AIG Bonuses and Short-Term Thinking

There is a old wisdom that has been rising to the surface of American consciousness regarding the economic collapse of last year, which is that our crippled economy is the "long-term consequence of short-term thinking." I must say that I agree whole-heartedly, and I am glad that the notion of long-term investments in our government, our businesses, and our lives finally has fertile ground in which to grow.

Unfortunately, the American fetish for instant gratification is not yet dead-and-buried. Not only do we have those on the Right calling this the "Obama Recession" - after all, he's already had 60 days to fix a problem that was only 30 years in the making! - but we have an American public that is so outraged by the AIG bonuses that the House has already passed a tax bill that is little more than a "smart-bomb" for this small group of individuals - individuals who signed binding agreements with AIG in early 2008, long before any bailouts were even considered.

I understand the outrage, and of course we absolutely must address the kind of reckless, get paid-because-you're-rich-and-entitled mentality that drives these kinds of contract negotiations. However, we must also keep in mind that the reason why our entire economy has tanked is because nobody thought ahead to the unintended consequences of acting on our base desires, and if we now expect our highly-paid financial wizards to start paying attention to the long-term consequences of their actions, we must also hold ourselves to the same standard. We must temper our blood-lust with an eye for the long-term consequences of that righteous anger.

The alternative is to allow ourselves to be consumed by this anger, and thereby screw ourselves just as surely as these AIG "geniuses" have screwed us. Did anyone really think that as we focused our microscope on the inner workings of these bailed-out companies that we wouldn't find more and more examples of the kind of wrong-headed thinking that got us into this mess? Of course the whole thing is jacked, or else we wouldn't have had to bail them out in the first place!

And of course the bail-out itself is completely unfair. No one is denying that we shouldn't have to keep giving money to those who got rich off of bankrupting our economy. But the question is not whether or not it's fair, but whether we care about our ideal of fairness more than we care about our actual well-being.

If we continue with this witch-hunt mentality, we will surely make some major mistakes along the way. Remember in 2002-03, when America was still in shock over 9/11 and we thought it would be a good idea to invade Iraq? Six years later we are still paying for that mistake. Yes, we were lied to, but we were so scared and angry we didn't investigate that lie very thoroughly, did we? If we had done our due diligence we would have known that Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11, that Saddam Hussein was actually philosophically opposed to al-Qaeda, and that "preemptive war" is just a euphemism for unprovoked invasion.

In the case of AIG and bonuses, do we really want to go down the road of seizing people's assets just because we're angry? Do we want to make today's two most difficult jobs - President of the United States and Secretary of the Treasury - even harder, at the same time that these two people are working night and day to right the wrongs of those who came before them? Do we want to deny our own responsibility for buying into a system that rewards greed over productivity?

It's a bitter pill to swallow, but if we want our Wall Street execs to think less selfishly, we have to be willing to do the same. If this public outcry forces our government to react for the sole purpose of assuaging our anger and distracts them from focusing on what actually needs to be done, that could extend the recession. And if this recession lasts for even one extra day, that will cost our economy and regular, tax-paying citizens far more than the $165 million being paid out in AIG bonuses. So let's think before we react, and maybe then we won't perpetuate the same kind of short-sighted thinking that was inflicted upon us over all these years.