We’re in this mess because of a lack of long-term planning.
Do I mean the fiscal crisis facing this country or the health crisis?
Yes.
In a time where rapid money printing has gone hand-in-hand with a pandemic to bring the economy to a grinding halt, it seems like unified leadership is a pipe dream at best.
Instead, the people responsible for trying to get us through this are content to point fingers while trying to avoid having any of this come back on them.
It’s baffling, shortsighted behavior that will not only hurt the everyday person, but hurt the country as a whole in the long term.
Pick Your Side
On some level, politics has always been something of a team sport, but that seems to have truly ramped up in the past 10 years or so. It’s gone hand-in-hand with the rise of social media and 24-hour news pundits who are more infamous for their personalities than how good they are at their jobs.
And so it goes that in this new age of divisiveness, anyone with a degree of influence would do or say what they need to appeal to the people in their immediate sphere at the expense of everyone else.
It happens on both sides of the political spectrum. It happens everywhere from the nation’s capital, to news studios, to whatever your social media platform of choice is. This comes at the cost of working together as a country during the times when it really counts. We’ve seen that clearly since the spring.
Because the country’s leadership didn’t prepare when the whispers of a new, deadly disease began emerging, millions of people have gone without income and have little in the way of a safety net. Tens of thousands of businesses have shut down, some permanently, for the very same reasons.
Likewise, states were left fighting each other and relying on outside sources for critical supplies because those things weren’t already on hand.
At the national level, it seems like politicians rarely look past the next election, which means that the feeling of the moment often informs their decision making. It’s often led to cases where a short-term patch is put over a problem. Let the next person worry about it. It’s an issue for future generations to deal with.
Long-term policymaking doesn’t have the same appeal as quick fixes. Establishing a solid foundation now so that someone else can build on it in the future doesn’t benefit anyone today. Because of that, putting a plan in place to make sure the future is secure is something that seems to have fallen by the wayside.
But that’s leadership here in America in 2020. Sides are chosen and battle lines are drawn. Better to do what we can to slander the other side so we can feel better about ourselves. Don’t worry about what happens one, five, ten years from now. That isn’t our problem.
With the upcoming election being the most divisive, this way of thinking is only going to grow.
If nothing else, it illustrates that your future wellbeing is something that you need to take control of while general carelessness reigns.
Creating Your Own Long-Term Plan
The fiscal crisis the country currently faces, made worse by the ongoing pandemic, is another result of a lack of long-term planning. The idea, on the surface, was to print, print, and print some more and everything would somehow sort itself out.
For the majority of people, that’s just led to a hard-earned dollar doing less than it used to.
But it also caused another unintended consequence.
As the dollar crashes and burns, gold has seen a resurgence in its value that’s only going to continue to new highs. It’s increasingly being seen as the only real store of value that will be useful in the long term, and investors are taking notice of that fact.
The resurgence is in its early stages, so now is the best time to take advantage. Doing so will let you take control of your long-term financial planning at a time when very few people seem to care about that kind of thing.
The details on the best way to profit from this gold resurgence can be found here. The sooner you get in, the better the right kind of long-term planning will pay off.
