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> the only people whose point of view I care about are those who had been poor and found ways out of it. Those are the people who "figured it out" and I want pe
by jopsen 5y ago
> the only people whose point of view I care about are those who had been poor and found ways out of it. Those are the people who "figured it out" and I want people to know what they know.
Apologies for not being one such person. But doesn't this assume the libertarian (or conservative) view that financial wellness is a result of individual action?
As the article says at the end:
> Such curricula also tend to reinforce a libertarian view of financial wellness, based on individual rather than collective action — one where poverty and debt are less a societal problem and more a consequence of bad individual financial decisions.
Of course there is an individual component to it. But the most effective way to get people to save for retirement, is to make such savings the default configuration.
There's many subtle ways to configure society such that people make good financial choices.
Educating people to take action, seems a lot harder than just making sure your life has a sane default setup, if you do nothing :)
- xyzelement 5y agoI actually am not a big believer that people can be educated on something they don't want to be educated about so I am with you on that. So ln the surface your idea of a good default setup makes sense. But I am cynical about that working because I wouldn't trust anyone with the power to set the default, especially when the people they are setting the default for aren't able or interested to understand if it's done poorly or well.
- jopsen 5y ago> I wouldn't trust anyone with the power to set the default This is why Americans don't have health insurance by default :) In other countries these defaults are setup by union, politicians, NGOs, interest organizations, etc. I think you have a fair point though: you can't easily create trust -- nor can you easily build up a system of such defaults. It takes time. For example: In Denmark there is no legal requirement that your employer pays into a pension scheme. Yet, almost all employers do, negotiated through unions etc. And when you get a job the usually setup a default contribution from you too, which you can tweak/reduce if you want to -- most people never touch it.