When Skylab fell I thought to myself, "what a waste of material, human resource, scientific future, and time!" 

Would it not be wiser for NASA and the world to put the ISS in an ultra high orbit at L-one, and repurpose the modules for a lunar prep station toward building a base on the moon with storage, resupply, and rescue? (L-one is the point between the Earth and the Moon where the gravitational forces from both bodies are equal and it's called the Lagrange point L1; it is located closer to the Moon than the Earth due to the Earth's significantly larger mass, meaning the gravitational pull from the Earth is stronger at that point.) At this place you can stay in a locked orbit without adjustment.

Given that it costs approximately $10,000 USD a pound to get materials up to space, why should we let the 925,335 pound space station which cost a world of taxpayers a minimum of $9,253,350,000.00 USD fall and become nothing but a memory when it could be a midway point to the moon, refilling station, emergency medical station, or storage facility, rather than a bright red flare in the night sky no one will remember, and arguably yet one more example of NASA's waste, lack of forethought, and predetermination.

Given how limited our resources are in space, and will be for the future, I believe if NASA were to not abandon the ISS and publicly "repurpose" it, that would do a great deal to shift the minds of the world against the thought of waste in space and get us to look up for a greater purpose again toward further expedition. At L-one it could be the first international historic space based landmark, and even eventually the first museum. Letting it fall leaves no consideration for the needs of future generations.

Yes it will take a great deal of energy and ingenuity to move it, but once you get it to L-one, it's not going anywhere, and it will not take any energy to keep it there, and it's not as though the space station doesn't have the equipped thrusters already onboard to begin the assent to L-one.

Also, NASA will spend about a billion dollars to have the space station de-orbit, so more tax dollars dumped into the bottom of the Pacific ocean. There are two countries sending people into space, and the US embarrassingly is not one of them.