Degrees of frustration
Daleela Farina of BloggingStocks perhaps doesn’t like financial writer James Altucher: her interview with him is titled “You can profit from James Altucher’s insanity.” She doesn’t succeed in baiting him, however:
BloggingStocks: Since you clearly oppose post-secondary education as stated in your New York Post article, “School of Hard Cash,” suggesting that our youths should find their entrepreneurial spirit and get experience starting new businesses instead, how does the recession affect your conclusion?
JA: The recession makes my conclusion stronger. Why should I fork over $200,000 to my kid (probably much more by the time they go to college) so they can emerge four to six years later, saddled with debt and more confusion than ever about what they should do with their lives. The costs of college have gone up 10-fold while cost of living has only gone up 3-fold and health care has gone up 6-fold in the past 30 years. Congress should be debating education reform rather than health care reform.
BloggingStocks: And the stats: Given the lack of banks’ willingness to lend — a decrease of 36% to be exact, which, some may argue, could be attributed to the 11.9% default rate of those loans; small business failure rate exceeding 95% within the first 5 years, and over the lifetime of the average small business only 39% are profitable, 30% break even, and 30% lose money; why do you believe uneducated, inexperienced adolescents can beat these horrible odds?
JA: They can’t. They will most likely fail. Failure is the best education. Best to get it done with as young as possible.
“Good judgment,” said Will Rogers, “comes from experience, and a lot of that comes from bad judgment.”
Of course, we’re still going to need rocket scientists and such, so someone is going to have to finish college, but right now, the most immediate need, as I see it, is to see that Congress gets an education.
