"We are mortgaging our future"
About this Quote
"We are mortgaging our future" lands like a boardroom phrase with protest-march consequences. Joan Blades, best known as a civic-tech organizer with a business background, uses the language of finance to translate a sprawling, abstract problem into something even market-minded listeners can’t ignore: debt isn’t just a number, it’s a binding contract that narrows choice.
The intent is accusatory without being partisan-by-default. "We" spreads responsibility across voters, leaders, and institutions; it’s collective guilt framed as collective agency. "Mortgaging" is the key verb because it implies consent and short-term reward: you get cash now, but you sign away flexibility later. That’s the subtext: today’s comfort is being purchased with tomorrow’s constraint. It’s not merely "we will have problems"; it’s "we are actively trading away options."
Contextually, Blades tends to speak in the register of pragmatic civic engagement: make politics legible, make action doable. This line is designed to recruit. It borrows the moral weight of intergenerational fairness while staying in the familiar idiom of budgets and balance sheets, a rhetorical hack that collapses ideological distance. You don’t have to agree on the policy to agree that mortgaging your kids’ house is a bad deal.
It also smuggles in a critique of political incentives: leaders chase quarterly wins, not long-term resilience. The quote works because it reframes the debate from abstract "costs" to a concrete trade: who gets the benefit now, and who pays when the bill comes due.
The intent is accusatory without being partisan-by-default. "We" spreads responsibility across voters, leaders, and institutions; it’s collective guilt framed as collective agency. "Mortgaging" is the key verb because it implies consent and short-term reward: you get cash now, but you sign away flexibility later. That’s the subtext: today’s comfort is being purchased with tomorrow’s constraint. It’s not merely "we will have problems"; it’s "we are actively trading away options."
Contextually, Blades tends to speak in the register of pragmatic civic engagement: make politics legible, make action doable. This line is designed to recruit. It borrows the moral weight of intergenerational fairness while staying in the familiar idiom of budgets and balance sheets, a rhetorical hack that collapses ideological distance. You don’t have to agree on the policy to agree that mortgaging your kids’ house is a bad deal.
It also smuggles in a critique of political incentives: leaders chase quarterly wins, not long-term resilience. The quote works because it reframes the debate from abstract "costs" to a concrete trade: who gets the benefit now, and who pays when the bill comes due.
Quote Details
| Topic | Money |
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