Where the Money Lies

Making an informed decision before casting a vote has never been harder. Complicated issues are oversimplified and delivered as tweets and sound bites. News is more fragmented and more partisan, sources of information are more opaque (sometimes even turning out to be our foreign adversaries), and networks increasingly rely on outrage over thoughtful analysis to build their audiences. It is easy for voters to becoming overwhelmed and disenfranchised. An estimated 58 percent of eligible voters showed up at the polls during the 2016 presidential election. That means 42% of eligible voters did not vote, despite the fact that the subsequent four years would have a huge impact on their individual lives and prosperity.

I embarked on a journey to help encourage young, eligible and disenfranchised citizens to vote. Through Vote.net, the website I founded and operate, and through Where the Money Lies, I strive every day to get young voters interested in the political process. They respond, sometimes out of anger or fear, but more often out of an understanding that every vote is equally critical. For ourselves, for our country, we need to exercise our right to vote and show up for both the primaries and the election itself. While a single vote might not seem to make or break an election, an entire social circle could very well be that extra push to get a candidate elected. When lower-income voters do show up at the polls, we often are puzzled why they don't vote in ways aligned with their own self-interests. Why do poor people often vote for tax breaks for the wealthy? Why do rural voters often go out and vote against federal infrastructure initiatives? Why do sick people frequently vote for restrictions in healthcare?Often, voters are simply frustrated with the status quo. Other times, they are led to believe that a specific social issue or social group pose some sort of urgent threat, which, in fact, is rarely the case. The false sense of urgency distracts from the actual matters that they should be focused on, and therefore lead to less-than-optimal conclusions.

Where the Money Lies, provides a non-partisan guide to economic issues that have been brought to the forefront by the Trump "America First!" platform. These policies have been quietly implemented since Trump's inauguration and dramatically impact us all-- our health, education, employment, taxes, retirement, food and water, and even how we access the internet.