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Every year the biggest sport event and TV show in the US isthe Super bowl of American football championship. (You will find all national highways devoid of traffic on Superbowl night and water supply pressure in cities suddenly drop during Super Bowl TV commercials)  This year again a Boston team(the PATRIOTS) is involved. The entire city and region are whipped up to nearfrenzy in promotions and stories about our team and the people involved.Yesterday morning a front page newspaper article featured a Massachusetts ruralfamily of four planning to attend the sport event in person. They were lucky tobe able to purchase tickets to the event in Indianapolis, Indiana for $1000 perticket (the average price is over $2000 per ticket). To save money for airline ticketsto Indianapolis (about $1000 per ticket) they will fly to Pittsburgh for $215per ticket and rent a car to drive six hours to the event. Also to save moneyon hotels, they will stay at a motel 30 miles away. All told even with all thesavings, this family of four will spend $4000 for tickets, $1060 for airline,$150 for car rental, estimated $500 for food and lodging for total of  $5710. Yet even though I am a Patriot sportsfan, the thought of spending that amount of money for entertainment never onceenters my mind.

This contrast illustrates the mentality about spendingbetween native born Americans and immigrant families. This Massachusetts ruralfamily which I am sure is not rich since they went out of their ways to try tosave expenses consider spending $5000+ for attending the Super Bowl aonce-in-a-life-time event with the associated bragging rights. And the newspaper obviously considers the story newsworthy to report it.  But after some 60years of living in the US, we still consider this kind of spending to be frivolousand unwise. Yet this is approximately the same amount we spend for my wife’sexpense (not reimbursed) when she accompanies me to China each year since sheno longer considers safe for me to travel alone on extended trips abroad at myage. One type of spending represents what might be called “Entitlement”; theother “Necessity”. Yet each family freely chose their spending. It also is theroot of our national debt problem in my opinion. Luxuries and benefits become entitlements once government institutes them.

(Notes added 2/10/2012. The total viewing audience for this event set a TV record - 167 million viewers)