Should governments spend money on computer technology or more basic needs

Should governments spend money on computer technology or
more basic needs?
Many people believe that governments should spend as much
money as possible on developing or buying computer technologies,
while others think that governments should spend money on more
basic needs. While spending both on computer technologies and on
basic needs of society are important, I think that government should
concentrate on the latter. Computer technologies are not very good
investment from point of view of society as a whole, while
investment in essentials has a much higher rate of return.
Investment in areas related to computer software, networks and
hardware are not very profitable and will not improve life of
ordinary citizens. Several years ago many thought that by investing
in computer-related fields we can improve performance across the
board, but reality proved to be much more complex. Most of
Internet companies, dot- coms, went bankrupt. Although huge
money was poured in those companies, they even were not able to
support themselves. The promise of improved performance also has
never come true.
But we have more than 20 million people who live below poverty
line in the United States, the most powerful and prosperous country
in the world. More than third of the earth population live on less
than one dollar a day - official threshold of poverty declared by
United Nations. We can greatly improve life of those people by
investing in public education, organizing small business loan
agency or other project that can help to alleviate poverty. What`s
more, computers can actually make this problem worse, because
they make inefficient to produce anything by bare hands - so
making most of world`s uneducated population obsolete and
without means to sustain themselves.
Analysts expect that in several decades more than third of population

will not have access to clean water. This can leave famine, bad
public health and other disasters. Some argue that we will have wars
for access to clean water. To prevent this scenario we need to invest
large amount of money in projects that will help to save clean water


on our planet.
In conclusion I want to say, that investment in computers will not
solve a single problem of our society. Computer will not prevent
famines, which are so usual today, or help poor people. On the
contrary computers can leave poor blue-collar workers without work
and money to support their families. So governments around the world
should spend all available money on basic necessities of our society,
not on some dream projects