I posted my first thoughts on Barbara Ehrenreich’s socialogy expiriment / book in this blog post. Now I have finished the book and it has changed how I think socially and politically.

I now realize that people can work a full time job and still not earn enough money to go to sleep at night with a roof over their heads. For the lucky ones that are able to do that, saving is literally impossible. Any money not spent on housing is spent on food, and that is the end of their paycheck. For many people, there is no room in the budget for extras.

This newfound knowledge has made me a bit more liberal than I used to be. I think minimum wage needs to be increased for one. Secondly, I don’t think people should pay income tax on the first $12,000 of their income, because that is what I figure to be the absolute minimum people could spend on the bare necessities. Lastly, I think we need some kind of free health care. I don’t think all health care in america should be free, but there needs to be a system that provides health care (including birth control) to families who cannot afford it.

Americas budget for 2007 puts aside $148 million for research on solar energy, and $44 million for wind energy. Together that is a $70 million increase from 2006 so you might think we are on the right track. I don’t think so. The war in Iraq is costing us about $250 million PER DAY. I would much rather see that money going to researchers in the United States.

It has been estimated that the United States could get 20% of its electricity from wind power, but as of 2006 only .06% of the electricity we used was from wind. Denmark gets 19% of the electricity it consumes from wind power, so the United States definitely has some room for improvement.

Someone please tell me, why are we spending so little money on alternative energy?