By: Nick Z

Nick Z — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 11:57:36 +0000

It was terrible. Worst attempt to educate in the history of the universe. I’ve seen shows aimed at children that were more informative and accurate about business and finance. To say this was pointless frivolous puff is to insult all the peeps sold outside of Easter season. Her math was shoddy, the celebrities “witty, entertaining” infotainment skits were glaringly numbingly dumbed down and idiotic, and it only served to demonstrate how finance has become the new religious power structure in American culture. Complete with priests(accountants), and a Vatican(wall street), and proselytizers like the spokeswoman in this special.
I refuse to believe Americans can be so stupid as to need this information, especially not when it is delivered in this fashion, and still be capable of breathing and walking and standing up right instead of drooling in a pile while slumped over in their beds.
The show could’ve been a 30 second commercial saying: “save 4-6 months worth of expenses as a cushion, reduce your debt on your credit cards, don’t treat the home you live in like an investment, and plan for retirement.” Simple absolutely basic stuff.
But more importantly, it’s really time people learned to be beyond money already. If this is the top level of humanity, if this is the level we’re going to operate at, I say push the reset button already. This show was a horror.
When is humanity going to stop behaving like all their deeds need be tallied up in some imaginary system of credit, so that everyone gets their “due”. Entitlement is the really disgusting feature of our shared culture that this show speaks to. Premise: Let’s get the richer than God celebrities on a show, led by a president of a billion dollar investment firm, to tell everyday Americans how their spending habits are the cause all the world’s financial problems. If only people were “living in their means”, everything would be fine and dandy they repeatedly drum, sure it would… in the world of these ultra-rich members of the financial aristocracy. Many of which have done nothing to deserve their tremendous wealth, which they all spend with conspicuous consumption.
Yet the unwashed, unclean masses must obey the laws of the financial Gods and remain in their places on the bottom rung.
The reality is all finance and currency is imaginary, and what’s real is people’s homes and people’s lives. Health, happiness, and freedom. Anyone unenlightened enough to find this show worth watching, let alone producing and airing on television, should seriously consider some alternate dimension of existence and press on from this universe into the waiting void of death.
And the audience claps like lemmings.
So here’s a penny for your thoughts, not that the penny is worth very much anymore, maybe what the world needs instead of this fluffy piece of garbage, (that oscar the grouch wouldn’t find suitable for his retirement dumpster), is a culture where people do real things for real consequence in real people’s lives, and 40% of the american GDP isn’t devoted to investment-related paper-pushing financial-religion-proselytizing-and-tithing. Then maybe our debt wouldn’t be over-seas in the hands of the people in this world doing real things for real consequence in real people’s lives, the foreigners that actually MAKE things… maybe then we’d have wealth in everyone’s hands. Not 90% of the wealth in the hands of 1%. True wealth, not paper money. True wealth, like healthy spacious homes. True wealth, like balanced clean environments. True wealth, like human beings who are happy and healthy, not fat and miserable. Doing it not because they expect to get paid, but because through enlightened self-interest they know when they do for others, as those others are doing for others, we are all having ourselves enriched and made wealthy, instead of just being done for as is the present course for humanity.

By: Roger

Roger — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 21:43:09 +0000

Sounds like it was a pretty good special; I’m sorry that I missed it.

By: FFB

FFB — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 01:46:04 +0000

I saw the special and thought it was pretty useful for someone trying to get their head around their finances. The “Network” Samuel L Jackson portion was probably the best part.

Comments on: UN-BROKE: What You Need To Know About Money

By: Nick Z

By: Roger

By: FFB