Common Sense, Long Term Thinking vs Democratic & Republican “Short-termism”

Sep 28, 2010 Posted by Solomon Kleinsmith

I will say, I’ve been surprised with the British peoples’ warm reception to austerity measures Prime Minister Cameron, and his deputy Nick Clegg, have proposed to bring their debt situation under control. We should be so lucky to have politicians who are willing to be so honest with us.

…Nick Clegg, the deputy prime minister and leader of the Liberal Democrats—the smaller party in the governing coalition—is overjoyed. Recently, he gave a speech in which he explained that tough choices had to be made, so that “we will be able to look our children and grandchildren in the eye and say we did the best for them.”

No matter how you want to try and spin it, every time we pass more spending, and/or cut taxes further, by pulling out the nation’s credit card, we’re sticking the bill to our kids. Its perfectly understandable that we’d have big deficits during a steep recession, but not THIS big, and we had deficits during all but the biggest boom years of the dot com bubble… a time when people were making an unusually high and unsustainable amount of money and we had a split congress that was actually intent on trimming the size of government.
Clegg again…

…his government’s forthcoming austerity budget will value “long-termism” over “short-termism” and eliminate “the dead weight of our debt, and our failings” so that future generations can flourish.

This is the crux of the issue… not just in politics, but in so many other problems our country faces.
People want pills, or quick and painless surgeries, that fix problems they could have avoided altogether if they had just not lived a lifestyle that slowly (or not so slowly) fattened them up, ruined their lungs, clogged their artieries, screwed with their insulin production, or a whole slew of other things we largely control and form the very things that lead to our country having one of the lower age expectancies among first world countries. They also want these treatments to come cheap, and be provided to everyone… and then complain when their insurance bills, and taxes, go up.
Our companies push for short term profits, over long term, solid growth, and many times over honesty with their shareholders. Our country is so good at looking for ways to squeeze short term profits out of people that we’ve even made loan sharks legal, allowing pay day loan “companies” (mobsters/racketeers would be more accurate) to charge rates of interest that should give us all pause, and frankly piss me off. I wonder if we’ll soon make breaking kneecaps for lack of payment legal as well.
…and I don’t think I need to get into the short term thinking that led to the mortgage crisis and our current recession.
But politicians have taken short term thinking to a whole new level. Many people, and some corporations, have let short term thinking bring ruin to themselves and today’s economy, but politicians have been raping and pillaging none other than our childrens’ future.
… and we let them.