Re: Book report: The Two-Income Trap
... and on many occasions I felt like throwing the book across the room.
I'm going to stay out of your library's reading room!
The book evoked a strong emotional reaction for me, too, but I wonder if the authors were trying to avoid that. I'm no shill for the Warrens but I think they're much more likely to be implemented by society than by your approach.
I think they've decided that the solution should involve campaigning for various govt/corporate controls. Yes, people have to be personally responsible, but I think the Warrens are trying to help blissfully-ignorant readers to avoid minefields that they may not recognize no matter how responsible they think they are. As every parent has learned, an audience can't be educated by shaking a warning finger at them. Warrens are analyzing the "logic" that the bankruptcy filers have used and then they're framing solutions that are likely to be applied by those who've used that flawed logic. They're not trying to change the way that people "think", only the practices that exploit the people's response.
There's a lot that needs saying about public education and the corporate financial industry. Both are motivated by the highly attractive profits gained from exploiting their customers' emotional reactions. If the organizations are providing a public service, then they're doing a bad job of it. Others with a "strictly business" or a "what's best for the customer" approach are also failing. Just as the electric company and the waterworks are regulated by govt legislation, perhaps the "fix" for rising personal bankruptcies involves legislation targeting education & financial organizations instead of passing harsher bankruptcy laws aimed at the "customers". I'm not saying that the bankruptcy legislation that just passed is all bad, but I am saying that the education & financial organizations need fixing far more than 1.5 million people.
Yes, we should all be responsible. Yes, we should all save our money. Yes, we should all spend it on assets that have value and perhaps we should negotiate the price to enhance that value. We shouldn't waste our money on "assets" that are priced by emotion. But in a world filled with cognitive dissonance, I don't know anyone on my street who's likely to apply that logic to either the stock market or to their family savings. They're simply not aware of the details of investor psychology or of predatory financing, and even if they were aware they'd feel that somehow they're avoiding those pitfalls by applying their own innovative (illogical) solutions.
Speaking of emotion and a lack of personal responsibility, I think the authors provide extremely valuable advice: "It is okay to splurge on extras. Never mind the dour looks from the Over-Consumption camp. So long as you are staying out of debt and putting something away in savings, you should feel free to buy the kids a new pair of Nikes or treat yourself to a night on the town. If the tough times come, you can drop those expenditures in a heartbeat."
I think that everyone should have a budget category for this and call it "Entertainment". To expect people to behave otherwise is to overlook the fact that we're all human (or should be) and that we're not going to do the logical thing by deferring all discretionary spending until we've built up that 3-6 month savings account.
I guess a Harvard law professor will see every solution as political and corporate. Or at least a lot more likely to be implemented than anything achieved by finger-shaking admonitions.
And a book like theirs is definitely more likely to be purchased by that same audience. I don't think that preaching personal responsibility has the same marketability...