How people become voluntary slaves

Nothing new there; people has been voluntary slaves forever. Just look at individual and family credit card debt. Banks offer credit cards to college students for a reason. They give you just enough rope to become their slaves forever. Just look at the average credit card debt being carried by individuals in the US - why would government be any different, when the average person can't properly manage their own debt?
If I loan someone some money, I'm limited to charge them 10% max. (legally). How do credit card companies get away with 25+% interest rates?????? Thieves don't like competition!!! Remind me again how many bankers and/or mortgage brokers went to jail after all the Liar loans dumped into Freddy Mae and Fanny Mac that brought about the 2008 housing crisis??? I guess if you steal in a large enough scale. it's OK.....

 

Dead-beat corporations. Case in point: Toyota pledges to replace the pistons and (low-tension) rings they spec'd, if consumption exceeds one quart in 1100~1300 miles, within the first 60k miles. After that: go pound sand. Catch-22 clauses of that caliber don't come cheap.

Dead-beat is also the tongue-in-cheek expression credit card companies were using, for card holders who consistently paid their balance on time.

Car payments is something I've never even considered. I read a Canadian news article: a father (getting on) went with his daughter to buy a new vehicle. He had the cash, wanted to buy it outright, was not interested in buying on the installments. The dealership ended up threatening to call security if I recall correctly. At least it made the news.

 

Why don’t we teach basic personal economics in public schools?

 

I still remember noticing that change. When I started college, my parents figured it would be useful for me to get a credit card, and it was hard. Had to go to issuers and ask. Dad had to cosign it. They kept him on as cosigner all through my graduation and my first few years on my own. When they sent me the letter saying "congratulations, we took your dad off, it's all yours now" it felt like a rite of passage.

I was about a decade out of college before I spent much time on a campus again, and when I did I noticed the early days of fall had bank shills walking around in inflatable credit card costumes accosting the new undergrads. Ewww.

Also changed: when I was in college, if you walked into bank and opened a savings account it paid you 5¼ percent interest. Didn't have to ask about it, that's just what it paid. And the rate on that first credit card I had was somewhere around 15% if I remember right, so what I'd pay the bank to use their money was around three times what they'd pay me to use mine.

Time passes and the savings account you walk into the bank and open drops and drops to whatever, like, 0.05% nonsense you see today—a hundred times less—while credit card rates stay around the 15% ballpark or even up into the twenties. So now what you pay the bank for the use of their money is three hundred or more times what they'll pay you for the use of yours, which is the same exact shade of green.

"Sense of proportion" has been taking a beating over the decades.

 

And that’s with Liz Warren doing her best to protect us from the crooks

 

When I was in elementary school, the principal organized an excercise, we all got bank accounts at the one-and-only bank in townsite (beautiful building, long shut down, hosts yoga classes now), with an account book, learning how to make out deposit and withdrawal slips, write a cheque. Pretty much all gone the way of the dodo now, apart from very occasional cheques, but it was fun, and we did learn something, relevant at the time.

Tom Clancy's Debt of Honour tome had one or two paragraphs, about half-way through, that gave me a clue, as to what "money" is. Not that it stuck for long, but was enlightening.

I see he's got another one, never read it, called Executive Orders. Seems topical...

 

I'm glad it isn't just me. I recall in elementary school, it was part of home economics class. Also know as home making class that all the boys would make fun of and not pay attention. By junior high school, home economics still existed, but all the finance pieces was gutted out of it. They literally focused on how to cook, bake, and clean; not how to properly manage a household along with a budget...

IMHO; Our government wants us financially illiterate, otherwise consumer protection would be ALL up Wall Street's back side.....

 

Why don't we teach gun safety, and 'food safety' in school?

(Personally I would be happy if they just taught students to read, write, and maybe do some 8th grade math)



The Nation's Report Card

 

Why would you teach gun safety to people who won’t have a need for it?
Food safety should be at the processing level

 

That's a low bar, but I see your point....

Only star athletes used to get a cap & gown without learning the 3'R's in the past. Now EVERYONE does, so is that nondiscrimination and progress????? I don't know since there's also no accountability either..........

 

Easy.

Accidental shootings and accidental food poisoning deaths are non-zero.

People in poorer depth bands do not always eat out every night and so sometimes they have to prepare their own food.
ALSO, people of more humble economic means are also more likely to live in high crime areas and these might buy and keep a firearm in a home.
SO....
Perhaps a few classes on these subjects might save a life or two.

I grew up in a fairly conservative part of the country.
They used to ALSO think that kids did not need sex education in schools and fought pretty hard against THAT.

Lather.
Rinse.
Repeat.

 

Same reason they don't teach critical thinking. Makes the population easier to control.

The they have been dismantling that since it started.

 

@BiomedO1 : "Our government wants us financially illiterate" This was stated as a matter of truth and long standing. At some risk to this discussion, I mention that one aspect of promoting financial literacy is on hold:

What's going on at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau? | AP News

But its website persists:

The CFPB | Consumer Financial Protection Bureau
Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) | USAGov

"... after all the Liar loans dumped into Freddy Mae and Fanny Mac that brought about the 2008 housing crisis???"

CFPB was created in 2010 in response to that. Wish I could mention other favorable responses. It lasted 15 years and may rise again in future.

"... Liz Warren doing her best to protect us from the crooks" If that were her role as Senator, it began in 2012. No CFPB star for her

 

We like to complain about the deception, unfairness and injustice in society, but it has always been with us, no doubt for millions of years. It's the way that an intelligent social species evolves.

But nonetheless, I'd like to see us get over all that stuff, and just become much more altruistic and moral.

 

Utopian societies have been many, small, and short lived. There have been several essays written about reasons for failure. It may be an oversimplification that reasons boil down to laziness and intolerance of (different) others.

I remain optimistic that these, that might be considered inherited traits, can be overcome. I am not optimistic they can be overcome during my time remaining*. So it's on you, young ones.

Do not make statues of heroes of the past. Or don't overdo it Instead create a world that is entirely in itself a monument to having risen above laziness and intolerance.

* time remaining which one can never truly know. Not going gloomy on you, but I can read an actuarial table

 

That may or may not place you out in front of some of our dot.gov employees.....

https://www.msn.com/en-ie/money/technology/elon-musk-says-there-are-150-years-olds-collecting-social-security/vi-AA1yU8re

 

Elong will find, or claim to find lots of waste.
Nothing new under the sun.
Then the admin will claim trillions in savings.
At the end of four years we’ll see where the deficit and debt stand, although it wouldn’t surprise me if they cooked the books

 

NAW; he wouldn't do that!!! That's called S.O.P. (standard operating procedures) at Trump International. Which one you wanna see? The insurance coverage or the IRS income spreadsheets or the real one?????