The Lack of A Long Range Perspective
Tom Chatham

Those that have the foresight to plan ahead for their distant future needs are growing smaller by the year. With every new generation the want for things to be faster and always newer is the driving force that will eventually devour us as a nation. Long term planning has given way to short term gratification. The need to live for today has replaced the time tested wisdom to live life in moderation. Its not a bad thing to want a good life and those things that make it easier but to sell your future in order to have it all now is a recipe for disaster.

There are those that tell the masses that life should be lived to the maximum every day and not to worry about the future because someone else will take care of that for you when the time comes. That is like driving your car wide open everywhere you go. You will get there faster and have a lot of fun doing it but your car will wear out much faster and leave you stranded at some point with no means to get another because you still owe on the first one for years to come.

Life can be just as much fun when lived in moderation and done with a long term plan to get you to the end. By planning your future needs and wants you can get there with money to spare. The act of buying it now and paying high usury fees destroys your future savings. If you go around paying two or three times for everything you get, you will be throwing away a lot of your hard work and future happiness.

Westerners, and more so Americans than the rest, tend to take a short term perspective on things. This short attention span and desire for immediate gratification is the cause of many of our woes. Since most Americans live paycheck to paycheck today, it is easy to understand why they take a short term perspective on their lives. They put so much energy into the here and now they have nothing left for the future. This short term perspective causes them to develop tunnel vision and disregard future possibilities. This prevents them from forming long range plans and goals that they can work towards to fulfill their hopes and dreams.

As many preppers will tell you, they did not have the ability to immediately fulfill their want list of preparations. They had to make a long term plan and stick to it to some degree in order to get to the preparedness level they desired. For many this took years and for some the work still continues. A prepper is the epitome of a long range planner. They evaluate the resources they have to work with and set out long range goals to achieve a certain desire.

This is the primary element that is missing from the American culture at large today. The desire for immediate gratification has led America down a path of destruction that will destroy our nation in due time. Americans give little thought to buying on credit or borrowing beyond their ability to repay. They want it now and will deal with the problems later. When the problems finally rear their ugly head, the lack of a long term plan to deal with it causes them to implode, costing them everything they have and the loss of many years of hard work. The wealth amassed by previous generations has been squandered and the current generation wants to have the same living standard as previous generations but there is nothing there to support this lifestyle.

The lack of a long term plan has led many Americans to borrow at excessively high rates and give away their hard work for little gain. As the economy collapses they will lose the few things they have that were bought on credit that they can no longer pay on. The current plan is nothing more than short term creative destruction. Americans are leveraged to the hilt with no hope of ever coming ahead. Only through the use of well conceived long term and short term goals will the U.S. achieve a stable economy that offers prosperity for its people.

The lack of a long term plan for economic prosperity has left America with a hole that must be filled by something. That something is now becoming very obvious to those that care to see it. The hole in American jobs is being filled by foreign investment that is buying up America at fire sale prices. The lack of a long term plan will ultimately see this nation owned by the savers of another nation that have long term plans.

The Chinese are an old civilization and as such they usually take a long range perspective on things. This long term outlook has allowed them to come ahead very fast in the past few decades. They have a goal in mind and a plan to get them there and it is working better than they expected. China has absorbed a major part of Americas manufacturing capability and the technology that has made us competitive in the world. They developed a business model that paved the way for a takeover of the American markets and a systematic de-jobbing of America began. America filled this earnings gap by borrowing from our new business partners.

America has now reached a point where a new plan is taking shape. China is now in the position to systematically take over the U.S. piece by piece. This type of thing can only be accomplished by a long term plan. Most Americans that have no concept of long term planning cannot comprehend the actions taking place and ignore the future consequences of these actions. They only see a savior that is coming to our rescue and will eventually provide them with jobs that will allow them to continue to live beyond their means a little longer. Those that are preppers and have the capacity to plan ahead can see the storm that is coming and no amount of information will convince those with short term thinking of the coming danger.

The lack of a long term plan and the shortsightedness of Americans has led us to a point of desperation as a nation. The lack of a long term perspective will lead to a loss of the standard of living most Americans are accustomed to and a loss of our freedoms as our economy collapses. Most will not realize it until they are staring at it down the barrel of a gun. That day is coming sooner rather than later and it will be a revelation of biblical proportions.

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