Group think and the study of the dollar

When asked to reflect on what I learned in Government class during the first two trimesters, I jump to thoughts about number crunching and groveling around in the ever elusive quest for the ultimate budget proposal. Such a project required the collective skill set I acquired while learning about intricacies in congressional politics.

Group think

While I am far from having a notable voice in congress, what I learned was a that having a voice is only part of the battle, the rest is learning how to use it in order to patch together a budget proposal with your fellow congressional leaders. At first I thought the purpose of the project was to understand how congress is making their cuts and what we would do differently. Rather than stop there, I discovered that we were also learning how to set aside our own beliefs and work with a group and formulate a plan while thinking critically about the individual choices. I recognize group collaboration is a highly valued skill in the work place and I took my experiences in government class to heart. While I know balancing the government’s budget is not in my future, I know i have learned skills that will help me in my own budgetary quests as wells as working more effectively in groups.

This old house needs a new bag of tricks

This country is spiraling out of control, while our federal government digs deeper and deeper into a quest for economic prosperity, we continue to sink into the same quagmire of debt. An unrelenting quest to continue to stay on top of the global market is unraveling us at an ever increasing rate. In the past decade we the taxpayers are being forced to continue to pay for war and peacekeeping operations around the globe while our government has forgotten about its most important topic. The unwilling supporters of these operations, We the people have been forgotten. Our government’s forgetful attitude has  been a progressive downward spiral and more evidence supports our fears, that the our elected representatives have forgotten our needs.

While our government is not a kickstarter project we expect it to behave like one, we fork money out in hopes it will survive and in return every year we expect our conditions of living to not worsen, yet our donations are not appreciated thus we are not being rewarded appropriately. Our security seems to be dwindling, shootings are becoming even more deadly our government has spread its money too thin and now its is being forced to recoil from its mistakes.  while many people are blaming the entire government for its failings, nothing has been produced. Last years newspapers were covered consistently with news of economic woes, debt troubles, and violence. What will it take to pull our country out of this spiral?

Compounding issues are not aiding our recovery process, our government’s debt is still running wild, the personal debt accrued by a the average american is $47,000. Why has our nation not been able to come to terms with their illness, and ultimately take the medicine and man up.