Family Values and Government Administration

My parents demonstrated typical Asian immigrant frugality in raising me and my sister. At the time, I didn't appreciate the values that underpinned their financial choices; I just wondered why we skimped on so many things, especially when I observed my friends enjoying the fruits of their parents' splurges. I don't think I realized that we weren't poorer than my friends' families, though our standard of living might have been lower. Rather, in most cases, we were richer; we just chose to defer our spending of dollars by funneling them towards things like college and retirement savings. And now that I'm a head of household, I do the same things, and don't think twice about it.

I bring this up because the temptation in government administration is to literally mortgage the future for the present. Glitzy new projects are funded for the ribbon cutting opportunity, while unsexy infrastructure improvements are left for our children to deal with. Pensions are perenially underfunded -- who wants to put in our current workers' fair share of deferred salaries when we can let the next generation worry about that expense while we spend that money on stuff that will endear us with this generation's voters? Deal-making to woo the next big company or industry has completely taken over any thought toward overall improvements that would get the next big company or industry to choose to come to us on their own.

Family values are so seared into my head that while I understand the logic behind the aforementioned actions, they quite frankly drive me nuts. It's like watching a contractor do something to your house that might make it look good today but will guarantee a huge repair job down the road. Yes, it hurts like that. I only hope we can elect and support people who, while they are savvy enough to secure the votes they need in the short term to get in power and stay in power, have enough of a long-term commitment to their jurisdictions to make sound financial and administrative decisions. Politicians, in other words, who share my family values.