Consider This

Here's what my thoughts have been centering on today:

1.) Andy Pettitte signed a contract with the New York Yankees today. As a starting pitcher, he will play for about 5-6 innings approximately every 5 days. For this, he will be paid $11.75 million for one year. (This is nearly 3,000 times what I have made in the past year.)

2.) According to the United States budget for 2009, $541 billion was to be spent on "Defense" this year. This accounts for 54% of the budget, more than any other discretionary parts of the budget combined. Only 6.2% and 5.3% of the budget was directed towards Education and Health respectively. (These statistics and lots more can be found here.)

3.) Hundreds of billions of dollars in bailouts have been handed out to corporations and millionaires.

4.) I can't find a job and am barely able to put gas in my car or buy food. Yet even I am astronomically better off than countless people on this planet.

5.) Approximately one in eight people on this planet do not have access to clean water. It is estimated that it would cost $9 billion to provide clean water for every human being on Earth. Americans spent $10.66 billion on Black Friday this past November.

Our world is flooded with Social Darwinism and the vast majority of the people are drowning while a comparatively small number of people/countries float on by on their yachts without a care, not even willing to throw out a life preserver, as if those drowning don't deserve it. No, "The drowning must pull themselves up by their bootstraps and build their own life preservers" they say. "It doesn't matter that all the yachts together have plenty of life preservers to save all the drowning. Those are OUR life preservers." And so the yacht-riders float on, blissfully drinking their margaritas, while the drowning sink further and further, every second losing more of what precious breath remains in their lungs.

May God have mercy on us all.