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, 2/7/09
• Links, 5/27/09
• Links, 9/27/09
• Links, 6/4/10

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