[Neurons] 2013 "Neurons" --- Meta Reflections #46

[L. Michael Hall]

From: L. Michael Hall


Meta Reflections 2013  #46

Oct. 28, 2013


 

 

 

LEADERSHIP, WEALTH, 

AND HARD DECISIONS

 

 

One of the challenges of leadership is that sometimes leaders have to make
some very hard decisions.  A true leader sometimes has to make decisions
that will not be popular, decisions that will not increase one's approval,
decisions that might even trigger temper tantrums and outbursts, but
decisions that have to be made.  Decisions that someone has to "man up to"
and make.  That's why they are hard decisions.

 

For several years now many governments are facing some really hard choices
about finances- spending, taxing, accountability, etc.  Since the worldwide
financial crisis of 2008, several of the European countries (Greece, Spain,
etc.) have really struggled with this- with the threat of the entire country
going bankrupt.   Now the same challenge is beginning to show up in the
United States.

 

For several weeks leading up to October 1 and then up to Oct. 17, our media
gave us a front row seat to the "playing of politics" by our President and
Congress as each spent lots of time demonizing the each other and pointing
fingers as who is the real culprit about our financial problems.  The
"funny," but sad, thing in watching and listening to all of this, to the
political parties dancing around the issues, making their points, and
quoting their "talking points" over and over was that all the while they
were neglecting the big issue.  Yes, they eventually came to an agreement
and "kicked the can down the road," so we'll have to go through it again in
January, yet all the while they essentially ignored the 800 pound gorilla in
the room.

 

What is that 800 pound gorilla?  The fact that we are spending more than we
are making.  It is the problem of an addiction that our country has-an
addiction to impulsive and out-of-control spending.  This addiction has now
created a national debt of more than 17 trillion (see "Visualizing
Trillions" at the end).  And not only that, but we have the problem so bad
that our Congressmen and Senators alike constantly sneak "pork" into every
bill that Congress passes and that the President signs.  And why?  They put
in the pork to win the votes of certain political and interest groups.  This
is the "politics as usual" that's destroying our financial well-being.

 

While that is the basic or primary problem, there is the meta-problem.  This
is the problem of refusing to face the primary problem of over-spending.
The meta-problem is refusing to make the hard choices regarding what to cut
back on and how to bring the spending under control.  I hardly ever hear
anyone address that problem.  The problem is that except for the rare
exception-all of our leaders seem to be cowards about these problems.  Some
of them will at least talk about it, but then when it comes down to actually
doing something about it, the great majority are cowards.

 

All of us know that as individuals we cannot handle our finances in the same
way that governments are handling their national finances.  Who would even
be able to keep borrowing and borrowing, even borrowing money for
bread-and-butter expenses (food, shelter, transportation), and then borrow
so much that it is more than a person can make in an entire year or more
than all of their combined equity (or nationally, more than the whole
economy), and keep "kicking the can down the road" crossing-their fingers
and hoping that "it will work out"?

 

We all know better than that.  That's the fast track to bankruptcy and
dissolventcy.  Yet before we would ever get to that point, we would cut back
on spending, we would sell off things, we would be told that we have reached
our borrowing limit and can borrow no more.  Well, the President and
Congress has a borrowing limit called the Debt Limit.  But then every single
year, under both Republican and Democratic administrations, they vote to
raise it.  Now isn't that weird?  I think it is weird!  After all, what this
is the purpose of having a Debt Limit if it never limits your spending?  If
every time you get to the limit, you then raise the limit, what's the whole
point of a limit?

 

Individually, you and I know that wealth is squandered and wealth-creation
is undermined by an addictive spending pattern.  The same is true nationally
although that awareness does not seem to govern the thinking or action
patterns of the leaders in Washington.  Somehow they don't seem to think of
the financial responsibility that they have been given in the same way they
think when it comes to spending their own money.  In this, they are engaged
in a form of irresponsibility and are acting as if there's no consequences
to what they are doing.

 

The solution to all of this is obvious and easy-well easy to say.  It is an
differently matter to do.  It involves a change of behavior in our political
leaders.  It is going to require the development of new kinds of leaders.
On the personal front, to change your own finances requires a change in your
own self-leadership so that you think long-term, you think about
consequences, you assume responsibility, and you make some hard decisions.
Similarly with our political leaders- we need men and women who will stop
with the "politics as usual" and think beyond their own vested interests and
political parties.

 

Visualizing Trillions

Just how much is a trillion dollars?  If there was such a thing as a
thousand dollar bill and if you had a stack of thousand-dollar bills in your
hand- a million dollars would be only 4 inches high.

 

Now for a billion dollars, we have to multiple that handful of 4 inches for
a million by 1000 and then the stack would be 4000 inches high.  And 4000
inches is 333 feet or somewhere about 110 meters.  That's longer than a
football field!  But that's just for one billion.

 

To now go to a trillion, multiple the 100+ yards or meters (approximately)
by 1000 - and the stack is now 67 miles high.  And that's just one trillion.
The US debt today is over 17 trillion, so multiple it the 67 miles by 17 -
and now the stack is 1,139 miles high.

 

 

L. Michael Hall, Ph.D.

                Neuro-Semantics Executive Director 

                Neuro-Semantics International

P.O. Box 8

Clifton, CO. 81520 USA                             

                1 970-523-7877 

                Dr. Hall's email:
<mailto:meta at acsol.net\hich\af31506\dbch\af31505\loch\f31506> meta at acsol.net


     

    

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