Teenagers and money

[Tiassa]

I'm looking at a Merriam-Webster site hanging behind my current browser window. The ad banner at the top is from Visa.

"Teach your teen about responsible spending," the advert advises.

Where Joe Camel failed, Visa now takes over.

Introducing "Visa Buxx", the credit-card specifically designed to accommodate the needs of your teenage son or daughter.

I would like to note that this ties responsibility of growing up to money even more deeply than before. Being adopted, it's been a luxury to have a semi-angry mother shielding me from those notions that I, at age three, or eight, or thirteen, or ever, "owe" my parents financial support for their decision to raise children. I did feel angry for my friends whose every day was spent being reminded what a financial burden they are, and how they owe their parents their best efforts because of the financial cost of raising children.

Now it seems like we have one more way to mess kids up with money. I could be wrong, but hey, I'll figure that out shortly enough.

thanx,
Tiassa

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Whether God exists or does not exist, He has come to rank among the most sublime and useless truths.--Denis Diderot

 

[Oxygen]

There are plenty of ways to teach children about money, when to save and when to spend, without screwing up their credit histories before they're old enough to shave. My parents never taught me anything about the value of a dollar. I am in a financial grave now, but am digging myself out. I have promised myself that when I finally get around to having kids, I will teach them not to squander money, but not to stiff themselves on some of the pleasures of life, either. I plan to use this radical approach called responsible parenting.

 

[Tiassa]

Responsible parenting? Careful, I hear they lock you up for that one these days.

What I dislike about it is that credit cards are a way to make money from nothing, so to speak. If we accept that the cost of printing money cancels out in comparison to the cost of making credit cards .... I don't know, since we must spend money in order to obtain anything tangible in this world, I find it somewhat sinister to want to make money from the spending of money. The move toward a "cashless" society disturbs me in that sense. From that moment on, we'll be paying a private firm for the "privilege" of spending the "money" we earn with our time and labor.

Look at all these bank charges!
--Well, it costs money to maintain the system, and somebody has to pay for it.
I remember the day when you could just pull cash out of your pocket.
--But you had no bank record of spending the cash.
You didn't need a two-dollar record of spending the cash.
--The only people who don't want a record of their spending are criminals. The only people who have anything to fear are doing something wrong, anyway.

The "Honest" SmartCard Banker:

What do you do for a living?
--I make money.
I mean, how do you make money?
--I'm a SmartCard accountant. I skim off the top.

And now we're indoctrinating our children, so goes the argument. Not only is it a Visa for your kids, but it's hip with funky spellings just to be more appealing to the rebellious youth.

I don't know. I'm just whining, in the end. I thought it was kind of dumb, all things considered. It apparently isn't that people are dying from cigarettes, it's that tobacco was allegedly pitching to youth, whose judgement is not--by the working standard--trustworthy in such matters. Now we're fostering a cashless age, in which there will be a huge enterprise to be had making money simply by "allowing" someone to spend their wages. And we're going to reach out and tap that youth market, get them firmly behind the idea of interest rates and service charges and not having to carry that nasty, nasty cash in your pocket.

Albert O Hirschmann, in The Passions and the Interests cites a philosopher (whose name escapes me) who asks how something like commercial banking, which was reviled throughout much of history, became an honorable calling in the same way one aspired to be a cleric, a doctor, or otherwise.

Is there a Temple left for the modern-day moneylenders to defile?

thanx,
Tiassa

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Whether God exists or does not exist, He has come to rank among the most sublime and useless truths.--Denis Diderot