The problem with your (and many others) "short-term thinking" argument is that the assumed long-term consequences -- you wrote "crash everything" -- doesn't happen. We went from 2008 to now, 15 years, with corporate profits and stock prices zooming straight up. Even shutting down the globe was just a temporary blip. Highly aggressive corporate activity, massive expansion of economic inequality, yet the longest non-recessionary period in this country's history.
Been hearing "unsustainable" for a long time. I believed it wholeheartedly for a while. Sure, we will have recessions again, perhaps we're in one presently, but do you think the USA is going to somehow collapse? It will likely see a gradual decline in living standards, I agree, but you are overlooking how bad the 70s were economically, when the Baby Boomers were in their 20s and 30s.
That's the thing though, we shouldn't be seeing a decline in living standards. Technology, productivity, efficiency are all up dramatically. We just have an oligarchic ruling class sucking up all the difference.
I'm not claiming there will never be another downturn -- of course there will be -- but the fact that we just went through the longest non-recessionary period in this country's history, despite all the "short-termism" already indicates at least some flaws in the original hypothesis
I would question whether the measure we should be concerned with is "recession or not" - everything can be getting worse while simultaneously corporate profits are high. That's kind of by definition what short-term thinking gets you - cash in hand but ruined infrastructure and societal safety nets.
You can always find negative things if you go looking for them. The reason people care so much about "income inequality" rather than "poverty rates" is that poverty has declined dramatically around the globe. So doom-and-gloomers shifted the goalposts and ignore successful results.
You can't accuse corporate CEOs of short-term thinking and then use infrastructure and "societal safety nets" as the measurements -- CEOs are responsible for the success of their company, not of the well-being of an entire society, that's the government's job.
