A Hellish Decision

Imagine St. Peter standing at the Gates of Heaven, assessing whether or not to admit those seeking entry. To some supplicants, he offers a look at hell, indicating that this is their final home. Imagine their delight when they see a place where everyone is partying. They happily tell St Peter that they’re just fine spending eternity there.

Instantly, St. Peter dispatches them to hell. To their dismay, they land in the midst of pitchforks and fire.

When I was told this story, the punchline was: “This is the difference between how a prospect and a customer are treated.” Hopefully it’s not the way any of you treat your customers…

You probably noticed that the leaders in Washington recently offered us a huge tax cut. To many of us, it looked pretty tantalizing. Now that it passed we see that it came along with a huge shortfall in revenues…also known as an increase in our deficit and thus our debt. To top it off, they just added a big, and unfunded, increase in spending.

According to the Pew Research Center, our estimated fiscal year 2018 debt is $21.09 trillion. Our gross domestic product, $19.93 trillion. 6.8% of federal outlays go to pay the estimated interest on the debt, $276 billion. Before the recent and almost certain continuing increase in interest rates on the debt. A hellish scenario indeed.

In my last missive, “The Measure of Leaders”, I wrote about how leaders are known by the decisions they make, meaning the results of those decisions. One day out from Presidents’ Day honoring the great decision makers George Washington and Abraham Lincoln, it’s interesting to ponder how history will look upon our current leaders and their decisions. After a review of these lousy deficit and debt numbers the picture doesn’t look so good for them…or us.

While the voters were sold a low tax vision of paradise, once the deal was done we the people aren’t being treated so well with our high deficit result. Meanwhile, these leaders strut around taking credit for the wonderful things they have done for us while being completely silent, or worse, disingenuous, about the negative future results of their decisions and the hell that awaits.

“The opportunist thinks of me and today.

The statesman thinks of us and tomorrow.”

Dwight Eisenhower