Having taken the point of this post as it was intended, we can also recognize that learning how to manage your money is in fact always a good thing. Will basic hygiene undo generations of economics? No, but we certainly shouldn’t NOT teach young people to manage their money.
Nobody on earth has suggested we stop teaching economic literacy. We should however stop pretending it is sufficient. We require systemic change.
I wish I felt confident in that. But you can almost hear it right in this tweet. The mere suggestion of financial literacy is borderline offensive.
It’s similar to how the notion of reducing your personal environmental impact is actively shit upon these days. Say anything about it and someone will shout you down about how corporations pollute more.
It’s very similar: there are larger forces polluting the environment that make your personal behaviors insufficient to solve the problem.
All true.
But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do what you can personally.
I think there’s a suggestion we start teaching it. I’m 37, but there were idiots who didn’t understand credit cards when I was 18, and there’s just as many now, and there were just as many in 1995. I think this response thread here was meant to say yes, understanding the system is fucked, even if we come out on the other side with a functional economy, people still need to learn some personal responsibility when it comes to spending.
