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Finance and some understanding of the economy should be taught as a course, or perhaps those concepts should be taught as “application” in a math class. One is

Finance and some understanding of the economy should be taught as a course, or perhaps those concepts should be taught as “application” in a math class. One issue we have in the US is high school kids who take unfathomable amounts of student debt to land degrees that have little ROI. Of course that problem has lots of different dimensions, but one of the things we can do is teach kids how to think about money, savings, investing, and retirement.

jimmyvalmer 5y ago
And "finance for kids" somehow equips them for running the regression that estimates the expected value of college? Realize that the kinds of people for whom post secondary education is financially net negative are generally the ones who've never mastered basic math.
- tracer4201 5y ago
  I don’t have data to accept your generalization, and I think you’re arguing a strawman. Teaching kids financial literacy can help them make better informed choices, and for some of them, they might learn concepts like investing and planning for their future earlier in life as opposed to late.
  - jimmyvalmer 5y ago
    The strawman reared its empty head earlier regarding "financial literacy" (a vacuous notion) as a nostrum for pointless student debt. For whatever reason, you seem to think formalizing "buy low, sell high" and "keep your savings on the right side of zero" would somehow deter the general population from doing the opposite, rather than two things which would: learning a trade and mastering basic math.
    - tracer4201 5y ago
      > you seem to think formalizing "buy low, sell high" and "keep your savings on the right side of zero" would somehow deter the general population from doing the opposite I’d be happy to provide specifics on what I “think”, but I’m not sure if it would be a productive conversation. You keep responding in bad faith. No where did I write anything about buying low and selling high or “keeping your savings on the right side of zero”. I don’t even know what that means. Can you please show me where I wrote that? It seems like you’re against teaching children financial literacy, and you don’t actually care to listen or understand what it might even mean. Your definition is teaching kids “buy low, sell high” - you are confidently uninformed on the topic. In all seriousness, your behavior in jumping to conclusions about what the other person is saying and trying to tell them they’re wrong without even hearing them out — this is cyber bullying. I’m going to stop engaging with you here, full stop.

jimmyvalmer 5y ago

And "finance for kids" somehow equips them for running the regression that estimates the expected value of college? Realize that the kinds of people for whom post secondary education is financially net negative are generally the ones who've never mastered basic math.

tracer4201 5y ago
I don’t have data to accept your generalization, and I think you’re arguing a strawman. Teaching kids financial literacy can help them make better informed choices, and for some of them, they might learn concepts like investing and planning for their future earlier in life as opposed to late.
- jimmyvalmer 5y ago
  The strawman reared its empty head earlier regarding "financial literacy" (a vacuous notion) as a nostrum for pointless student debt. For whatever reason, you seem to think formalizing "buy low, sell high" and "keep your savings on the right side of zero" would somehow deter the general population from doing the opposite, rather than two things which would: learning a trade and mastering basic math.
  - tracer4201 5y ago
    > you seem to think formalizing "buy low, sell high" and "keep your savings on the right side of zero" would somehow deter the general population from doing the opposite I’d be happy to provide specifics on what I “think”, but I’m not sure if it would be a productive conversation. You keep responding in bad faith. No where did I write anything about buying low and selling high or “keeping your savings on the right side of zero”. I don’t even know what that means. Can you please show me where I wrote that? It seems like you’re against teaching children financial literacy, and you don’t actually care to listen or understand what it might even mean. Your definition is teaching kids “buy low, sell high” - you are confidently uninformed on the topic. In all seriousness, your behavior in jumping to conclusions about what the other person is saying and trying to tell them they’re wrong without even hearing them out — this is cyber bullying. I’m going to stop engaging with you here, full stop.