Like common sense and physical fitness, deferring gratification seems to be something Americans appear to be better at on an individual level than on a collective level. On an individual basis we're know for excelling at working tireless hours all year long and saving up our money to eventually enjoy a nice vacation or retirement, but on a collective basis we're only on the level of stopgap spending bills to keep the government functioning for a few months1 and other actions that focus on keeping us comfortable in the now instead of in the future. Even though the immediate discomfort deferred gratification can cause when applied to national political issues can be formidable, at some point we're going to have to embrace it to some degree in order to ensure the US is put on a long-term path to prosperity.
The area that is perhaps most relevant here is education. You hear people all the time, from average citizens to Democratic and Republican politicians, saying how kids, teenagers, and college students are this nation's future, yet nothing is really being done to effectively help this future. In California, for example, even the brightest university students are struggling to develop themselves into what the country will undoubtedly need (and demand) due to the incompetence of those who run the universities and those who run the state. As long as the American people as a whole and their elected representatives can't keep the future in focus long enough to take steps to ensure its success, education will continue to be allowed to fall to the wayside as we concentrate on issues that will eventually become problematic without the insight of well-educated citizens.
Part of this problem could have to do with the age of the people who have the power to make the biggest impact on the nation's approach to education. With the average age of members of the House and Senate being in the mid-50s (with the oldest member being 89), there might not be a lot of motivation to do much for, say, 2030. Many politicians and bureaucrats won't be around for very long after that and trying to help make it a better place won't affect their futures too much. But it's not all their fault; the nation as a whole sucks at delaying gratification as well. If the people see their politicians making some (even necessary) sacrifices now to ensure a more prosperous future, they're going to get upset and yank them from their coveted offices. As important as enjoying and acting in the now may be, focusing exclusively on it is not going to do well by tomorrow and getting a country of 314 million to change its mindset is not an easy task. (And hopefully it won't take a disaster to do it.)
Even if steps to improve and promote education aren't taken, the US will likely still continue to move mediocrely forward into the future without much issue. The thing is, as I interpret it, part of the point of the United States is to constantly strive toward a better future for its people. Doing a lot more for education and the bright young people who will benefit from it and eventually lead the country will not require drastic actions and defer enough gratification as to throw the country into turmoil or severely restrict today's potential for prosperity, but it will likely require a bit of sacrifice.
There are millions of young people around the country, as young as kindergarten kids and as old as PhD students, who have the ingenuity to create innovative ideas that will make the US a prosperous place. If extra spending that will defy budgetary requirements is required to truly foster education, then that can be made up for by the fruits of such spending and sacrifice; the better educated who will have had a solid environment where they can intellectually and creatively flourish without worries and restrictions will very likely produce new and insightful ways of making the spending and functions of government unprecedentedly efficient and more than make up for what we might have to do to create a world-leading 21st century society. A countless number of fields, from medicine to transportation to entertainment, will benefit greatly from generations of people who are allowed to get the best education possible.
Funding for elementary, middle, and high schools as well as colleges and universities will have to be increased in order to achieve this and that might require a certain amount of cuts to other things that don't impact our future as much as education does (the amount of cuts will depend on how far over the budget politicians choose to let spending go). A huge part of this will be making post-high school education affordable. You'll often hear it said about health care that the system should be people only getting the care they can afford — in the US, people should get the best education that they're qualified for.2 With schools and colleges able to provide the best education they can and with students able to learn, flourish, and innovate without fear of having to pay off a boatload of debt, a future of improved efficiency, creativity, solutions to global problems, and intellectual achievements is not only possible, but inevitable. Again, this will require some sacrifice today: the very wealthy will likely need to pay higher taxes, corporations will lose their tax loopholes, and cuts might affect certain areas of the budget. Truly investing in and fostering education, however, will, as I've already said, more than make up for this and can actually create a cycle that will eliminate the need for making burdensome sacrifices for education: innovative and creative people will make more efficient ways to go about funding and running a whole host of things and will lessen the need for sacrificial cuts. All these benefits, though, will only happen if we take the time to truly recognize the importance of education and the positive impact it will have on the future by deferring gratification and giving it the proper treatment and attention it deserves.
One philosophy we often see with students of higher education is idealism and fostering this philosophy will be important in using education to create a prosperous future with fewer problems. Even though full-blown, starry-eyed idealism is not really practical for solving all of today's and tomorrow's problems, having a sizable amount of it is more important than many people would think. Idealism is the engine of progress — without it there is no substantial motivation to move forward and fix the problems we face. Any well educated student, however, should be endowed with enough realism to combine the two to markedly improve the country and help remedy the issues we combat in an innovative and practical way.3 Not being afraid to tackle any of the problems we face, believing that solutions are possible, and being allowed to combine properly-appreciated ingenuity with a society-fostered passion for innovative improvement will result in the progress we need and should have.
If one person can work tirelessly and put off deserved rewards for years so he or she can live prosperously later in life, the US as a whole should be able to make some small sacrifices here and there and defer gratification in order to produce a future that is prosperous and enjoyable for everyone. The way to make any kind of decent progress in this day and age is to have a well-educated pool of citizens ready to use its resourcefulness and creativity to craft an innovative, efficient, and better society and the only way to do this is to foster education and give it the proper attention and appreciation it deserves.
1 Even though it's politicians who, in this case, have difficulty imagining the country existing very far into the future (with the exception of the their reelections), we're the ones who put them in office.
2 Meaning, someone with who's smart enough to get into Harvard and gets accepted there shouldn't have to worry about drowning in debt to be able to live up to their intellectual and creative potential.
3 And if you're still worried about naïvely optimistic students, I'm sure there will always be more than enough realism (and cynicism) in the country to keep any "rampant" idealsim in check.
The area that is perhaps most relevant here is education. You hear people all the time, from average citizens to Democratic and Republican politicians, saying how kids, teenagers, and college students are this nation's future, yet nothing is really being done to effectively help this future. In California, for example, even the brightest university students are struggling to develop themselves into what the country will undoubtedly need (and demand) due to the incompetence of those who run the universities and those who run the state. As long as the American people as a whole and their elected representatives can't keep the future in focus long enough to take steps to ensure its success, education will continue to be allowed to fall to the wayside as we concentrate on issues that will eventually become problematic without the insight of well-educated citizens.
Part of this problem could have to do with the age of the people who have the power to make the biggest impact on the nation's approach to education. With the average age of members of the House and Senate being in the mid-50s (with the oldest member being 89), there might not be a lot of motivation to do much for, say, 2030. Many politicians and bureaucrats won't be around for very long after that and trying to help make it a better place won't affect their futures too much. But it's not all their fault; the nation as a whole sucks at delaying gratification as well. If the people see their politicians making some (even necessary) sacrifices now to ensure a more prosperous future, they're going to get upset and yank them from their coveted offices. As important as enjoying and acting in the now may be, focusing exclusively on it is not going to do well by tomorrow and getting a country of 314 million to change its mindset is not an easy task. (And hopefully it won't take a disaster to do it.)
Even if steps to improve and promote education aren't taken, the US will likely still continue to move mediocrely forward into the future without much issue. The thing is, as I interpret it, part of the point of the United States is to constantly strive toward a better future for its people. Doing a lot more for education and the bright young people who will benefit from it and eventually lead the country will not require drastic actions and defer enough gratification as to throw the country into turmoil or severely restrict today's potential for prosperity, but it will likely require a bit of sacrifice.
There are millions of young people around the country, as young as kindergarten kids and as old as PhD students, who have the ingenuity to create innovative ideas that will make the US a prosperous place. If extra spending that will defy budgetary requirements is required to truly foster education, then that can be made up for by the fruits of such spending and sacrifice; the better educated who will have had a solid environment where they can intellectually and creatively flourish without worries and restrictions will very likely produce new and insightful ways of making the spending and functions of government unprecedentedly efficient and more than make up for what we might have to do to create a world-leading 21st century society. A countless number of fields, from medicine to transportation to entertainment, will benefit greatly from generations of people who are allowed to get the best education possible.
Funding for elementary, middle, and high schools as well as colleges and universities will have to be increased in order to achieve this and that might require a certain amount of cuts to other things that don't impact our future as much as education does (the amount of cuts will depend on how far over the budget politicians choose to let spending go). A huge part of this will be making post-high school education affordable. You'll often hear it said about health care that the system should be people only getting the care they can afford — in the US, people should get the best education that they're qualified for.2 With schools and colleges able to provide the best education they can and with students able to learn, flourish, and innovate without fear of having to pay off a boatload of debt, a future of improved efficiency, creativity, solutions to global problems, and intellectual achievements is not only possible, but inevitable. Again, this will require some sacrifice today: the very wealthy will likely need to pay higher taxes, corporations will lose their tax loopholes, and cuts might affect certain areas of the budget. Truly investing in and fostering education, however, will, as I've already said, more than make up for this and can actually create a cycle that will eliminate the need for making burdensome sacrifices for education: innovative and creative people will make more efficient ways to go about funding and running a whole host of things and will lessen the need for sacrificial cuts. All these benefits, though, will only happen if we take the time to truly recognize the importance of education and the positive impact it will have on the future by deferring gratification and giving it the proper treatment and attention it deserves.
One philosophy we often see with students of higher education is idealism and fostering this philosophy will be important in using education to create a prosperous future with fewer problems. Even though full-blown, starry-eyed idealism is not really practical for solving all of today's and tomorrow's problems, having a sizable amount of it is more important than many people would think. Idealism is the engine of progress — without it there is no substantial motivation to move forward and fix the problems we face. Any well educated student, however, should be endowed with enough realism to combine the two to markedly improve the country and help remedy the issues we combat in an innovative and practical way.3 Not being afraid to tackle any of the problems we face, believing that solutions are possible, and being allowed to combine properly-appreciated ingenuity with a society-fostered passion for innovative improvement will result in the progress we need and should have.
If one person can work tirelessly and put off deserved rewards for years so he or she can live prosperously later in life, the US as a whole should be able to make some small sacrifices here and there and defer gratification in order to produce a future that is prosperous and enjoyable for everyone. The way to make any kind of decent progress in this day and age is to have a well-educated pool of citizens ready to use its resourcefulness and creativity to craft an innovative, efficient, and better society and the only way to do this is to foster education and give it the proper attention and appreciation it deserves.
1 Even though it's politicians who, in this case, have difficulty imagining the country existing very far into the future (with the exception of the their reelections), we're the ones who put them in office.
2 Meaning, someone with who's smart enough to get into Harvard and gets accepted there shouldn't have to worry about drowning in debt to be able to live up to their intellectual and creative potential.
3 And if you're still worried about naïvely optimistic students, I'm sure there will always be more than enough realism (and cynicism) in the country to keep any "rampant" idealsim in check.
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