How's the rarefied air way up there on your moral high ground bud?
Large enough the echo never makes it back. I try to look at a problem as needing a solution that works the best for the ones the changes are impacting the most. Food and water always come first, we should be able to do that with unemployment at something well above 80% and not have the population 'be restless'. Let them choose their own form of 'misery' be it escape through drugs or same money used to follow a hobby that never really does anything other than keep boredom at bay, that is the main purpose of both and the list that is used today is a lot longer than 2 items and the availability is more than 'limited' yet it is called a 'success'.
Somehow I don't see you seeing that picture as being something worth working for.
People like you don't like it when the hard questions are asked.. Generally speaking, when you're faced with these questions, it accentuates that any functional, practical and long term 'solutions' are not as simple as just pushing a bunch of cash somewhere... All that accomplishes is that you might feel a bit better for as long as it takes to spend the dough.
I'm all for hard and soft questions being asked, an answer of sorts should also be something that can be demanded rather than skating around it like it was never asked.
I'm also in favor of spending, to the point all the vaults are empty, saves having to hire guards for one thing. I'm also in favor of projects that takes many man and machines to make some needed changes. If we can go to the moon in 10 years how long to straighten out the Mississippi River system to where the flooding is a yearly thing that is greeted with cheers. The cheering would be from the natural hill or man made hills that are well above flood level. The self fertilizing fields would take little effort to grow enough for more than just that region. 10 years to construct, 100 years before the trees need trimming. The hobbies that men follow after their bellies are full would dictate where the flow of money then goes. Finding funding is not part of any 'hobby' it is a 'hindrance'.
In a 'build it and they will come' kind of mentality setting up a park-like setting where rides as mundane as a golf-kart can take you on a loop that lasts from 15 minutes to 15 hours. Little jet boats that get fueled up 2 or 3 times a day delivering supplies far from the warf when the lake hasn't seen one boat on the water all week because of the winds. Get 6 people and 300 miles of waveless water and somebody is going to want to launch, let alone have their own 'tenting spot' that is 15 minutes to 50 minutes from the warf. If it catches on great, if not you roll back the moss.
As Barnum and Bailey put it so well, low those many years ago: "There is a sucker born every minute'... You are the ultimate personification of this reality
At least they put up signs warning people they were coming to town and when they left so did 'the games'. Thieves and liars have no such morals.
'We' are just as broken as all others... The difference being, 'we' have advanced far enough to be able to provide some form of welfare to those in our society
If we are just coming off the boom years and we didn't pay off out grandfathers debts off and ran it up even higher then how do we expect the generation that is less able to do more than we did when we were in control. Say the Yukon found a lot of gold the other guys missed and slide-rule out some $70T if you insist on the banks getting some, they can have $60T and the rest just floats around the party, I mean 'struggle for life under the harshest of conditions'.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=UsNUR6tsoTs