Hey, guys, ready or not, twenty twenty four is here, and we here at breaking points, are already thinking of ways we can up our game for this critical election.
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If you like what we're all about, it just means the absolute world to have your support. But enough with that, Let's get to the show. I rarely am speecial shrine, but that's how I felt when I saw this.
Let's go ahead, put this up there on the screen.
Elizabeth Holmes is being rehabilitated by The New York Times in a fawning new profile which is so humiliating that they even acknowledge it.
In the story.
They say, I was admittedly swept up in Liz as an authentic and sympathetic person's and charismatic in a quiet way. My editor laughed at me when I shared these impressions, telling.
Me Amy, you got rolled.
The headline of the piece, Ryan is the black turtlenecks are gone, so is the voice. As the convicted there and was founder awaits prison, she has adopted a new persona devoted mother. Liz Holmes wants you to forget about Elizabeth.
I mean, what did you make of this crap where basically they want to say like, oh, she's a mom, and all this erasing the fact that billions of dollars were stolen from investors and worse, as I always say, she actually sold this technology knowing it wouldn't work to Walgreens and people were misdiagnosed based on her fake blood technology, some of whom suffered severe health events as a result of her BS diagnosis. So that is, to me, the
most unforgivable crime of this entire thing. But give me your impressions of this ridiculous.
And I think there's nothing wrong with doing a profile of I would love to talk to if you if you can get that, But then you also interview a bunch of people about what it takes to be a.
Sociopath in this world exactly like, because.
It appears from everything that she was doing in her business world like some type of a sociopath.
Great parcisss, no question.
The fact that she's now admitting that she faked that entire voice is so disturbing that I think it could make for some deep psychological explorations.
Oh, I would love to talk to her one on one.
I'd be like, so, you know, how do you do Do you have any remorse whatsoever about those people?
How do you feel about it? What about people?
At what point did you realize that people are going to be getting wrong diagnoses? And you continued forward anyway because you just thought that you could keep juggling it.
And then eventually are.
You at peace with that? When you post for cameras with your two little kids? How do you live with I'd be like, how do you live with yourself?
Could have been great.
Instead, it takes the celebrity profile form and applies it to this. Everybody has, you know, read a good Vanity Fair profile of you know where, where an author spends like a day or an afternoon with the celebrity, writes a couple of witty lines. We read it in the airport everybody everybody has fun and we all go.
Yeah, it's great.
I was just fun.
I was telling you I just read a profile of Tom Hanks. It was nice. Tom Hanks a nice guy.
I don't really think about it, but I was like, oh yeah, Tom, real stand up.
Guy, loves time writers. That's cool killed. That's not the same thing.
Right, killed twenty minutes. Everybody's happy they bring that to this is sociopath.
So like the most celebrity profile line probably in the whole piece, but the whole piece is in that form. Amy Choseck writes, and we'll talk about who Amy Choseick is in one second. She writes, So to just say it, MS Holmes knows what you're thinking about her trial and the birth of her two babies. And what she's referring to there in that under that subtle way is the fact that she had these two kids in the middle
of the sentencing in the trial. Yes, that everybody assumes like she had these kids in order to try to get out of prison.
It's obviously true she used her pregnancy as a shield at trial for sympathy.
It's so transparent.
How do you not ask her that, not even ask her press her on that directly.
It's just it's so absurd.
And so the other interesting part is the identity of this reporter, so Amy Choseick, who has mostly gone away since twenty sixteen. It feels like she was the beat reporter who was assigned to cover for the New York Times. The Hillary Clinton campaign in twenty fifteen twenty sixteen, and her quite soft coverage of her, I think helped produce some of the delusions that the campaign operated under in
a self destructive way. So this kind of soft coverage that you do doesn't, in the end, often end up helping the person that you think it's helping, because it prevents them from then actually doing the self reflection that would be necessary to correct what's going wrong here. Now, kudos to Liz Holmes, she's now Liz. She doesn't wear the black turtlenecks, she doesn't have a deep voice anymore.
Kudos that are forgetting this coverage in the Times. But I don't think it's going to be enough because all it did is kind of lump Amy Chosick and the Times in with her rather than I think actually rebuilt it because people can use their own common sense, Like you've got rolled.
Just like your editor.
Said, people read it. We're we're not exaggerating.
Still can't even be incredible, Just an incredible moment where Tim Dillon had on two little Biden TikTok stars clearly who have been They claim they're not being paid, but of course they're attached to some sort of agency tim doing the lord's work, I guess having them on and interviewing them about their process, which resulted in one of the best clips that I've.
Ever seen yet. Regarding these guys, let's take a listen.
It's actually really hard in the space, right, Like we have like forty five seconds to record a video keep Moole's attention, and a lot of the people on our side, like if they start hearing like I've actually done it before, I've I've criticized like Democrats, like specifically hicken Jeffreys, and
it all just went south. I started losing followers, Like it's bad, right, and I really want to be that person that like reaches the other side because Democrats, I mean, they're horrible at their jobs, right, They do a lot of shitty things, although I'll vote for them all the time.
But it's also hard in the space to Criticiz's sore good.
Can we clip that quote?
They're hard? Please?
Please don't please don't please don't click that please no, no, no, please.
Please don't clip please don't clip that. Whatever I criticize it when people get.
Mad, that's a definition of propaganda and not of providing honest analysis. I mean, look, to be fair, these guys probably they're so young they probably don't even really realize like what they're caught up in. But I think one of the things that you mature and realize Ryan is I'm sure you've had and I have many times, is that pissing people off is actually a key part of the job if you want to remain intellectually honest throughout
the period. Because I have been in the melee of some big social events and stuff, and you got to stick to your guns man, and sometimes it works out.
Sometimes you look like a fool, and then you think about that.
In retrospect, and you said, you know what, it was a little bit too hot in the way that I was thinking and talking about this and this time around, because I remember exactly what was going on with that.
You know, at this time, I'm going to do this, and then by doing that, you end up pissing people off who would demand like loyalty and fealty from you, when in reality, what you realize over time is you got to try and stay true to yourself, but beyond that, you have to always try and say what you believe and explain it in a cosion and thoughtful process and trust that people will stick with you through it, and if they don't, you have to come to the conclusion it's on you and it's not on me.
Yeah.
And from the post World War two on, corporate capture was the big risk when it came to media and to anchors and reporters and editors not being honest with their audience because it would run up against the corporate interests of the people that financed their entire operations manufacturing consent well tried terrain. What is becoming a big problem now is audience capture and those kids are a perfect
example of it. That they are afraid to say what they believe, which is that a Keem Jeffries might not be the most wonderful person on the planet. But if they say that, all of a sudden, it all falls apart as they start losing followers. It's what I love about this format you have because we have and we don't have a monolithic audience.
We don't have one hegemonic group.
We've got white people all over, people all over, literally all over, and you really see it, especially when we do in person events. It's so crazy. I remember the first time we did a real student loan debate, it was genuinely fifty to fifty and it's just so validating to be.
Like, yeah, people really are you know all walks of life. Watch the show. Probably the thing that Chrystal and I are the most proud here.
And I love pissing people off.
Yeah it's fun, but that's the other thing.
People forget, right, But if the audience all felt one way, I could love pissing them off all they want, but like, at the end of the day, you're not going to be able to survive that if your entire audience like disagrees with you. And so there is that audience capture that you just if you cultivate an audience that believes just one thing, like democrats are amazing and hikeem Jefferies is going to lead them to the promised Land.
You just have to keep saying that you're not independent.
And too many people to describe themselves as independent today when they are not actually independent of their audience.
That's smart, that's a good way of putting it.
I you know, I think about all the time I shared a career before we took a big hit, A lot of people cancel their previous descriptions during the withdrawal from Afghanistan, and Chris and I looked at each other and we were like, we're not going to change a damn thing.
We're just going to keep going.
And actually it was vindicating because in the long run we got more by being staying true to who we were we would have, you know, business wise, you could see how we're like, oh, we got to you know, make sure that we said no. They said, we believe this. Being anti war is core to the things that we believe. If we make less money as a business, so be it. And again, I think it worked out actually in the long run. But you know, I know a lot of people in the business.
They would take an opposite move.
They really would.
And yeah, so you got to remain true to yourself. That's what I would say to these kids. You're twenty years old. You probably cringe of that clip in a few years.
And that's okay. I cringe every time I watch all the clip hit me.
Too, and it's not just YouTubers.
Fox News after the November election did not believe that the election had been stolen, but started seeing audience bleeding out to Newsmax and these other places, and the orders came down we need to play foot seat with this stuff because they were They had become captured by their audience and had no choice.
Smart as everyone who watched this show knows. I love history.
So I hear there's a new Cleopatra thing coming, I say, oh, great Cleopatra. What a fascinating era, the Macedonian Age, the declining, you know, intersections with the Rome. We've had all those famous the mark antony and stuff. I said, maybe that'll get into it. But then it turns out the controversy euroups because let's put this up there all the screen. Netflix's new Cleopatra slash historical series cast Cleopatra as black. Now,
I personally had never thought about it. I mean, you know, it's a little wit weird, but it has caused enormous consternation actually in Egypt, because the Egyptians say that cast and I'm not just saying the Egyptians, I'm talking about the Egyptian government is calling out the United States and Netflix for casting a black actress to play Cleopatra. They claim that they are falsifying Egyptian hit. We are falsifying
Egyptian history. We are desecrating their heritage, their government, their antiquity, their overall history, that is not accurate and not true, which has now caused Ryan a great study into what was Cleopatra. It turns out, you know, that from three point twenty three BC, we don't actually have a particularly good view into what the racial what the makeup was of some of these figures. It's like Jesus, you know,
we don't actually know all that much about either. Some accounts to say this to some accounts that say that, well, same thing apparently is true of Cleopatra. The general consensus
is that she had Persian ancestry of some kind. We know that she was, you know Ptolemy, the Ptolemy Ptolemaic dynasty, That she had Persian ancestry of some kind, that she possibly had some intermingling ancestry involving slaves, but that to be a noble woman or whatever at that time very likely had the hue of what you would you know that you would relate Egyptian person who's not black to be Okay. So that's the general historical consensus according to
the Egyptians too. Okay, but again, you know, we don't technically know, well, this then what I love this is that this is peak Westerners in like putting their own bs on to other cultures and then finding out that other cultures don't actually agree with us at all and actually get very angry. And it resulted in this New York Times op ed that we showed you fear of a black Cleopatra.
Now, this was by an associate.
Professor of philosophy at the University of Missouri and doctor Gilbert, an assistant professor of classics at Mississippi State University. This op ed is probably best noted as what actual.
Critical race theory looks like.
If people want to know critical race theory, they're always like, well, that's a graduate level.
This is a pretty good view into what it is.
And our friend Richard Hannania actually flagged for me my favorite part.
Let's put it up there on the screen, they say.
Quote.
Netflix's casting was informed by the views of Shelley Haley, who claims that, although evidence of her ancestry and physical attributes are inconclusive, Cleopatra was culturally black.
And so what does that remind you of? Ryan?
That reminds me of Rachel Dolezoll And so as Richard so aptly puts it there. They basically are saying that Cleopatra is the ancient Rachel Dolezoal, which is certainly something.
So I'm curious what you make of this entire thing.
Well, it's absurd, it's incorrect.
That's just wrong.
There was no such thing as black in Egyptian culture at that time, not until later.
Therefore, you can't be culturally black. It's just false. Now, I was.
Doing some research to get ready for this segment, and I looked into another historical drama called Hamilton and what I have done.
Great show, by the way.
And I have uncovered a couple of disturbing facts. One is that George Washington was a character in the drama Hamilton played black.
Was not black. He's white. Did you know that?
George Washington went, I did not know that something, Aaron Burr Ah, So what right? Hamilton, despite being born in the Caribbean, also white, also white?
Right?
So I think we're gonna need a pretty like serious run of corrections in the way that they portrayed.
I actually think this is a fair point, which is who cares it all? The only reason I think is funny is because of the whole ancient Regil doles all thing, and I don't know why they just didn't do what Hamilton did. The guy was his name lin Manua Miranda. The way he wrote Hamilton, his explanation was, it's America before told by America.
Now.
I'm like, okay, cool, And I was like whatever, you're the artist, yeah, yeah, he's like your show. By the way, it's a great show. I actually recommend people go and watch it. I know it sounds cringe, but genuinely is a great show. The songs are fantastic, so it's fun. It's we're captivating for two and a half hours.
And the theater is also much smaller than you would expect.
You know, when you're there, it felt much more theater into It's a lot of fun. Actually, my point, my point being, there's a way to do that and just be like, yeah, it's not you know, it's sort of but but And I think this is where in America, I think the idea of a heterogeneous alti racial society is much more baked into kind of who we are, whereas.
In Egypt not so much.
And that was part of the problem is that they were then trying to basically Western explain like American explain Egyptian culture to Egyptians, and they were like, no, no, no, no, We're not going to be handling this.
So it's caused a global freak.
I think they might actually ban it in Egypt exactly, which is actually a whole other you know, like who cares, guys, come.
On, yeah, and I think most people know the barstool history of the production of race as a thing. But if people don't, you know, it comes from mostly you know, South America and the Caribbean after the Spanish and then other European colonists came, and it was a way to basically implant a hierarchy because you had people who were born so you had you know, the highest, the highest in the heart hierarchy are Europeans born in Europe who have then come over to South America or to the Caribbean.
Then below that you have Europeans who are born in South America and in the Caribbean. But then they have their own pride because they're born there and they're calling themselves kind of native to this land.
But then you have intermingling.
Mestizo mestizo and like you have if you go to say Haiti or so there's something like fifteen different lists of like all right, if you have you know, one grandfather, that's this one, and they became legal. Now, the Haitians banned that and tossed it after the revolution.
But that's kind of where.
I was about to say.
I actually recommend Dan Carlin has a series on Haiti and the racial obsessiveness. It makes me vomit when I listened to it, because you're exactly right. Everything was ordered by drops of blood. Like they'd be like, oh, that's an octoroon, as in you have one eighth one eighth.
Of black blood.
Then they're like, no, that's a quadroon, as in you It's like, oh, this is reading. It is literally repulsive because that's not only the way that their society was ordered, it was the way that money was distributed, and it was the way through which power and all of that worked, which all was obviously on top of the most horrific conditions of slavery literally in the entire world at the time,
which led to the revolution. What was the name toussa I forget, Yeah, the name of the it's like the Haitian George Washington, he was.
Just celebrated in France McCrone went to the prison where he died in France.
Really yeah, oh that's interesting.
Napoleon went and got him, that's right.
Yeah, which, actually that's kind of precipitated. Why the Napoleon didn't want anything to do with the American colonies Louisiana purchased.
There's a lot of our own history actually intertwined with that.
And you're right, I'm glad that you brought that up, which is that the way that we think about race today is much more a byproduct of the repulsive historical legacy of the Spanish and Spanish Spanish and Portugal African slave trade than anything that happened, you know, two three thousand.
If you like, the More of Venice is nobody in the play considers the More to be racially inferior.
Ott point, Yeah, that's true. I haven't thought about that. But right around that age of Spanish American.
People understood that some people had different skin colors, but that's not how they judged people. It was more Now, there was plenty of tribalism, and you and you might, like, you know, have tribalist ideas about the Persians or about the Egyptians, but it wasn't. It only became codified by skin color thanks to the colonialists over here in the North and South America.
Well, shout out to them. I guess, I guess they're gone. I'm glad we're gone.
But that's why the Egyptians like, what are you talking about?
Yeah, the Egyptians are like, we don't, we don't do this over here. Okay, all right, we'll see you guys later.
Senator Dianne Feinstein returned to Washington after a three and a half month absence. She had missed a lot of votes, Ryan, Everyone hoped that she was in good health. And look, I want to say this at the top, As I've said here many times, I got nothing but compassion for elderly people who are in the last days of their lives, nothing who are private citizens. But I have nothing but discussed for narcissists who are unable to do their jobs, who continue to cling onto power. And the photo I'm
about to show you is genuinely disturbing. This is what Senator Feinstein looked like when she got out of the car after arriving in Washington.
I mean, what are we doing here?
Ryan?
And this is someone who I mean, she literally.
Looks like like this, like days away, Like the Queen looked better two days before she died.
If you coupled that image with either an indication or even reports of a crisp.
Mind, yeah, sure, and you'd be like okay, as in, she can get better. I don't think so, not looking at that.
Yeah, like this whole get well soon. The person has dementia. Now she's also suffering with shingles, which is extraordinarily painful.
Feel very bad for her. I'm like, please retire.
You have two hundred million dollars, Go sit in a in a palace in a wine country and be surrounded by your loved ones.
Yeah.
And what makes it doubly important is that she sits on the Juiciary Committee exactly, which can't move judicial nominees like the one thing that the Biden administration can still do unilatterly, because they control the Senate, make nominees the executive branch into the jugitial branch, moving through the Juitiary,
moving through the floor of the Senate. Republicans can't stop them because Feinstein's not there on the on the Juiciary Committee, everything has been just ground to a halt, and it brings to mind for so many people. Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who launched you know, an entire girl Boss campaigns in twenty eleven twelve thirteen to push back on the pressure for her and Bryer to step down as successfully so, and as a result, I wound up flip the Supreme Court.
Yeah, and very likely making sure that roe versus Wade was over. I actually fully believe that if it had been five to four that Roberts would not have fully overturned over Suaede. I think it would have kept some remnants of the Casey architecture and they wouldn't be where we are today.
But because it was six three and he would be outnumbered anyway, he went ahead and joined.
Right.
Yeah, I think you're right that Roberts would be unlikely to be the fifth vote for that, but he's happy to be the sixth one exactly.
Well, he's like, that's not on me.
Right, he doesn't want to be the fourth against it, right, Yeah.
So yeah, I mean that's the like. I mean, she was a narcissist too.
She said, I'm the notorious even though I've had cancer like five times, and I'm going to die on the bench. And as a result, fulfilled with the greatest legacy and the greatest dreams of the pro life movement and of the conservative movement. So I guess you know, for them, they're like, yeah, RBG is a hero, just not the hero though that the liberals wanted.
To make her.
And this is the thing too about Feinstein put this up there on the screen.
She says, quote.
Even though I've made significant progress and was able to return to Washington, I'm still experiencing some side effects from the shingles virus. My doctors have advised me to work a lighter schedule as I returned to the Senate.
What is a lighter schedule from zero from zero?
And also, you're a senator, you're barely within your right mind.
She ain't working that hard, all right, She ain't going anywhere.
What's she doing all I mean, you know, within the last several years, when you would talk to her in the hallway, her staff would constantly have to remind her of what you're asking about, what.
You're asking about, what you're doing.
Remember, she didn't remember that they put out a statement saying she wasn't going to run again. She literally didn't write fort She didn't know what was going on. So look in the farce, it's not right. There's forty million people who live in California. They deserve representation.
And some conservatives are like, why are you cheering for this? Here's the thing. Look, California's gonna liket a Democrat anyway.
And my point is that it's not fair to those people who need constituent services. They need someone in their corner fight, Like right now, you only have the junior senator.
If you had somebody with her level of seniority, she can make stuff move.
Man, if you're a California business, you got a problem with the tariff, she'll call the agency. All you're back you probably used to fifteen years ago today Nope, And that is fundamentally wrong in terms of representations. She got forty million constituents, the biggest state in the Union, in the whole country. They got gas problems, they got housing problems, they got so much going on. You deserve somebody in the chamber who's actually doing something.
Right.
If you add up you know North Dakota, South Dakota, Wyoming, Idaho, there's eight eight serving senators for like seventeen people. That's right, And California with what sixty seventy million.
That's like one it's I think it's thirty nine million, whatever it was, I mean a lot, right, Yeah, it's like almost ten percent in iron Nation.
I remember when I first started covering the Senate in two thousand and six seven, there was a senator from Mississippi.
I think it was that Cockran, it.
Was Thatad Cochran. He actually resigned because I had dementia.
Yeah, he would.
You would see him and wandering He's like just wandering around the Senate like because he'd been there since the forties or sessing right, Yeah, he'd been yeah, very very and it was clear that he was just completely out of it. And eventually it took a long time, but eventually they're like, look.
And you and I missed the whole strom Thermon thing, who one hundred and also was gone.
He was totally gone.
From everybody I've spoken to who knew and interacted with strom Thurmond in his later years, they're like, he was basically a living corpse. And guess what that also wasn't right either, and put his own personal history or whatever aside. Right, that still is not right to the people who he was serving.
It's not you know. I mean, look at Chuck Grassley, he's like, what ninety years old at.
Least he when you talked to him in the hallway, he's he's not who he used to be. Yeah, but you can tell he's totally.
That still with it.
Yeah, I don't know about that, you don't think.
So listen, I'm well all me and ages if you want. The thing is he could be gone tomorrow given the way that these things work.
Yes, and also you have good days and bad days.
Yeah, exactly, So fine, scene, it's time to go. We'll see you guys later.
You've probably seen headlines like this, lack of financial literacy cost fifteen percent of adults at least ten dollars in twenty twenty two. Financial literacy is essentially the idea that if you understand the mechanics of personal finance, you will make better financial decisions and have a more prosperous life. You might be thinking that sounds like neoliberal nonsense. The problem is not that people don't understand money, it's that
they don't make enough money. And you're definitely right, You're totally right about that. People who write headlines like financial illiteracy is an epidemic should all be uniformly ignored they do not get it. But as I researched this, I realized financial literacy doesn't have to be a completely stupid idea. It might even be worth taking seriously in the right context. Here's what I mean. If you don't have enough money, decrease your expenses and then your money will go further.
Gy.
If you don't have enough money, try spending less money. Now, when I think of the topic of financial literacy, I think of Charlatan's like her, people who totally discount systemic reasons for financial woes and instead write about things like lifestyle creep, which is basically going out to dinner too much as a core reason. So many people are living paycheck to paycheck. You see this in annoying articles asking
are you financially literate? Here are seven signs You're on the right track, or baiting you into reading about how financial literacy matters for your retirement savings, as if knowing just how to work the numbers is going to matter as much as simply making enough money, and the advice they give is often.
Frustrating and demeaning.
Credit cards and loans might seem like easy solutions to our money problems, not knowing how to manage them wisely can often leave you struggling. Financial literacy, you can better understand the terms and conditions. Well, dam are you telling me that by financing my lifestyle with credit cards that I'm only able to pay off with other subsequent credit cards, thus commencing and anexorable accumulation of debt that I have no hope of ever escaping. Are you saying that that's
ill advised somehow? Because apparently only twenty four percent of American adults have a basic understanding of financial literacy, and I may not be one of them. But when they say financial literacy, what exactly do they mean? Because the annoying advice money gurus give is pretty different from the questions that researchers ask to actually measure financial literacy. Now, personal finance training as part of US policy goes back to at least the fifties.
Yes, Ralph has a budget and a method of saving the shows results.
There was even a Financial Literacy and Education Commission established in two thousand and three. This is an ongoing concern of the government. We actually spend a quarter billion dollars a year. You're on this and if you think some of that money is being wasted, you are not wrong, because some of that money went to the FDIC to create this horrible game.
Select around to start earning coins. Welcome to round one.
You may want to save money for your goals, to build wealth, for emergencies, to cover times when you have less income or more expenses, And.
Of course the banks are in on this too. Resolutions were just passed in Congress making April financial literacy month. You just missed the barbecues, And this was supported by the Credit Union National Association. Well wait, banks are fans of financial literacy. Wouldn't it benefit them to have financially illiterate customers. Turns out there are huge believers in education. Charles Schwab helps bring financial literacy to kids as young
as four or five. Here are a bunch of teachers submitted lesson plans you can borrow to teach your third grader about sustainable financing. Bank of America volunteers helped Boys and Girls Club interns learn about budgeting and saving. Golden Sachs donates five hundred thousand dollars to Youth Financial Literacy Initiative. Of course banks do this, it's positive pr and it helps teach kids that being poor is their fault for
not knowing how to balance a checkbook. Do you think they should teach things like balancing a checkbook?
We don't even teach kids how to balance a checkbook balancing.
A checkbook, But I do keep teaching my kids how to balance a checkbook. No, we don't teach people literally how to balance a checkbook, because that was made obsolete with online banking. But we do teach financial literacy. Now, the US spends a quarter billion dollars a year on this. That's not much in the grand scheme of things, but it's almost double, for example, the National Endowment for the Arts, And that is quite unfortunate because apparently financial literacy training
doesn't really work. Loyola Law School professor Lauren Willis concludes that financial education does not demonstrably improve financial wellbeing, and a meta analysis of more than two hundred studies found that educational interventions explain only zero point one percent of the financial behaviors studied.
Also, as far as.
I can tell, we don't even know how much money is actually lost to financial illiteracy. If you're looking up figures on financial literacy, you will very likely come across this report that estimates three hundred and fifty two billion dollars were lost to financial illiteracy in twenty twenty one. The two articles I reference in the intro for this
video referenced that report. The report is from the National Financial Educator's Council, and how they conducted the study was by asking people one question during the past year about how much money do you think you lost because you lacked knowledge about personal finances. They then multiplied the average amount by the two hundred and fifty million adults in the US, and that's how we have three hundred and fifty two billion. So the question is, one, how reliable
are these personal reports? And two are people losing money because they're not financially literate or are people losing money because they were maybe bilked? Or how many people feel like they lost money because they lack personal finance education, but actually it's because they simply didn't have enough money and there was no way to avoid the overdraft fee or paying interest on a credit card or whatever.
We have no idea.
According to this report, a common financial illiteracy mistake is luxury spending. Apparently, luxury spending costs Americans sixty five billion dollars. Scroll down to the section on luxury spending, and all it says is that Americans spent sixty five billion dollars on luxury items in twenty twenty. It offers no insight as to what percentage of that sixty five billion was spent by people who couldn't afford what they were buying. And then it offers some wisdom. While you may need
a purse, do you really need a Louis Vaton? Scroll a little further down Personal Impact on Financial illiteracy. Twenty nine point six percent of Americans are in poverty or low income, but they established no concrete relationship between these two things. This could just as easily be Tomm DeLong leaves blank tweent eighty two. Twenty nine point six percent of Americans are in poverty or low income. Well, thank
god he rejoined the band. Clearly, this report is problematic, but somehow its results are finding their way into mainstream outlets like CNBC and Yahoo. And finally, what actually constitutes financial literacy? These are known as the Big Five questions for financial literacy. You can pause the video and read them, but something tells me that regardless of whether or not you know the relationship between bond prices and interest rates.
It's not going to be enough to lift you out of a low age job, Okay, But if we take a slightly more serious approach to this, it is possible. But the sense of public urgency over the level of financial literacy in the population is a reaction to a greater personal financial responsibility in the face of increasingly complicated financial products. When I started asking people about this, no one told me they wish they were taught the concept of saving money earlier. No one said they wish that
risk diversification had been more emphasized in kindergarten. People told me, actually that essentially they wish they had been warned and upon leaving high school, maybe gotten some practical lessons on navigating a predatory financial system. And if people were interested in reframing personal finance education like that, that's obviously not a solve for the predatory system itself. But I don't
think that is a completely ridiculous idea. But the fantasy that some people have that financial literacy is the antidote to poverty, as if poor people just missed the lesson on budgeting is idiotic and wrong. All to speak about using your money to maximize wealth or differentiating between needs and wants. That's all just worthless because in reality, the actual need we have for personal finance training should be held up to emphasize how opaque and cruel and unequal
the financial system is to the average person. And that will do it for me. If you found this video interesting, make sure you are subscribed to Breaking Points. It costs you nothing. You can also check out my YouTube channel where I talk all about media and politics and other things. Link and description, liking and sharing always helps. Thank you so much to Breaking Points. Thank you for watching, and I will see you in the next one.