Losing stock
Some milestones pass with a bang, and others with a whimper. One such milestone passed recently and most people scarcely noticed. Most newspapers have dropped stock quotes from their business sections, offering them online instead. The San Francisco Chronicle dropped printed stock quotes in early January. The Times-Standard did so a week or two ago. More's the pity.
Sure, I understand the pure accounting logic of sparing newsprint and paper whenever possible. Even newspapers that printed stock quotes didn't print everything. There are thousands of mutual funds and penny stocks that you would only find online or in pure business publications like the Wall Street Journal in any event. However, most "real" newspapers would carry the big board stocks and mutual fund listings and even vary the display by day of the week ... for instance, year-to-date summaries would appear on Saturdays, 52-week highs and lows would appear on Thursdays, etc.
Why do I think it's important to keep stock quotes for average readers? Because we're all dumbing down at an alarming rate. In his book Rich Dad, Poor Dad, author Robert Kiyosaki demonstrates the stark differences in how the financially savvy approach household finances as compared to the average working stiff. He even collaborated with Donald Trump to write Why We Want You To Be Rich: Two Men-One Message in an effort to improve the financial education of the general public.
We should all be shocked to know how many people can't balance a checkbook, don't understand how to invest, can't budget household expenses and even have trouble making change from cash transactions. It starts with kids, and accessing stock quotes in the local newspaper is just one more resource that is now only available to those with Internet access ... the technology "haves," and not the tech "have-nots." The digital divide strikes again.
If you have kids, visit the Rich Dad, Poor Dad website and consider buying some of the games they offer that help to teach kids how to handle their finances. That is, if you have a computer and have access to the Internet.
Chris Crawford
www.justiceserved.com
Photo credit = Microsoft clipart