Rethink.

• Bar­bara Dafoe Whitehead’s exam­i­na­tion of how Amer­ica changed from a pro-thrift cul­ture to one in which preda­tory lenders laud them­selves as demo­c­ra­tic might be the most impor­tant arti­cle for my gen­er­a­tion. We have to take credit card loans out to pay col­lege tuition — the notion that we just spend too much money on friv­o­lity only is utterly pre­pos­ter­ous. The truth is we’ve cre­ated a cul­ture and insti­tu­tions where mas­sive amounts of debt and bank­rupt­ing peo­ple via usury are accept­able, and the gov­ern­ment does need to step in and stop this non­sense. She makes the case that it would be very hard to be thrifty even if you wanted to be; under­ly­ing her case — and I’d like some­one to find facts to confirm/refute this idea — I think is a gen­er­a­tional con­flict. Some of those who are older have the insti­tu­tions to enable them to save; preda­tory lend­ing might make their stocks more prof­itable (again, would like con­fir­ma­tion on this last notion). Those insti­tu­tions sim­ply don’t exist for me.
• It doesn’t mat­ter how you learn, as long as you do learn. Test­ing does help, in con­junc­tion with some solid but still gen­eral guide­lines for what you should know — the qual­i­fy­ing and com­pre­hen­sive exams at the Uni­ver­sity of Dal­las pushed me to take a lot of ideas I had lying around and be able to express and elab­o­rate them.

• Adden­dum to the “Recon­ceiv­ing Eco­nom­ics” Post
• Links to Friends, 8/27/08
• Links, 2/17
• Links, 3/16/2009
• Links, 1/2/2010

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