From a set of surveys conducted by the Reserve Bank of Australia, they found that only twenty-five percent of respondents knew that higher interest rates would lower inflation. That means seventy-five percent did not know this. While the researchers found it alarming, I do not - because like it or not, the majority of people are idiots.
And before you protest that statement, remember that Australia (like many other places) has been going through a cost of living crisis on top of extremely appreciating house values where interest rates play a massive part in the repayments. This means that despite these factors, people still haven't done their own research to get even a modicum of understanding of the conditions that are affecting their daily lives.
What else would you call that kind of person?
Stupidity is on the rise, which is even more idiotic considering how easy it is to get information these days. It would make sense for people not to have a good understanding of these things if uneducated, but we don't live in the 1920s where information was hard to come by and generally theory required formal schooling. We live in a world where anyone has access to almost anything.
Perhaps that is the major problem.
Rather than spending our time gathering information and skills that benefit our daily life, we use it to avoid dealing with our daily life. We distract ourselves with information that doesn't help us, while we have just as much opportunity to spend our time on what does.
Idiotic.
The Reserve Bank says their job is made harder by idiotic people who don't understand what they are doing. I get it, idiotic people make my life harder also. However, since we live in a world where information is so easily available and easy to disperse, why do the governments do such a bad job of "educating" the public? If it is in the best interest of any particular country to have educated people who understand at least the basics of economics, why isn't it a compulsory subject at school, and why isn't the age of the internet, isn't education an ongoing process?
While I am not actually condoning that governments do this because governments are manipulative assholes at best, I do think that "learning" should be the one thing that we never stop doing throughout our lives. Well to be fair, we are always learning, but what we are learning now is obviously how to be increasingly idiotic.
Does your own idiocy help you in life?
I think that the lack of ongoing education that is being distributed for free to citizens is part of the proof that wellbeing is not very high on the government's agenda. If it was, we would have a lot of education that would help us improve our daily lives, eating habits, movement habits, money habits, social habits. Instead, we are left to our own devices which means, spending time staring at a screen that doesn't help us. If anything is an indicator that people are spending their time on the wrong things, it must be evidence that says they do not know what is causing what they claim to be one of their biggest concerns.
But seeing this, perhaps it is a good reminder for those who don't consider themselves idiots, to do a stocktake of our various situations, the conditions, and the influencing factors involved to ensure that at least some of us are staying up-to-date with what affects our daily lives. Maybe we could look at how much time we spend on frivolous activity and how much engaged with improvement processes. It doesn't sound like much fun perhaps, but neither does being a complete imbecile who is constantly suffering by choice.
We could all go back to school daily.
Or stay idiots forever.
Taraz
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First of all, I completely agree with your statement that majority of people are not very smart. That is why Democracy doesn't work very well and people keep electing populist leaders that are obviously peddling snake oil or complete BS to put it mildly. Like elect me and you will be winning so much that you will be tired of winning :)
And I don't think the main problem is that it is not very high on government agenda to educate people, the problem is that educating people is hard, you cannot make someone learn about interest rates and understand it if they don't want to. Plus educating the population means spending money for government, given it is a hard thing to do due to people not wanting to learn there are much better uses for the money...
For sure. And the longer it runs, the worse it gets - we are seeing it now. It might have been different in a world where everyone was an owner and had real skills. Now, most are renters and reliant on others for everything. It changes the political position a lot.
I don't think the government cares at all about people tbh. However, they aren't the ones that should be teaching people either. My main point is, why won't people learn about their causes of suffering?
Omg yes the idiots that fall for propaganda, and now it's worse as bots van be bought to influence the idiots on Facebook that cant see they are being manipulated.
I always thought that we are lacking financial education, myself included. While in my school times nobody even cared about that, the new generations have a chance for someone to do something about it. The financial world, with both stocks, crypto and tokenization cannot be ignored anymore.
Yeah, it is crazy. I took economics at highschool for my final year and there was about 10 people in the class only. I also took it at uni. Not that I know a lot, but the basics are okay.
btw, I thought I was following you but wasn't, I am now :)
I think a lot of people probably figure it is a lot more complex than they realize and so they just kind of accept it. I've personally got more important stuff going on in my life than ruminating on how interest rates are correlated to inflation. Now I know though.
But, if you were heavily concerned about rising prices and the cost of your house repayments, wouldn't you Google what interest rates do? It takes about 17 seconds to understand.
Probably, but for me they were two totally separate unrelated things. Maybe it's just that I have been locked into my mortgage rate for the past ten years so I don't really pay attention, but I know it is better than what is available now.
Yeah, I think a lot of people aren't in that position in Australia, so they should really look a bit harder. But I reckon it also goes with most things, even those that are not money related. For instance, many people seem to struggle in relationships, but what do they actually learn about it?
That is a good point. We are quite dense with a lot of things.
I think school should be much more than learning facts and passing exams.
Some of the most valuable lessons come from the experiences, friendships, and challenges we encounter throughout our educational journey.
Correct. Which is another part of the reason that we aren't learning what we need to learn - we have become isolated behind a screen.
I remember that no so long ago( still probably like a few years) our utility bills were less than 100 eur. I remember those days with a bit of nostalgia because the last time I paid for utility bills the total was around 120(?)...
Also I don't remember most of my dreams but I know that sometimes I dream that I am doing some assignment for school. Weird because I have not been in school in a looong time. So I find those dreams a bit annoying. Even if I don't recall any other details about them...😛
Everything has gone up significantly. Here, it has been pretty crazy. At some point, I will have to sell a kidney or something to get groceries.
What I find interesting that while things are expensive everywhere some places are just trying to rob us in the daylight. In the place where I bought wooden briquettes last few years one pallet now cost 400. In another shop 1 pallet cost 270eur. I don't understand how first shop justifies such difference...
These days we have access to so much information, but many of us spend more time on entertainment than learning things that can improve our daily lives. Even knowing a little about money or interest rates can help us make better decisions.
Unfortunately, just like eating healthy, most people would rather be entertained than learn what they can do to make their lives better.
You made a valid point. Information is everywhere today yet many of us spend more time consuming distraction than learning what could actually improve our lives.
If you were honest with yourself, how much time do you spend learning compared to being entertained?
Honestly not regularly though.
Spot on. It’s wild how disconnected people can be from basic economic principles, especially when those very factors dictate their monthly mortgage repayments and daily living costs. Financial literacy desperately needs to be prioritized in basic education.
Yes. But it won't be. So people will have to do it themselves, but aren't.
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STOPI read rpghorrorstories on Reddit on occasion and this morning the two that stuck out to me were a comment where someone was trying to introduce a new player to a game and eventually didn't add them to the group because the new player apparently "couldn't bring themselves" to read a 30 page booklet with the basic ruleset in it. Another one was a root post where the author was describing a new player who wanted to run a game but claimed they had played DnD before, the group gave them access to their 5e rulebooks and the new player apparently went off at them for "printing custom books" and "making up fake rules" (because producing official books is cheap and easy to do I guess?) and it eventually turned out that they'd played "DnD" on some Roblox server.
Both of those things was an extremely easy fix.
I do think schools are the problem for the majority of people though. If your learning style matches a school environment, you're going to thrive and everything will be amazing. If you're not (and it seems that most people aren't), a lot of what you at least subconsciously get out of it is that learning is a tedious chore that you're ecstatic to be "done" with once you finally escape that hellhole and then you go about actively avoiding any "learning" that bears even the most passing resemblance to "schoolwork" for the rest of your life because it's now got terrible associations.
I remember economics being a subject in high school that I didn't take because it sounded mind numbingly boring x_x
Part of the problem is that we value sports more than anything, and have no respect for education.
I'm just glad I don't have a mortgage as inflation is absolutely killing people here, even us - we never used to notice much but now the sting is real. You should see the queue outside the local food charity when it opens. It saves us at least $50 a week which used to be small change for us but now is not.
And diesel is now $2.33 a litre again... Ffs