I recently noticed the latest hotspots on the market concerning increasingly important targets of economic education. According to IMD Scoreboard from 2003, pupils from elementary and secondary schools in many different countries failed to reach the edge of basic financial and economic literacy. The country where I come from, namely Slovenia fell below 50th place on the rank of economic and financial literacy.
It is very interesting to see that predominantly genetically anti-capitalistic and genetically socialistic youth is very much eager to protest against any kind of particular economic reforms. Europe is the most obvious place to see such protests. The main source of objection to free-market economy and personal responsibility mainly comes from the environments in which the awareness of economic problems is very weak. In Slovenia and France, students even emerged as an interest group, a compassionate rent-seeker. This significant situation is partly the result of weak and unstable institutions permitting non-market behavior to be undertaken through the special status of treating students as a separate group which “shall not take market rules of the game into account.”
The effect is, of course, disastrous. Because of specially given status, students do not want to undertake productive behavior (work, save and invest) after they finish the study. Instead, they rather focus on how to maintain their current status because if they entered the market, the rules of the game would become very different. Students are also having a serious intention of becoming a strong political power. In this case, the quality of future graduates rapidly falls below the very much needed pace.
On the other hand, students who are not willing to finish the study are manipulating with their insane ideas about “socially just society” That’s the way how rent-seeking students in Slovenia brainwash younger schoolboys and schoolgirls. Instead of focusing how to grab the opportunities and make them come true, they are rather engaged in various forms of protests, being totally unaware of economic problems. In essence, this is a short summary telling how youngsters become anti-capitalistically inspired fanatical fighters in the framework of neosocialist ideology. This inevitably produces a long-run deficit of human capital in the economy. The shift from know-how to political engagement in terms of detecting economic reforms to be enforced is also the primary reason why youngsters become anti-capitalistic. And when they resist the market economy, they become economically as well as financially illiterate. Below you can find two efficient methods to avoid being economically and financially illiterate;
1. FREE TO CHOOSE is from now on available online. You can watch all ten parts of the television series on your personal computer. Both versions are easily available. Parents, this television series is a very useful tool for educating your children about the fundamentals of free market economy.
2. INTELLECTUAL SERIES PORTRAITS; in this audio collection of conversations with distinguished economists Nobel laureates are available to be listened. You can the interview with Ljubo Sirc, Milton Friedman, Friedrich August von Hayek, James Buchanan, Ronald Coase, Lord Harris, Israel Kirzner, Sir Adam Walters and others.
I wish you a joyful listening of conversations and watching of the series.
And remember, there’s no liberty without economic liberty. Without it, even political, personal and civil liberties cannot exist. When Arnold Schwarzenegger came to America, he had no money in his pocket, but he had a freedom to get it. Being free to choose means being free to make your own decisions, free to pursue your own goals and free to turn your potentials into good business.
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