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'Industry, thrift, and self-control are not sought because they create wealth but because they create character.'
-Calvin Coolidge
Without wisdom, brilliance isn't enough. In our generation, work isn't a place you go, it's something that you do from any remote location in the world.
As long as you have internet access, you have the ability to perform and do work. Travelling and wealth accumulation is easier, but one of the largest barriers to personal finance and actually accumulating wealth is debt.
Debt is an efficient tool. It ensures access to other peoples’ raw materials and infrastructure on the cheapest possible terms. Dozens of countries must compete for shrinking export markets and can export only a limited range of products because of Northern protectionism and their lack of cash to invest in diversification. Market saturation ensues, reducing exporters’ income to a bare minimum while the North enjoys huge savings. The IMF cannot seem to understand that investing in … [a] healthy, well-fed, literate population … is the most intelligent economic choice a country can make.
— Susan George, A Fate Worse Than Debt, (New York: Grove Weidenfeld, 1990), pp. 143, 187, 235
When Coolidge presided over this union---a union that was increasingly indebted---Coolidge's administration never thought that their livelihoods could change so drastically.
The population was completely demoralized in the late 1920s.
The population was completely demoralized in the late 1920s.
The college and credit card bubbles are getting exponentially larger.
This is not all gloom and doom and pessimism, the glass may be half full, but there are costs and benefits to every transaction.
We must frame college as another financial transaction because just like the World Bank and International Monetary Fund have enslaved developing nations with debt, so too have the banks on Wall Street enslaved so many in this country with crippling student loan debt.
We must frame college as another financial transaction because just like the World Bank and International Monetary Fund have enslaved developing nations with debt, so too have the banks on Wall Street enslaved so many in this country with crippling student loan debt.
Economists have made comparisons between that era and this one because the periods are similar financially. The future is uncertain, one must air on the side of caution and remember that debt is not a tool for wealth-building.
Imagine investing the same amount of money that you put towards your liberal arts or law degree towards a small business?
Is all this student loan debt and credit card debt sustainable and/or necessary?
Our public schools should start teaching kids how to manage their allowances from the fifth grade until graduation, even those kids that do not receive an allowance, any monetary gifts these students receive will be better managed with a more thorough understanding of that money.
Imagine a country where each constituent had to take out a SBA loan (for an amount less than six-figures) after several years of instruction in personal finance?
The money would be managed relatively well and further, even if the constituent mismanaged the SBA loan the repercussions may not be as dramatic as taking on six-figures worth of student loan debt.
Daniel Karpantschof and many economic libertarians have reasoned that the expectations of a brighter future with a college degree are somewhat misplaced, especially if people use a degree as life avoidance and rack up huge amounts of debt without really thinking about the long-term consequences of their seemingly impulsive decisions.
To paraphrase Benjamin Franklin, “An investment in knowledge [might not] always pay the best interest,” but, “the only thing more expensive than education is ignorance.”
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