Trampling Posterity

Who was Jdimytai Damour? He was a temporary worker in a Wal-Mart on Long Island, New York who was trampled to death by shoppers as he unlocked the door on “Black Friday.” His family must be in shock, that someone who showed up to work chasing the American dream was instead trampled by it.

In the current economy, it appears that the desperation of consumers to buy continues. Have we really become a group of people whose mindset is the ultimate in short-term? Have we really descended into a lack of manners in our conduct and an outlook of, “Have to have it now regardless of whom I have to trample to get it?”

We need look no further than government for the answer. Short-term thinking has ruled our nation from the highest levels. The attitude to often seems to be, “As long as I have my power, and as long as voters have what they want today, we’ll trample anything we have to, including the future financial stability of the nation to get it.” Legislative spending initiatives have grown at rates that no reasonable person could expect an economy to sustain. We have put our future at risk by avoiding the hard issue of reform of government-run entitlement systems of Social Security and Medicare/Medicaid which are threatened with insolvency. We have refused to balance our federal budget and continued to spend more than we make each year with no plan for repayment

The most recent example is the possibility of loaning money to automakers for the sole purpose of keeping people at work in a failed system. Thankfully, the U.S. Congress didn’t acquiesce at the auto executives’ first visit to Capitol Hill, but now the loans to a group of auto manufacturers who can’t seem to make money is being labeled as an economic stimulus. It is not economic stimulus to bailout the least efficient players in an industry. It would actually be a stimulus to give money to the successful companies and let the failed business models go by the wayside, but in either case the capital markets should make those decisions, not government.

A “loan” with no anticipated repayment is a “gift”. Our government seems to understand this well. If we aren’t able to repay our national debt, then why should we expect industries to be able to do so? Unfortunately, in the interest of providing gifts today, the future generations are likely to be trampled by the rush for short-term gratification of political interests.