Taylor Dee Hawkins on Why people agree on the future more than the present, and what it means for governance

Taylor Dee Hawkins, founder of Foundations for Tomorrow, a nonprofit working on long-term governance reform, on why political polarization might have a surprisingly simple fix: ask people what they want for their communities in 50 years, and their answers start to look remarkably similar. But almost no political system is built to plan that long-term. Highlights:

• Why the problem with political leadership isn’t individual leaders, but the incentive structures and systems designed to reward short-term decisions at the expense of long-term ones
• Why naming political procrastination is the first step to solving it
• How Foundations of Tomorrow secured cross-party support in a polarized parliament by making the economic case for long-term policy rather than the moral one
• Why planning for the future doesn’t have to come at the expense of present generations
• Taylor’s advice for a young person who wants to get started in long-term policy, and what she has learned from years of being the youngest person in the room