Delaney Kerr - Reflections on Financial Literacy

            I had never been on a plane before this past August. It had always been too expensive, and I never had anywhere to be except at school, work, or home. But, my best friend had moved away to Las Vegas, so I decided to save some of my money and take a cheap flight to see her. I was so excited - Las Vegas seemed so exciting and new. I learned rather quickly, however, that Vegas is not all of the glitz and glamor it is often portrayed to be. Underneath the dazzling lights, parties, and energetic music, there is an air of deep despair. There is an underlying yet entirely palpable feeling of isolation and helplessness, as thousands of people spend hours a day, often in front of their children, wasting their money away gambling. 

            My trip to Las Vegas is just one of many examples of the failing United States economy. Capitalism, fundamentally, sets the vast majority of American citizens up to fail. The poorest citizens in the country are left with no resources. They are given schools with less funding than in wealthy areas, offered a lack of job opportunities, placed in food deserts, and more. With their poor education, working class citizens are then given no skills in how to handle their finances, to help escape poverty. That is, if they are even able to attend school, as many students drop out to provide for their families, or cannot start school without a permanent address. If working class people decide to work, rather than go to school, they are significantly less likely to get a job that pays well enough to maintain a prosperous lifestyle than those who attend school. These people will then have children, and those children will be stuck in an endless cycle of poverty: they will be born poor, stay poor, and have children who are born poor. 

            On the other hand, wealthy people are in the exact opposite situation. Upper class people are given strong educational foundations as children, as their high tax-bracket neighborhoods pay for their schools funding. Many will attend college, and will receive high paying jobs right out of university. These people will be given the proper knowledge on how to handle their money, how to invest and save, and how to pass down immense amounts of wealth to their children. Thus, wealth becomes generational, and as each new generation inherits large sums of money, the amount their children will receive snowballs. 

            This is all to emphasize one primary truth: financial literacy is, ironically, very expensive. People need to be educated and informed on financial topics if they are to be expected to know them, yet working class students are often not given these types of classes and courses in school. They obviously would not be able to pay for them anywhere else, and therefore become stagnant in their ability to make sound financial decisions. In contrast, wealthy people are born into a sound financial situation, and have the ability to increase their wealth through "[buying] every personal finance book and self help book...learning how to make a budget [using excel]...and hir[ing] coaches" (TED 2022). Financial literacy is also unbalanced in American school systems. Private schools, which, due to their high price tag, inherently have more wealthy students than public schools, are able to give their students more time for instruction on financial topics. Since private schools are not bound to state curricula, they are allowed to, as Kruse (2019) states, "devote thirty minutes twice a week" at all elementary and middle grade levels, to their financial literacy course work (p. 45). No public curriculum has anything this intensive in financial literacy for any grade level. In essence, the foundations of strong financial literacy are stripped from the people who need it most, and handed on a silver platter to those who already have all they will ever need. 

            I am lucky enough that although my family and I worked multiple jobs growing up, and still do, that I am able to attend college, which will hopefully set me up for a strong financial future. There are so many people in the world, even in the same city I attend school in, that will never be given that opportunity. As a society, America has failed these people. Financial literacy does not mean understanding how to manage your wealth. Financial literacy means understanding that one's socio-economic class is in turn the value of their life to the United States government. If a person is poor, America does not care about them. Attempting to start to build a financial plan is useless. It will not work. Until America does away with their capitalistic greed, or until it inevitably crumbles at the detriment of all citizens, no amount of financial literacy will help our working class escape financial ruin. The people in Las Vegas, just like the people in New York City, rural Appalachia, Flint Michigan, and everywhere else in the United States, will stay in their lonely pockets of poverty until true, systematic reconstruction takes place. 

Left: Cycle of Poverty Diagram

Right: Public vs. Private Education in Test Scores