Governments spend millions of dollars each year on their space programs.

Most recently Mars is the focus of

scientists’ attention. Some people think this money would be better spent on dealing with problems closer to
home.

Do you agree or disagree?

It is widely believed that today, states are spending a tremendously gigantic amount of their financial resources for
projects relating to cosmos exploration than ever before. Practical thinkers, however, argue that such amount of
money is more beneficial if this will be used to find solutions to the problems confronting the people on earth. I
cannot agree more to the above statement.
Firstly, the millions of dollars collected from tax payers should be spent to the present and actual problems for
basic survival that they are facing. This money plays an essential role in finding a cure to health diseases such as
AIDS and cancer that made humanity suffer and even ended thousands of lives long before and still true today, and
providing food to feed the malnourished and hungry citizens across the entire globe. Take for example the
alarming increase in the mortality rates especially among children in the countries of South Africa. This happens
because of the large-scale hunger and poverty experienced by the people living in such a region. Seen in this light,
there are more important and urgent needs particularly food, medication, shelter, and education that people on
earth are waiting for these to be given to them through the million-dollar budget of the state and not on anything
that is beyond the earth’s atmosphere.
Secondly, safety and security of the people must be ensured by the government to its citizens through the use of
this vast amount of money for the measures and steps taken by the states to protect its people. In fact, many
countries right now are on the state of cold war with one another due to territorial issues, employment, and
abuses. If the governments are to spend these millions of dollars to sort these problems by coordinating with other
nations diplomatically and creating more jobs strategically and not on colossal studies, surely war threat and civil
unrest will be addressed.
To sum it all up, it is obviously more justifiable to use the million dollars of the governments to sustain the life of
people on earth by addressing the pressing problems closer to home. On the other hand, it is not also wrong to
apportion certain amount of budget for exploring the unknown outside the earth.
The birth rate in most developed countries is predicted to begin to fall over the next 50 years. By 2030 it is
estimated that over one third of the population in most developed countries will be aged 65 and over.

What effects will these predictions have on developed countries if they prove true?
What can be done now to deal with this situations?

It is widely believed that rich countries are said to be facing a plummeting situation in their populations’ birth rate
in the next half a century. Seen in this light, it is projected by sometime in 2030 that more than 30% of the
population in these economically stable nations are generally on their retirement age. Economic depression due to
the increasing number of age health related problems among workers is undoubtedly one of the most worrying
impacts that this scenario may cause to these countries if predictions come to reality.
One of the problems that causes strain to the country’s economy is the growing number of individuals having poor
health brought by ageing primarily to those who are in their 60s. In fact, absenteeism due to uncontrollable
frequent headache, hypertension, and mood swings are the common reasons why employees abandon their work
as per the reports of Dutch’s Workforce Bureau in 2015. As a result, companies who have invested huge amount of
money for these workers will render their efforts futile and expenses to be useless. This, will also require the
government to allot huge sums of money to health sectors to cater the needs of its people for health management
while sacrificing other government departments’ budgets, hence, will result to imbalance in the functions of the
public agencies. Given the strengths of these evidences, the normal deterioration of one’s health because of
ageing can directly and negatively impact the government, economy and the society as a whole.
Moreover, older workers are obviously far less productive than the younger ones and good productivity keeps
businesses alive. Take for example in Germany, companies are discretely encouraging their employees to avail the
early retirement program at the age of 45 so that they can replace them with younger and more productive
workers. In connection to this, the European Labor and Employment Union have concluded in their 2016 research
about workers’ productivity and efficiency study that employees below 35 years old are as twice as productive
than those who do not fall in the said age bracket. Hence, more work done means more profit it brings to the
company and at the same time this creates a positive effect in the countries’ economy.
Meanwhile, one of the most effective solutions that might possibly answer the worrying status of old-age- filled
developed countries, in the future, is to encourage and accept permanent residency and migrant workers from
foreign nations. In fact, programs and efforts are being made now by government leaders around the world to
have a standard and flexible international migration policy to shape up the countries which growth is at risk of
failing due to its scarce productive workforce, and counterproductive citizens. For instance, the leading nations
which are already embracing this proposed solutions to counteract the possible negative impact of this trend are
New Zealand, Canada and Japan, and the results so far are overwhelmingly positive from both the national and
business sectors.
To sum it all up, the impending increase in the number of countries which are largely consist of old individuals
might give rise to the problems in the economy; however, this is something that can still be prevented in many
ways and one of which is advocating immigrants to stay, work and live in at risk countries.