In January, I entered the Y-Care video contest initiated by Know-Y.org, creating a video meant to raise awareness of the National Debt. My video was chosen as one of the five finalists. The final winner, Stephen Byrd, was announced today.
Congrats to Stephen on his win! Here is his video:
And, because I really liked my video, here it is again:
Thanks to everyone who voted!
You’re lucky a cop didn’t stop you. I don’t know what state you’re in, but if it has civil asset forfeiture in it’s statutes, then the cop could have seized the money for no reason more than he suspected you were using it for illegal purposes, even if he didn’t arrest you and you were never charged with anything. Then, you would have to go to court and YOU would have to prove you weren’t doing anything illegal to get it back.
I think your video worked rather better; the ice cream sandwiches metaphor was spoiled a bit by indicating the nature of the problem (in gross form) but not the scale of it. It was just “big number” and did not impart any quantified knowledge.
Yours focused on the quantity, and certainly would make that aspect stick in one’s mind.
Of course, none of the people in the video (except for you, of course) are likely to pay any part of the national debt. The current government shows no indication that paying it off is even interesting, and the “average” person barely contributes to the many thousands of dollars per year of maintenance cost. The high-income people pay that, as a general thing.
The previous commenter may well be correct, but what a grim indictment of the system that suggests! The presumption of innocence would have fallen to “possession is nine-tenths if we make a law.”
Best wishes. I like your work.
===|==============/ Keith DeHavelle
I agree, your video is better. Not only does it illustrate the crux of the problem, but it also illustrates how little understanding the general public has with regard to that large of a number.
The other video sort of implied the father’s son would work off his debt; last time I checked indentured servitude was illegal.
I guess that’s why we inflate it away…. no one sees it coming and they just complain about how ice cream used to cost a nickel and they could watch movies for a whole day for a dime back in the day. The root of the problem is the monetary system coupled with the lack of political restraint.