carried debt on my credit card that always seemed to either remain the same or increase from month to month. I had every intention to pay it off and be debt free every single month, yet I kept spending dollar after dollar on things that weren’t important instead of paying my debit off. I would tell myself each time how necessary it was to have this thing or that thing. All that did was keep me from ever resolving my debt problem. The only way it ever changed was to change my spending behaviors. When I finally did and began looking at life differently, realizing how unimportant all those things were that I had kept wasting my money on, I was able to pay all my debt off and have kept it that way ever since.
That’s why I feel I can safely say our country isn’t ever going to resolve any of its major crisis’s like hunger and homelessness so long as it keeps doing things like spending billions of dollars on something like Presidential political campaigning.
I think what I find most ironic in all this though is that I read recently that the majority of people in this election at least, had already made up their minds as to whom they were going to vote for, long before the Presidential campaigning even began.
Nevertheless, I often believe it comes down to each of us to making an impact upon some of these terrible crises like hunger and homelessness. I know there is personally a lot more I can do to help and I’ll continue to do my best to make a difference. I only pray that one day our government might do better themselves by shifting their focus away from spending exorbitant amounts of money on things like Presidential campaigning and instead use that money to save a few souls who are far worthier and deserving of that money.
Peace, love, light, and joy,
Andrew Arthur Dawson
