Get your fucking hands off of space exploration. We can, and should afford it. The annual budget of NASA is a goddamned pittance in the scope of things. You want to defund some shit? Start with the military. Space exploration not only ensures a future where all of humanity's eggs are not in a single basket, but it pays dividends. Much of the tech we use and appreciate today is a spin off of space exploration.
Space exploration is a critical step forward to a post-scarcity society. Many of the problems on Earth are due to scarcity of resources. Adding Mars, the moon, and, ESPECIALLY the asteroid belts, are a huge step forward.
I agree that it is bound to be easier to fix Earth than it is to make Mars livable, but we also can have these other places, and god KNOWS what amazing things this will bring us.
We also need to look at building orbital communities and solar farms. We can move huge amounts of production and industry to space, reducing cost and want further.
People who bitch about a few million dollars being spent on the quest for Mars have no sense of the big picture, the economic benefits of humans living in space, or the importance of us getting to a place where a single asteroid strike cannot end our entire species in an instant.
Leftists, in particular, who attack space exploration need to shake their fucking heads. You want bread for all? Space is one of the best ways, in the long run, for us to get it.