I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how it is we spend billions of dollars on war and continue to cut spending on education and social programs. The rhetoric of “tax increases” to reinstate spending on these programs is mind blowing. That congress is actually arguing about whether or not to find a way to offset Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT) relief is astonishing. Do we really think that our country can function without those billions of dollars provided by the AMT? That it is ok to go right on cashing more checks we can’t cover?

So, back to spending – if we’re not willing to spend money on government and infrastructure, we get crappy roads, our children fall behind from an inadequate education, if they even manage to inherit a planet they can live on…we get what we pay for.

Likewise, if we spend billions and trillions of dollars on war, we are viewed as global bullies, we get violence and terrorism, we travel less out of fear and our children become even more isolationist deepening the cycle of mistrust…we get what we pay for.

There’s a great op-ed in the New York Times a friend sent me from Tom Friedman. He asks the question why we – our government, our country, our citizens – can’t seem to understand that the next big global marked is for green, clean energy. Can you imagine? An America committed to cleaning up our messes, cleaning up the world and in the process creating a new green economy to propel us forward into an age we could be proud of? I, for one, would love to start paying for that.