We Need More Tom Steyers
The front page of today’s New York Times’ Business Day today made my day when I read about Tom Steyer’s new nonprofit, The Center for the Next Generation, which “aims to be a loud voice in major public policy debates.”
Among Mr. Steyer’s many points was one that really stood out to me:
“Politics push elected officials to consider the short term in their decision making,” Tom Steyer said. “We think someone needs to be talking about what we as a society want for the future and the investments we need to make to get there.”
I’ve often thought the same about quarterly financial reporting in business. The need to show investors great numbers every quarter to protect stock prices inevitably leads to short-term decision making that can very often be bad decision making for further down the road. The British system, I know from having worked for London-traded corporations, calls for half-yearly reporting, doubling the time available to make something good happen. But it still stunts long-term investments that could make a company brilliant 5 or 10 years later.
Jim Steyer, Tom’s brother and partner in the creation of this new nonprofit, called out an example of the problem:
“We’ve spent hundreds of billions of dollars on war over the last 10 years at the same time we’ve been spending less and less on kids. That’s fiscally insane and morally bankrupt, but no one is talking about it.”
I can’t wait to see what the Center for the Next Generation does. Thank you so much, brothers Steyer.
