Financial Literacy is Important But…
It is often thought that people make spending or investing mistakes because they lack financial literacy. I happen to have different ideas about this particular matter.
Every spending decision made based on the economic rationale must transform into value. By value, I mean monetary return or any contribution to the society. But the priority is, of course, should be helping increase welfare.
Before lecturing citizens about financial literacy, I would like to ask the following question to those who represent the government. Our country barely makes the top 20 in the GNI per capita ranking. Meanwhile, our government keeps spending money so it can boast that our airline fleet size ranks among the top 10 biggest airline companies, or that we have one of the largest airports, or one of the widest bridges in the world, or the longest, deepest of whatever… With this fact in mind, shouldn’t that money spent so far and all that investment made so far have contributed to increase our people’s welfare and prosperity by now? Seeing all these huge buildings, people rightfully consider themselves entitled to be able to meet his modern needs such as a mobile phone, high-quality white goods or cars. To buy them, people use their credit cards, but their credit card limits never catch up with rising prices. So, could financial illiteracy be the only reason behind this ordeal?
As we constantly remind ourselves of how important our duty is as economists, we also need to accept that it is not unusual for people to imitate the government that never refrains from using its right to unlimited spending. As citizens of a country that keeps bragging about having buildings, facilities large, wide, long, deep, strong enough to compete with their worldwide counterparts, why would Turkish people consider themselves worthy of anything less? They too desire the biggest, widest, longest and highest. I also need to ask the government this:
When you place such colossal amounts of money in such colossal investments, shouldn’t we be moving up rapidly in the GNI per capita ranking or countries by GDP ranking?
Should high inflation be the punishment that people get for having the longest or widest bridge, the deepest tunnel, the largest airport, and the greatest number of planes?
Is it not morally wrong to say “no more instalments for you!” to parents who can manage to afford school books by means of instalment plans alone?
As far as financial literacy goes, I say to our people: “Never do what the government does!” If you want to protect your finances, never be envious of those who spend money lavishly.
I just hope that those government officials who want to cancel instalment plans, because they think it is not applied anywhere else in the world, are brave enough to talk about their certain governmental practices that are not applied anywhere else in the world, and hopefully abolish them. I wonder if they will really do it?
