Where's the world coming to when not even economists grasp a concept like 'the longer term'?

The long run is a misleading guide to current affairs. In the long run we are all dead. Economists set themselves too easy, too useless a task if in tempestuous seasons they can only tell us that when the storm is past the ocean is flat again. -- John Maynard Keynes -- A Tract on Monetary Reform (1923) Ch. 3