Interesting comment about guns, made in 1953, by Dwight D Eisenhower..

[Bernardo de La Paz]

16. Your other point about long-term choices is good too. Closely related to Con's family perimeter

RepubliQons are tuned into the 90-day event horizon of quarterly reports because it is consistent with their main personal economic theory of "grab all you can get as fast as you can".

It is closely related to the Cons idea of in-groups trump all out-groups. Concentric circles of family then circles of religion and race and finally of "country" (but not of the "other" people who make up the country and to hell with the rest of the world).

It is fundamentally the scarcity view of economics and the zero-sum game view.

But it's worse.

By constantly grabbing the here-and-now they turn it into a negative sum game, a race to the bottom.

The progressive view is that by helping all people, everything positive is raised including the family wealth the Cons are so obsessively concerned with. Helping the PTSD vet on the street by providing housing and a basic income results in lower costs (less policing/healthcare) and higher revenues (more taxes paid because more people working and higher paid jobs come in). Everywhere it has been tried, as far as I know. Just one example, of course.