Tackling financial illiteracy

I read today’s news, that the Obama administration had “announced a new campaign to promote financial education for high school students nationwide,” with mixed reactions. On the one hand, it’s a no-brainer that students need a better understanding of financial issues, both to handle money wisely in their personal lives and to be well-informed voters when it comes to how their tax money is used. But is a new campaign pushed by our President the best way to accomplish that?

Looking for related news stories, I discovered that the President’s Advisory Council on Financial Literacy had made a number of recommendations last January (prior to Obama’s inauguration), including that “Schools should be required to teach financial education from kindergarten through 12th grade.” Wondering why it took so long to even start to implement these, I read another article which explained that the changeover in administrations was one barrier to faster progress (presumably that would have been the case regardless of who the outgoing and incoming Presidents were).

It also pointed to the difficulty in implementing any kind of nationwide educational requirements, because most curricular decisions are made locally. Furthermore, teachers are already struggling to fit current curricular requirements into their class schedules. How are they going to squeeze in one more?

Ideally financial literacy is not treated as a separate program but is integrated into other classes. I think several things I read did stress this point. But I can’t help wondering something that I didn’t see addressed in any of the articles I read – what are the reasons this isn’t happening already? If something as obviously needed as financial literacy hasn’t already been incorporated into classroom teaching, are there underlying problems that won’t be solved by simply adding a new program at the federal level?

Books: Liberty and Tyranny (continued)

[continued from yesterday's post]

One thing I liked about this book was that it discussed conservatism primarily in the abstract, citing examples more from history than current events. That way you can focus on the concepts themselves, without the emotional baggage the accompanies current manifestations of conservatism, either in personalities or programs. Discussions on worldmagblog so often become mired in specific details of what some well-known conservative or liberal did, or anecdotal evidence of the success or failure of some particular program.

Since no one is perfect and no one’s program is perfect, there will always be places to find fault, and somehow the faults of one’s political opponents always seem somewhat worse than those of people on the same side. Even when this is admitted, however, such fault still end up being used as evidence of the perversity of the opponents’ political views. This tendency is less pronounced when it comes to discussing history – though it’s hardly absent.

On the other hand, discussing conservatism in the abstract makes it hard to envision how it can be put into practice in the real world. And it paints a picture of the conservative as the paragon of moral clarity, while his opponent is a tyrant, the source of unmitigated evil. There may be people in the world who fit those two extremes, but most people are much more a mix of noble and ignoble thoughts and motives.

Who is this Statist, anyway? Levin explains right at the beginning that he will use the term Statist rather than Liberal, since Liberal should rightly mean broad-minded, and Levin considers today’s “liberals” to be the very opposite. They want to control people’s lives by government regulation that reaches into just about every aspect of people’s lives. What products you are able to buy, how you can use your money, how you can use your own property – these are just a few of the ways that your liberty is abridged by those who call themselves liberals. Therefore, Levin calls them Statists, to emphasize their use of government power.

While it is true that liberals generally favor regulation far more than do conservatives, I have trouble with the idea of assuming to know their motives. Levin says, “But it is the Statist’s purpose to make as many individuals as possible dependent on the government.” I have known quite a few liberals, and they are variously motivated by concern for the poor and oppressed, protection of the environment, or reaction against what they perceive as the moral code that conservatives seem to be attempting to impose on society. The result of their efforts may well be dependence on the government, but that does not mean it is their purpose. If Levin thinks that all or even most liberals are Statists in the full sense he describes, he is blinded by his own ideology.

Books: Liberty and Tyranny

My husband is enjoying being able to discuss politics with our older son, now that he is old enough to understand and take an interest in current issues and events. At his request, I checked this book (along with Ann Coulter’s latest book) out from the public library, for them to read and discuss. When they were done, he offered them to me to read. I wasn’t interested in Coulter’s book, from what I had heard about her and the excerpts our son had read aloud.

But I took a look at Mark Levine’s book and decided it was worth reading. I even kept it two days past the due date, when I discovered I couldn’t renew it because someone else put a hold on it, so I could finish the book. (Fortunately our library only charges a dime a day per book.) I’ve considered myself a conservative for a long time, but it’s a long time since I had seen someone articulate the conservative views clearly and succinctly without indulging in sarcasm and invective.

I do have some criticisms of the book, but for the most part I thought that Levin presented the main principles of conservatism well. At first I thought some statements were made without offering examples or corroboration, but once I got into the meat of the book, he provided examples and lots of footnotes. If I were to purchase the book, I would be able to do further research into some of the areas he discusses, using the sources noted in the notes at the end of the book.

I first came to hold a conservative position in college. I happened to turn 18 in 1980, right at the start of the presidential campaign (although that first semester I was studying at Word of Life Bible Institute, where no TV or radios were allowed and I paid little attention to the outside world (they kept us much too busy anyway). By the time Reagan emerged as the Republican candidate, I had decided to transfer from WOLBI to Cedarville College (now Cedarville University), and that fall I took a required course that included an introduction to both economics and political science.

I wasn’t certain just how the Bible supported free markets as clearly as our professor said, but everything he said about free markets and limited government made sense to me. When a straw poll taken that fall at the college showed over 90% support for Reagan among the student body, I was actually surprised it wasn’t higher. How could anyone listen to what they taught us about what the Republicans stood for and what the Democrats stood for, and not choose to vote for Reagan?

Bidding, bidding… sold!

I first discovered ebay well over a decade ago, when it was still relatively unknown. The clerk at a store had told me about it when I mentioned my husband’s interest in collectible chess sets. It was years before I actually made my first ebay purchase, but it was fun just to browse through the listings of all sorts of unusual items. Kind of like a giant flea market, but better organized so you could just look at the interesting stuff.

It was a few years more before we starting thinking about selling things on ebay ourselves. We’ve tried garage sales, before each big interstate move (from NJ to MI in 1998 and from MI to IL in 2004), and had very little success. Selling items on ebay would save us having to carry everything outside, only to have to carry most of it back in when it didn’t sell. It wouldn’t require sitting by the merchandise hour after hour, and it would attract people who actually had an interest in things we were selling instead of those who just happened to be in the neighborhood.

But it also required learning how to do it. We read through a set of instructions, and it looked doable but still daunting. We didn’t decide not to do it, but we didn’t decide to do it either, and the instructions vanished in the pile of paper and other junk that our desk attracts the way a garbage can attracts flies. The idea resurfaced during a period of unemployment, stalled in the complexities of categorizing and valuing the items to be sold, and was again swallowed in the sea of papers when a job offer alleviated the immediate need.

This summer, with the economy as a whole as depressed as our personal finances, determination overcame the barriers to becoming an ebay seller. This was helped significantly by a speech given in Toastmasters by a co-worker who has a store on ebay, and who described the entire process of getting started in a simple step-by-step Powerpoint presentation. Five days ago, I finally succeeded in listing my first two items.

For the past few days, I watched somewhat anxiously to see the first signs that anyone was even looking at my listings. Finally one showed that two people were watching it, and the next day the other one also. This evening (with only a few hours left in the auction), I finally saw bidding activity. Many buyers – as I have learned to do myself – waiting until near the end of the auction to place any bids.

A few minutes ago the auctions both ended, and I saw with pleasure that both items sold. The dollar amounts are small, but the satisfaction is significant. It really does work, and it’s a lot more efficient than setting up shop in the yard or the driveway. Soon I’ll have money coming into my bank account (via paypal), and then I will happily head to the post office to mail the items.

And at the next Toastmasters meeting, I’ll have to thank my co-worker for her part in getting me started.

Thinking about the news

When I first saw a weblog or two (before the word “blog” entered our society’s vocabulary), they didn’t interest me. True to the term “log,” they appeared much like diaries – brief accounts of what someone had done or thought about during the day. Unless you knew the person or were very familiar with his fields of interest, they were either hard to follow or boring (or both).

The WORLD Magazine announced they were started a blog (they defined the word first, for readers unfamiliar with it). They pointed out the important role bloggers had played in “Rathergate” and expressed a hope that Christian bloggers could have a significant impact as they discussed the news from a Christian perspective. I liked that idea, and started checking in often at worldmagblog.

It’s been very interesting, sometimes encouraging, sometimes frustrating (there are people who seem intent on misunderstanding what others say), and it has certainly increased my awareness of what’s in the news. But I’m not sure how far it actually gets in fostering serious discussion of the news from a Christian perspective.

Certainly it leads to lots of discussions of issues which are in the news. But there are certain hot topics that can be counted on to get a heated argument going (as there is hardly one “Christian” perspective on many issues – though some who comment there seem to be certain that theirs is the correct one), whether it was the central point of the news story or not – sometimes even if it wasn’t mentioned in the story, but only by another comment on the blog.

A matter of death or life

When we think about the economic downturn, most of us probably think in terms of job security, whether we can pay the bills, the effect on our savings for retirement, and the rapidly rising national debt. But until yesterday I had given little thought to its effect on the criminal justice system.

USA Today reports that several states have been considering abolishing the death penalty, primarily as a means to save money. Some proponents of the death penalty are quick to point out (see readers’ comments on this article) how much less it would cost to execute criminals right away than to keep them in prison for years or even decades. But it is the appeals process that costs so much money, and the recent examples of people exonerated based on DNA evidence show that the initial verdict is certainly not always right.

I remember when I first heard of the death penalty. I was in the living room, near the console radio, and I saw a headline about it. I don’t know if it was in 1972 when the Supreme Court invalidated death penalty statutes in 40 states, or in the following years as some states rewrote their laws, approved by the Supreme Court in 1976. I do remember that I was horrified at the thought.

Catholic Schools Week (Part 3)

[As I wrote at the conclusion of yesterday's post, this will be on school choice, rather than Catholic schools specifically. But it was reading about Catholic Schools Week at a Catholic education site that got me thinking about it - so here it is.]

School choice has been a hot-button topic for at least the past two decades (though the movement can be traced all the way back to a 1955 article published by Milton Friedman). I’ve heard it discussed mostly by evangelical Christians, often in the context of private Christian schools or homeschooling. I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised to discover that the Catholic Church also supports school choice, since Catholic parents face much the same issues in deciding whether to enroll their children in a public or faith-based school.

I wouldn’t think too many people would oppose school choice per se: that is, enrolling one’s children in a school that seems well-suited to their needs. (There are valid concerns that people would tend to self-segregate by race, religion, or socioeconomic status, but I don’t think this is a primary argument for those opposed to school choice in most cases.) The arguments arise over matters of cost and unintended consequences.

Even without considering private schools, there is disagreement about the extent to which parents with more money should be able to use that money to provide better schools for their children. People who can afford to buy a home in a wealthier school district want their higher property taxes to benefit the schools their own children attend. Other people argue that this isn’t fair to the children who live in poorer districts, and that it tends to perpetuate socioeconomic disparity because the poorer children get a poorer education and have less chance to get the better jobs.

Of course parents who can afford private school tuition are free to do so; the question is whether they should get any break on their taxes because they are saving the government the money it would have cost to educate their children. Or whether poorer parents should be able to use public funds to send their children to a school that includes religious education.

Will Atlas shrug?

I read Atlas Shrugged the summer of 1985, borrowed from a friend who had enjoyed it and thought I would also. I had never had any interest in business, and little enough in politics or the economy, and it was hard to imagine a novel that dealt so heavily in those matters being a riveting read. But it was.

The characters were not especially memorable. But the ideas were. I probably would have ended up working in “business” (primarily manufacturing companies) anyway, because that was where I found the intersection of my abilities and available jobs. I might even have gotten an MBA anyway. But it was in large part because of reading that book that I was convinced that by working in business I was contributing to the good of society, not simply making myself and stockholders rich (which was the view of business I had had previously).

I purchased my own copy of Atlas Shrugged a few years ago, but haven’t reread it yet. (It’s a very long book, and I don’t have the kind of free time I did the summer of 1985 when I had no husband or kids and only worked 6-hour days.) Occasionally the topic of Rand’s books will come up in a blog (Renaissance Guy is currently doing a set of posts on Objectivism), and I find it interesting to see how her books come across to other people.

What it hadn’t occurred to me to think of until tonight was the possible relevance of Atlas Shrugged to our current economic situation. I remembered well how the brilliant entrepreneurs had chosen to opt out of a society that didn’t appreciate them or let them enjoy the rewards of their work (profit). What I had forgotten was way government had gotten society into such a mess.

Meltdown

I don’t generally care for the idea of art that does something rather than just is. I’ve read about performance art, and concluded I had no interest in seeing it. But the idea behind Main Street Meltdown is clever, and makes its point effectively. (It isn’t actually performance art, since the artists’ bodies are not involved, but it is somewhat similar because it is about something happening over a period of time.) And ice sculpture is just plain cool (pun intended).

The nature of money

Of all the lessons I learned in the economics classes I took in my MBA program, one of the most helpful was to understand that most of the money that our economy runs on only exists on paper. (Actually, since most records are kept electronically now rather than on paper, most of the money only exists in digital ones and zeroes on computer disks and tapes.)

Money is, after all, simply a medium of exchange. Whether nuggets of gold, copper coins, salt (Roman soldiers used to be paid in salt, which is the origin of our word “salary”), paper currency, or a personal check, money is what one person is willing to take in exchange for goods or services. If enough people were willing to accept an IOU written on a napkin, it could function as money. The key is that it’s widely accepted, and that people have confidence that it will retain its value, so that they can later use it to purchase goods and services.

An AP article this weekend does a pretty good job of explaining this. “If you’re looking to track down your missing money – figure out who has it now, maybe ask to have it back – you might be disappointed to learn that is was never really money in the first place.” The author is using money in a more limited sense, of something that could be taken to the bank or the grocery store and deposited or exchanged for merchandise. But essentially I think he’s saying the same thing, that the wealth that has recently vanished never existed except as a paper or digital record saying that it did.