Just spotted an article on the Motley Fool about how teens are failing to adequately understand financial matters, according to a recent survey:
Bad news, iPod Nation: You’re failing finance. And this time, there’s no make-up course. That’s the conclusion of the Federal Reserve and the Jump$tart Coalition for Personal Financial Literacy. Every two years, the coalition surveys teens on a wide range of personal-finance topics, and this year’s results were, shall we say, less than reassuring. Participating high school seniors answered only 52.4% of questions correctly.
The article itself and the statistics they describe aren’t especially interesting. But I think in a larger sense it raises some good questions. Mainly, is lack of financial smarts in the upcoming generations actually a bad thing - if you’re a huge corporation managing these people’s finances, that is? Wouldn’t companies actually benefit from this lack of knowledge? Sort of like how car mechanics benefit from the fact that you don’t have the time, expertise or resources to fix your own car. I know the above article is presented as sort of an alarmist piece, but it strikes me that lots of companies are probably celebrating this news and capitalizing on it over the long run
- END -
ASSOCIATED CONTENT @TMBCHR (Auto-Generated)
- Financial Crisis Spam Attacks
- Archon Financial
- Novel Solutions For Economic Crisis
- Whither the Amero?
- Hawala & Islamic Prohibitions on Usury
8 Comments
“no-touch” credit cards are being pushed very hard by the CC companies, despite the certain increase in fraud they will bring with them, because the profits from the higher rate of CC use will outweigh the fraud loss.
If x is greater than y, then act. There will not be one human in charge in this transition from touch to no-touch cards. The technology called “corporation” is a complicated protocol for capital allocation which acts purely robotically. Humans are the computational substrate on which it is built, any or all of them may be replaced in the structure.
“I’m sure if the test was given 50 years ago the results would have been worse. I really believe that the human brain is evolving and the collective intelligence is going to increase. SO over 50% passing isn’ that bad.” Point
“Some humans evolved from apes, although I am sure a few evolved from other sources such as space sperm from planet Zilonio a planet in which all the aliens look like italian flags. I actually wonder is only some humans are evolving while others are devolving.” Counter-Point
which humans evolved from apes?
Of copurse business benefits- look at the multi-billion dollar credit card industry, the “borrow your paycheck” industry, the “buy a house you can’t afford” racket…it’s identured servitude for the poor and the ignorant..
It would be more disturbing if it were a survey of college students. The adage “A fool and his money are soon parted” is true, and let’s face it– when it comes to financial matters, most teenagers are rock-dumb.
Ever since Beatlemania, however, the spending power of the typical American teen is a gold mine for any number of institutions looking to get hormonal adolescents to plunk down their not-very-hard-earned dollars on whatever is cool at the time.
And of course, we all know what P.T. Barnum said about the birth rate of suckers. And he was an honest businessman, from what I know.
oooooooooooooold article. maybe today’s teens don’t know about finance because TEENS NEVER KNOW ABOUT FINANCE. you develop an understanding of that when you actually have to pay for things.
I know this is related to the thread but I want to respond to comment suggesting humans evolved from apes. There is a possible racism to suggets some humans evolved from apes while others evolved from more intelliegent beings.
“The modern field of paleoanthropology began with the discovery of ‘Neanderthal man’; and evidence of other ‘cave men’ in the 19th century. The idea that humans are similar to certain great apes had been obvious to people for some time, but the idea of the biological evolution of species in general was not legitimized until after Charles Darwin published On the Origin of Species in 1859. Though Darwin’s first book on evolution did not address the specific question of human evolution— “light will be thrown on the origin of man and his history,” was all Darwin wrote on the subject— the implications of evolutionary theory were clear to contemporary readers. . Darwin believed that Caucasians evolved from chimpanzees, that Africans evolved from the less intelligent yet stronger apes, and that Asians evolved from orangutangs. Even many of Darwin’s original supporters (such as Alfred Russel Wallace and Charles Lyell) balked at the idea that human beings could have evolved their apparently boundless mental capacities and moral sensibilities through natural selection.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_evolution
opps I meant to say not related