Editor, Times-Union: Economic experts warn that the world is on the brink of an economic collapse that will dwarf the Great Depression. Trillions of worthless dollars have been invested in the Stock Market. That’s like when investors paid 10 percent for stocks they bought before the market collapsed in 1929. We need the world’s governments to balance their budgets. We did it when the Republicans controlled Congress while Clinton was president. It also cost us over 3,000 lives on 9/11 when Clinton didn’t take on terrorism like a war, and more lives than that in Iraq and Afghanistan when we fielded a military that lost over a million service people due to Clinton-era budget cuts. I believe my Applied Capitalism System, which makes the citizens and government economic partners, could make our economy a powerhouse that inspires other nations to copy our example. We should also use plasma excavation equipment to do a deep mining around the world to reach trillions of dollars worth of precious and strategic minerals and gemstones. We should also use advanced space technology to reach the asteroid belt beyond Mars and eventually the Kuyper Belt where there may be enough planetoids to mine to provide quadrillions of dollars worth of mineral wealth. If NASA is continually hobbled by low budgets, we may not reach the Kuyper Belt for over a century with mining equipment. But if commercial mining and manufacturing companies invest in the development of high-energy space systems that cut travel time by over 95 percent, the nations might reap the economic benefits of Kuyper Belt mining before the turn of the 22nd century. We have an EPA and restrictions that could prevent us from reaching rich deposits of gold, silver and strategic minerals worth trillions along with oil, coal and uranium that could reduce energy costs. Russia and China, on the other hand, could increase mining and drilling with few limitations to make their economies much stronger. If they develop advanced space technology before we do, they could virtually rule space and keep America and Europe from becoming debt-free by the 23rd century. It was exciting when we competed with the Soviets to land people on the moon first. Commercialization of space could make space travel common place by 2100 and profitable enough to pay off the world’s debt by 2200. Our future is beyond this world. It’s a tragedy that too many people think we shouldn’t “waste” money going into space. If they get their way, the world’s economic future will be bleak. It would be like dying in poverty while 1,000 tons of gold laid buried inches below the grass in your backyard. Rick Badman Warsaw
