Financial Goals: Graduation

College admissions offices make it a point to harp on the increasing numbers of applicants. Enrollment may be steadily rising, but the percentage of graduates has not.

It is the issue of graduation that stands in the way of the financial education, because so many college students do not graduate. Kids work more hours, attend school part-time, and sometimes- eventually not at all because their lives become consumed with, well, life. Relationships and jobs and children and mortgages move to the forefront, and college graduation becomes less important.  This lack of graduates leaves the world with fewer trained workers for more high-skill jobs, and dwindling incomes.

Allegedly, the best way to prepare the US against another 2008 financial crisis is through education. I mean the kind that involves money management, although simply graduating college ensures a sort of “experience and learning ability” that allows students to manage their money.

Institutions were mostly to blame for the recent “financial mayhem” but it was the adults who bought unaffordable mortgages and dug themselves further into debt.  At the moment, countries everywhere are trying to figure out how to educate school age children about money so that in their adult lives, they will have been given the tools to manage their money, and will avoid another financial crisis.

http://moneyland.time.com/2011/09/28/simply-finishing-college-offers-the-best-chance-to-gain-financial-education/?iid=pf-main-lede

Cash or Charge. Actually, that iPhone will do.

We keep hoards of information on our electronic devices. Bank statements. Work samples. Financial spreadsheets. Access to our credit card and email information. Even our culture is present on our smartphone, tablet, e-reader, and/or laptop. We store our libraries, movies, home videos, pictures and documents. Never mind just our contact lists, we have the majority of our lives on the “cloud”.

McAfee recently estimated the cost of our digital lives to be about $55,000. That value is only going to increase. It has become almost frighteningly easy to upload personal data onto digital devices. Not only are they used like desktops, but today’s smartphones are more powerful than the computer that sent Apollo 11 to the moon. They are also less often equipped with security and are highly vulnerable to malware and identity theft since they are used in more places on more networks. And people care very much for the newest Apps, which can offer easy access for hackers.

I know I’m focused on economics, but I think a large part of business is now deeply rooted in technology and in the ways it affects our markets. Attaching a number to our digital lives is like attaching a number to the lives we lead on the Internet and whether or not there are laws that govern the access of our private lives.  Going back to our previous discussion, Google could control the world.  Yahoo can actually delete people’s emails.

McAfee conducted the survey- and they’re offering a protection plan for just the sort of vulnerability they’re describing.  McAfee All Access ($99.99) is designed specifically against malware and viruses for all your Internet-connected devices.  It appears that our $55,000 is online someplace, and it now requires its own insurance.

http://www.dailyfinance.com/2011/09/28/your-digital-life-its-worth-nearly-55-000-and-its-at-risk/ 

True Enough

Especially considering our Google/1984 discussion, I am particularly interested in the paradox of technology and globalization. The world has been rendered so small, but at the same time- there no longer seems to be one, single reality. We live in a society that allows us to pick and choose our news, unlike Winston’s 1984, and we are governed by different passions to pass along news to others, or what information we want to digest ourselves. We have the capability to choose what reality we want to subject ourselves to.

I am particularly intrigued by True Enough’s concept of American niches, and why we look for what we look for, especially online, and whether or not we find anything. There’s a huge amount of reality readily available on the Internet, but there is no way to be aware of all of it, or even recognize all of it (or any of it) as truth.

1984

The Party has made it possible for Winston to be homesick for a place that does not exist. It exists solely in his memory. The Party can deny that things have ever existed because of its concept of “doublethink.”

            The Party’s use of doublethink enables Winston both to question that incidents in his memory ever happened, and also to assure him that they did happen. Both realities are not at odds with each other because the Party has made them the same object; they are products of the same thought process. The Party uses doublethink to keep themselves in power. It matters little if its bloodlines die off, because its ideology will not cease. They understand that memory is knowledge, and have attacked public’s memory to become in charge of the past. Controlling memory in that fashion allows them to remain in control as long as the present has always been the past. The past is constantly changing because the past has to be consistent with the present.  The continuous alteration of the past is the only standard of comparison, and is thus tolerated. The Party’s infallibility rests solely on the alteration of the past. Memory is questionable, and the past is alterable, but neither is ever fully distinct from the other.  Similarly paradoxical realities exist in the Party’s use of “blackwhite”,  meaning the ability to “believe that black is white, and more, to know that black is white, and to forget that one has ever believed the contrary” (218). 

Written records can, as Orwell explains, be tampered with. Only through memory, then, can the past be remembered. This seems ridiculous. Of course memory is required to remember things. However, the Party is able to question even such given facts. Its mere social climate regulates crimes punishable by death that are not even illegal. Nothing is legal or illegal because there are no laws. Government does not exist here, but that is to say the so-called “nongovernment” is somehow still fully serviceable.  The lack of government present nevertheless is capable of asserting that reality is nothing but “inside the skull” (274).  So-called “external reality” does not exist, because the mind is the source of all power. Only in the mind, in the consciousness of humans, can the past exist, because only in the mind can anything exist. Contrary to Winston, however, I believe that the “immoral collective brain” (287) must be in the right, even though there is no external standard. It is by holding onto the individual thought, the idea that my single mind makes a difference, because my mind is my reality, that makes me human, that makes my reality real. Nothing can be real without a reference point. So, then, my reality is real because it is real to me. That is all the checking necessary. I have a past that exists because I can remember it. I remember that I am alive, and thus legitimize my reality.  

Economics

On Tuesday, Congressional Budget Office Director Douglas Elmendorf delivered a message to the new congressional debt committee. He preached that the economy would slow down if spending was cut and taxes were raised. The committee is now working to restore the American budget and slash the current deficits. The committee is stressed to exceed its target cutting of $1.5 trillion over the next ten years, because even that large a reduction will still not prevent the country’s debt from exceeding the GDP. 

Elmendorf said the “most effective” approach would be to change taxes and spending to create a larger deficit for today. However, it would be narrowed later in the decade. The issue of timing is crucial. Any abrupt action involving raising taxes or cutting spending has been dissuaded by many economists as it could hurt the already struggling American market. Short term bets, then, would do better boosting the economy, even if they initially add to deficits, coupled with a long-term strategy. Republicans on the panel only want cuts in spending.  Republicans refused to consider new taxes; Democrats refused cuts to Medicare without new revenue included in the deal.

But a failure to produce an agreement in the panel would results in automatic budget cuts in 2013, split between Defense and non-Defense spending., and both parties wish to avoid that.

Lawmakers are cautioned that the future of the country’s budget will look much different than its past.  “Attaining a sustainable budget for the federal government will require the US to deviate from the policies of the last 40 years.”

I’ve been speaking mostly about the state of the economy in the future, but jobs are generally at the front of people’s minds because they are the constant struggle. The congressional debt committee has not moved to pick up Obama’s new jobs bill, and in the face of GOP opposition is not likely to do so. Lawmakers of both parties agree that economic growth will help to fix the record deficits in the nation even if they strongly oppose on ways to go about fixing American employment.

The big question here is what role people want government to play in their economy and in their society. What I’m most interested in is the relationship people have with news of the economy and how that affects their own finances and their own viewpoints on the American market.  

Finance/Economics

I plan to gather most of my information and news in the public sphere from The New York times economy and market sections, BBC’s US page, the Financial Times’ US section, The Washington Post’s Economy section and Real Clear Politics’ Economy and Market section. The only kind of math I like involves dollar signs, so I will definitely be more focused on how everything affects the population and how the political climate, etc. is contributing to the issues at hand.