system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
CMV: I believe any first-world government should have space travel as a highest priority.

I hear all the time about countries cutting funding for their space programs, and it drives me up a wall. Any scientist will tell you humanity's current goal should be to expand into space, currently Mars.

In my opinion, the problems of war, economy or the environment should always come second (disregarding a World War situation, I guess). We as a race should be expanding our universal footprint and perfecting space travel, so all issues concerning overpopulation and planetary disasters become a much less terrifying and immediate issue. 

When I bring this up with others they tend to disagree but refrain from debating, so I feel I may be missing a major factor or piece of information. Because of this, I'd like to see if someone could CMV.

**Edit:** Thank you everyone for the thought-out replies! It was very late at night when I posted this so I may not have gotten everything across. I do not believe space travel is an immediate fix to all our problems and I'm well aware a human may not set foot on Mars in my lifetime, but I was more thinking along the lines of the long-term benefits and I just used Mars as a quick, simple example. I was thinking more along the lines of putting more funding into research that greatly benefit our race when our current real estate of 1 becomes an issue. 

However, after reading most comments, I no longer agree that there is enough urgency to prioritize space travel over matters that could cause a country to collapse. I believe this stems from the lack of useful motivations in the general public, but that's a CMV for another day. I guess the basic point I was missing was "no country, no space program". I do still believe cutting NASA's budget or any other space program's budget is foolish and ignorant to the future of our species, though. 

Thank you all again for your comments, and all the interesting points brought up.
gpt
It's a misallocation of resources.

Why?  While many nations have space development as part of a national science and research program, it's a secondary concern to issues closer at home.

I'll agree that funding space research is something infinitely more beneficial than things like the military.  But in the end, even in first world governments, improving the lives of its citizens is always the priority.

Space travel has dubious payoffs that won't be seen for many decades, or even centuries.  There's no incentive to push for more greater development than current efforts, which are mainly subsidized industry or commercial interests by people with money to burn.

What you see during history is incremental development, the slow refinement of existing technology punctuated by groundbreaking discoveries.  The present is no different where the majority of space development is either:
a) Catching up by less developed nations and programs
b) Incremental development or slowly improving efficiency
c) Sporadic funding to pure theoretical research that could have immense payoffs.
d) Think-tanks.

There's a difference between simple exploratory programs such as the planned missions to the moon or mars and true mass migration, migrating millions of humans on an inhospitable planet.  The technology is not there.  The technology to build the infrastructure to build the technology isn't there.

There's one more reason of course.  Domestic politics doesn't allow the amount of self-sacrifice that a government will require of its citizens.  There's always problems at home, and politicians know when you use money on a pet project with no benefit in the lifetime of the average taxpayer, they'll be replaced with someone more amendable.  Although it's not a logical reason, it's undoubtedly the main one.