I feel like there needs to be a financial literacy class in school that includes a unit on scams with many examples of how you can be scammed.
I never tried planning out a curriculum, but I think in addition recognizing scams, people should also be aware of options they can request/demand that would protect themselves, things a legitimate partner would agree to but scammers would refuse. For example, putting funds in escrow, or "Oh, you work at the Important Institution? Please tell me your office-extension and I'll call you back through their official phone number."
Other gaps that I would want to address if I were the Czar of Education include:
1. Debts, compounding, how bankruptcy works.
2. How contracts work, and what they don't do even if you've seen it in fiction.
3. Some basic tax stuff. (I've met adults-with-children who still think things like "I can't accept that raise, it'll put me into a higher tax bracket.")
4. What people can or can't usually sue each other for.
If talking purely about taxes and income without anything else in the context, you are correct. However, sometimes the logic you describe makes sense when it comes to government benefits.
Totally made-up example: imagine the government gives some sort of a benefit/assistance to people in certain circumstances (e.g., heavily subsidized childcare), but only if they are below a specific tax bracket, and if you cross that threshold, the benefit eligibility is gone entirely. So even though you technically still made more post-tax income if you crossed into that bracket, you might have lost more overall than you gained due to not getting that benefit/assistance (the one that requires you to be below a certain tax bracket) anymore.
0. https://www.consumerfinance.gov/paying-for-college/student-l...
For example, a former-worker, a software engineer in the Seattle area making way above welfare-levels. Perhaps he had always let his scientist-wife handle the finances before, I dunno.
Oh, absolutely. There are tons and tons of adults who don’t understand the concept of marginal tax rates and how those actually work, so they truly believe that getting into the next tax bracket makes the entire pre-tax income gets taxed at that rate.
https://danbarber-12163.medium.com/defanging-authoritarianis...
This also reminds me of an interesting alternatvie high school in Russia I read about here on HN years ago:
https://www.euronews.com/2012/03/02/spotlight-on-russia
The New Humanitarian School in Moscow was one of the first private schools to open in Russia after the end of the Soviet era, and its teaching is radically different.
Vasily Bogin, the head teacher and founder of the New Humanitarian School, said: “We educate children in a broad sense. The education we give them includes developing their personal potential. A smart villain is worse than a stupid one. So it is primordial to make a good person first, and then a clever one.”
Lessons include “anti-manipulation classes” – interpreting hidden messages in the media. The aim is to make each child capable of independent thought.
2023 NYS Legislative Agenda: Require a personal financial literacy course in State high schools February 13, 2023
The City Bar supports legislation to require successful completion of a personal financial literacy course for all New York State high school students in order to graduate from high school in the state. Such a course should include, among other topics, instruction in automobile, homeowner/renters, health and life insurance, banking, borrowing, credit, and responsible retirement investing. Only a few of these topics are consistently taught in New York despite the fact they provide essential education needed in order to be productive individuals in a complex world. Without a required, separate course in personal financial literacy, virtually no high school graduates in New York will know, for example, that a standard homeowners insurance policy will not cover damage from flooding, or that a standard auto policy will not cover them if they have an accident while driving for Uber, or how to improve their credit score, or how to prudently borrow for college, or how to economically purchase or lease a car, or how to profitably save for retirement. Many internet-based educational tools already exist to comprehensively teach financial literacy, so it should not be onerous or expensive for educational leaders and stakeholders to vet and implement a personal financial literacy curriculum. We believe that as lawyers we have a responsibility to promote greater understanding by consumers of financial services, which a panoply of federal and state laws extensively regulate.
The problem is that what you think of a "scam" is in a category of actions that businesses we consider legitimate use and those people have lobbying power over the state, which controls education. This isn't very different than how people are preyed upon by credit agencies, free trials, variable interest, etc which make up a good part of our business ecosystem. Essentially capitalist systems are about finding potential victims, and well, victimizing them.
Education programs like this are often criticized as liberal or "communist." What school administrator with a solid job and cushy state pension is going to risk the ire of the ruling monied class to potentially lose those things?
The people wondering why this and things like socialized medicine or minimum wage hikes are "taking so long" are really missing the forest for the trees here. These capitalist systems are ultimately anti-consumer and have narrow allowable cases for what is to be taught in state education. The US more so than most Western ones as it never developed a strong socialize tradition that lasted and its politics long captured by the "low regulation" monied class.
Look at the top reply to your comment, its someone saying "Well, if I was made czar of education, I'd do this and that!" If you said you were going to do those things, you'd never be made czar of education! A bit like if you said during a jury trial "I believe in jury nullification over non-violent crimes used against vulnerable populations often victimized by police dishonesty and brutality and caused by systems of oppression, poverty, racism etc," you'd never be made a juror. Anyone wanting to nullify, say non-violent drug offender charges in poor neighborhoods, will never be allowed to do so.
Nah, that's only specific countries that do so. America, and maybe... hmmm... that's it?
Plenty of other capitalist places exist, which have no problem with educating consumers.