Why

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some reason, our schools have a quasi-religious view about money. Schools seems to believe:

       “For the love of money is the root of all evil.”

       – Timothy 6:10

      Schools ignore the passage that reads:

       “My people perish from a lack of knowledge.”

       – Hosea 4:6

      People are perishing economically due to a lack of financial education in our schools.

      Lao Tzu, the Chinese founder of Taoism in the 5th Century BC, stated:

       “If you give a man a fish, you feed him for a day. If you teach a man to fish you feed him for a lifetime.”

      Unfortunately, rather than teach people to fish, we are teaching kids the Robin Hood philosophy of economics:

       “Take from the rich and give to the poor.”

      That’s also known as socialism.

      Ultimately, all that this generosity does is create more poor people.

      On November 2, 2012 a headline in The Weekly Standard stated:

       “Food stamp rolls grow 75 times faster than jobs.”

      As expected, the Republicans blame President Obama for this crisis and the Democrats state that Republicans are to blame.

      This book is not about politics. It is about education, and about how the lack of financial education is the true cause of financial crisis.

       Lag Times

      Most schoolteachers are great people. The problem is that most teachers, and parents, are products of the same educational system.

      Many teachers are frustrated. Many teachers are pushing for change. Unfortunately, the education industry seems to be an industry that has one of the slowest rates of change.

      Different industries have different lag times. One definition of lag time is the time delay between a new idea being proposed and its adoption. For example, I’ve been told that in the world of technology, lag time is around 18 months, the time between a new idea and that idea taking the form of a new product. That’s why competition can become so fierce in bringing a new product to market… and why new companies soon find themselves out of business because someone else can deliver new products or technology faster, better, and cheaper.

      Lag times in the Agrarian Age were measured in hundreds of years. Lag times in the Industrial Age were measured in fifty-year increments. Lag time in the Information Age is measured in half-years.

      I’ve heard that the auto industry has a lag time of 25 years. This means the new ideas you see on cars today were conceived 25 years ago… ideas such as hybrid cars. And that the business of government has a lag time of approximately 35 years.

      The reason many teachers and parents are frustrated is because, among all industry sectors, the educational industry has the second-longest lag time—50 years.

      The only slower industry is the construction industry, with a lag time of 60 years.

      Notice that the automobile, government, construction, and educational sectors all have strong labor unions… and labor unions are products of the Industrial Age.

       The Future of Education

      The lag time in education means that children starting school today will be grandparents before the educational system adopts the changes this book offers.

      By teaching your kids the lessons in this book, you are giving your child a financial headstart. If lag times hold, it will take until the year 2065 before the ideas in this book enter most classrooms. I don’t believe we can afford to wait.

      This book is written for parents, who know that it’s up to them—not the school system—to prepare their child for the real world. And that world is a fast-paced, ever-changing, Information-Age world… a world unlike any of us have ever experienced.

      This book is also written for parents who know their children face larger financial challenges, the financial garbage heaps previous generations have left behind.

      This book is written for parents who want to understand why President Obama earns $3 million and pays 20.5 percent in taxes while Mitt Romney earns $21 million and pays 14 percent.

      Once a parent knows and understands the differences in what the two men know, they can pass that knowledge on to their children.

      My Story

      I have been an advocate for financial education for most of my adult life.

      In 1973, I returned home to Hawaii from the Vietnam War and found my dad, the man I call my poor dad, unemployed. He had been the Superintendent of Education for the State of Hawaii. His problems began when he ran for Lt. Governor as a Republican against his boss, a Democrat. In losing the election, he also lost his job.

      My dad committed professional suicide by running for Lt. Governor. He risked his “job security” because he was a man of principle. Once he reached the top of the school system’s ladder, as head of the Department of Education, he was outraged at the corruption he found in Hawaii’s government, a government Forbes magazine has since called “The People’s Republic of Hawaii.” That same article stated, “The state taxes everything that moves. Fidel Castro would feel right at home here.”

      President Obama grew up in Hawaii. He is the first U.S. President from Hawaii. The Forbes article may explain why the President has the views he has on government, business, and taxes.

       The End of Empires

      I am not a Republican or a Democrat. And I do not blame President Obama for the crisis we face. This crisis has been brewing for decades and similar crises have occurred throughout history. Financial ignorance and political corruption have brought down empires for centuries. The same financial ignorance and corruption threatens to bring down America.

       Military-Industrial Complex

       On January 17, 1961, President Dwight Eisenhower gave the nation a dire warning about what he described as a threat to democratic government. He called it the military-industrial complex, a formidable union of defense contractors and the armed forces. Eisenhower, a retired five-star-WWII Army general who led the allies on D-Day, made the remarks in his farewell speech from the White House.

       Economics of War

      Empires also end when empires fight too many wars in far away places. In doing that, America is proving we’ve failed to learn from history.

      While in junior high school, I listened to President Eisenhower’s warning to the nation about the threat of the “military-industrial complex.” I was in my early teens, and his warning meant little to me. Returning from Vietnam in 1973, I understood the President’s warning. We were not fighting for the freedom of the Vietnamese people. We were fighting for money. We had been lied to by the elites. We had no business fighting in Vietnam, apart from the issue that war is big business. When I returned from Vietnam, I knew it was time to stop blindly following orders. I knew it was time to start thinking for myself.

      I do not criticize my fellow sailors and soldiers. Most of the young men and women I met in the service were great people dedicated to their country. Our problem was that we were fighting wars to make the military-industrial complex richer. Any time the military-industrial complex needs more money, they simply start another war.

      We are making the same mistakes, in my opinion, when it comes to printing money.

      The Roman Empire crumbled when the Romans began destroying their own money, fighting wars in far away lands, and raising taxes on their workers.

      The United States is repeating the mistakes of the past, proving

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