The Cost of Votes

I am sure most of  you reside, like I do, in the 7^th congressional district of California and I am sure, like myself, you grew very tired of all the Ami Bera/Doug Ose ads that were on television.  Just in case you were wondering, $22 million dollars were spent on those ads.  For the number of votes that were actually counted in that election that works out to $220.00 per vote.  Obviously, a very distressing figure.  However, it is politics as we know it today and in fact nationwide if you add up all of the local statewide and national elections the total comes to slightly over one billion dollars spent in advertising for the elections on November 4^th, 2014.  That certainly seems like a very large figure, but what does that have to do with my dental blog one might ask.  Well, it has to do with what occurred the Friday before the 4^th, that would be October 31, 2014, which was Halloween.  Would anyone care to venture a guess at how much was spent on candy in the United States for Halloween this year?  I am not talking about the alcohol for parties, or for costumes, or for transportation, or little bags and other trinkets that are given away, but just the candy given to children.  Well it works out to $2.2 billion dollars.  That is over twice as much as was spent on the political campaigns.  Now one could certainly make an argument that the future of the country is more important than candy, and as a dentist I would probably agree with that.  But these figures are certainly open for interpretation and I leave it to you, my blog readers, to make your own determinations as to which one or both of these figures are in excess of what is reasonable.  I would be interested if anyone has any comments to make.