[dragontamer]

* The 1800s of the USA were marked by a large, government program to invent pocket watches to solve the issue of trains crashing into each other.

* There were additional long-term government projects, such as ARPA's Network (aka: the internet).

* Strategic supercomputer initiatives as well.

* The debate over USA's social security is all measured in the year 2040 or later. People constantly use social security as an example of "short term thinking", but policies from the 1980s have been forward looking for at least the next 50 years.

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I dunno much about UK politics, but I imagine that similar forward looking projects and/or decisions / debates have occurred.

[onlyrealcuzzo]

Just because you demonstrated some long-term thinking in the future does not mean the US government was not short-sighted in the past.

I don't know if it it was or not, but a few counter-points is not proof.

I am sure you could find millions of counter-points that the US and the UK are currently long-term thinking (even though I think most of us can agree that isn't the subjective truth).

[dragontamer]

> I don't know if it it was or not, but a few counter-points is not proof.

Literally no one in politics thinks about purely short term issues actually. I *disagree* with my political opponents, but that's because my vision of the next 30 years is grossly different than their vision of the next 30 years.

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This isn't about "counter-examples". This is about you failing to provide even the first example of short-term thinking. What exactly is your "short term" problem that was messed up here?

Brexit, in particular, was never supposed to be a quick-and-easy process. I think it was an idiotic idea, but everyone knew it'd have short-term pain. You can call the UK Brexit crowd stupid perhaps for misreading the future. But they weren't thinking "short term" at all.

I've got criticisms of the Brexit crowd, and that has more to do with xenophobia, europ-phobia, self-centered thinking, etc. etc. But it doesn't actually have to do with "short term vs long term" thinking. If anything at all, the Brexit crowd was very forward looking (just wrong / incorrect about it, if anything, misjudging the short-term effects of Brexit's decision)

[klelatti]

Maybe some of the Brexit crowd was thinking about the long term but Johnson certainly wasn’t: he was thinking about his chances of getting into No 10.

[DiggyJohnson]

Politicians always are thinking about their next election. The issue of elected (I understand the PM appointment process by the way) shouldn’t be a revelation to anyone.

It still stands that these short cited representatives and officials champion policies that come from without, not within, their own scheming.