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“Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.” – Romans 6:23
Do you have a long-term or short-term strategy for your life? Which view creates greater happiness and greater success?
A 1960’s experiment (The Stanford marshmallow experiment) suggested that children who could delay gratification demonstrated greater self-control leading to academic performance and healthier lifestyle choices. It seems the ability to embrace a long-term strategy will result in greater long-term success.
In Man’s Search for Meaning, Victor Frankl explained how we each can endure any current suffering if we see the long-term meaning and purpose. Frankl survived suffering in a WWII concentration camp by seeing the long-term meaning. Millions of others died. It seems the ability to embrace a long-term strategy will result in greater long-term success.
The Bible encourages us to embrace a long-term strategic view to achieve eternal life. It also warns how short-term thinking leads to destruction (Proverbs 19:16). If our thinking drives our decisions, it follows that long-term strategic thinking will lead to higher quality decisions. And, as the Romans quote above suggests, it can even lead us to everlasting life.
Short-term thinking can cause long-term harm. Like CEO’s of American companies who trusted China to produce their products. China has since violated many of those agreements. China stole intellectual property and threatened our national security by becoming a sole supplier of many of our essential pharmaceuticals and technology products. China’s control over rare-earth minerals, technology, pharmaceuticals and health care items put us at risk. This especially became clear during the Covid-19 “plandemic”.
Which political party makes decisions with a long-term view? Which one usually embraces the short-term view? Don’t we want to vote for the party and the politicians that take a long-term view?
The Political Left and The Biden Administration
The Biden-Harris administration described their economic strategy as “Middle Out and Bottom Up – Not Top Down”. This required “investments” which means spending taxpayer dollars. These “investments” included addressing the “plandemic”, green energy, creating apprenticeships, technical education, and boosting labor agreements. This is all short-term spending justified by Keynesian economics.
John Maynard Keynes argued for government to become a major factor in boosting economic health. By creating increased demand for goods and services through government spending, the economy could be boosted and prevented from languishing in a recession. Keynesian economics is short-term thinking because the government cannot afford to support the economy over the long-term without serious consequences. Today our Government Debt amounts to 118% of GDP. Interest paid on this debt amounts to 13% of the entire yearly Government Budget.
This short-term Keynesian thinking has been used by both political parties because the results often effectively justify the short-term goal of re-election. It is very often used during a crisis. The political left looks for and often creates crises to justify Keynesian spending.
“Never let a crisis go to waste.” – Rahm Emanuel
The Trump Administration
It’s fair to say not all strategies implemented by the Biden Administration were based on short-term thinking. Biden’s open-border policy likely offers a long-term opportunity for the political left to win more elections. In theory, the illegal immigrants would likely vote for the left because they were and are dependent on government support.
Trump closed the border in the first month of his administration as he promised he would. Can we agree a closed border offers a long-term benefit to the American people? A closed border boosts national security, prevents child and sex trafficking, prevents entrance of criminals, reduces the flow of illicit and dangerous drugs, increases job opportunities for citizens, reduces overload of social services and school systems.
Implementing tariffs to negotiate more attractive trade agreements is a short-term action to achieve long-term trade solutions. Tariffs resulted in companies pledging trillions of dollars of new investment in the USA to avoid tariffs. This long-term result will boost economic development and jobs well after Trump leaves office.
Capturing Maduro also offers a surprisingly effective long-term approach to national security and economic development. By removing Maduro, the US provides Venezuela with an opportunity to rebuild its oil industry while impeding China and Russia from infiltrating and investing in America’s hemisphere. Control of Venezuelan oil puts economic pressure on Russia, China and Cuba increasing leverage for them to negotiate long-term peaceful trade with America.
Trump’s typical long-term strategy emphasizes economic “carrots” instead of military “sticks”. If our enemies can enjoy economic benefits while we also benefit, cooperation is the result and the probability of conflict is reduced. Peaceful trade helps prevent wars.
Sending taxpayer dollars to Ukraine is a short-term and dangerous attempt to end the war. Trump is working for a long-term solution through economic “carrots” and “sticks” to bring the parties to the negotiating table.
The elimination of the Iranian nuclear threat was a long-term solution to the Middle East conflicts. Signing a weak nuclear agreement and sending pallets of money, as Obama did, was short-term and didn’t work. The Middle East is now poised to shift toward peace thanks to this long-term strategy.
Summary
Thinking and acting long-term is challenging. It’s often easier to take short-term action but it often doesn’t address the root causes of the problems. For example, Keynesian spending is easy to do but doesn’t address long-term root causes of a crisis.
The ability to delay gratification is a skill that helps with personal goals such as losing weight, improving personal health and achieving eternal life. Our founders wrote the Declaration and the Constitution with a long-term mindset. They were wise enough and humble enough to realize the Constitution may, from time to time, need to be amended. This was a long-term mindset idea.
Amending the Constitution offers a long-term strategy for some of these long-term strategic goals of national security and economic success. The Convention of States initiative is diligently working to call an Article V Convention to accomplish the following three goals:
Embracing a long-term strategic mindset is useful for us personally and for our entire country. Vote accordingly.
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