Second, we prefer immediate results and quickly grow impatient. Keynes had it wrong. In the long run, we, or at least our descendants, are not dead. If we surrender to every urge today, we leave nothing for tomorrow. If we do not save, if we only borrow, if we dance too merrily tonight, tomorrow will be a very long and arduous day.
Societies prosper only when they think of a long run.
This is not to say that a society of misers will thrive. While the medieval obsession with a heavenly afterlife probably drained the energy to innovate and excel on earth, we in our century have exalted tonight as the chiliastic moment rather than tomorrow or the day after tomorrow. This may sound rather ethereal now, but our grandchildren who will inherit trillions of dollars in debt will feel a real and true sting. Economic happiness is not an explosion of wealth. The Industrial Revolution, the most dramatic economic event in the history of mankind, came at a rate of barely 5 percent per year.