Currently in Chapter 4, and the discussion of the court defense where Thaler said the 401k would encourage savers but the lady who was a pension supporter (sorry, Audiobook - tried to scrub for her name but couldn't find the place) argued that it would be an overall net negative and divert individual human effort towards money management reminded me of this recent post by ERN: You are a Pension Fund of One (or Two), which points out the inefficiencies of individual money management.
Teresa Ghilarducci
http://teresaghilarducci.org/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teresa_Ghilarducci
Thanks! I'm interested to read some of her work, I'm now very intrigued by the idea of pensions in a way I haven't been before...
I just finished the book, and I have to say I feel CALLED OUT! Hah. My county is the county that does the dumb 8th grade finance field trip! I've never been on it, so I don't know the extent of the branding, but it makes sense. The only field trips we get to do are the ones that are somehow free - like 7th grade basically observes nature at a creek as their field trip. The kids do point to the finance field trip as one of the most memorable/useful parts of the year, but that doesn't negate the commercial aspect of it.
I feel like on an individual level, my biggest takeaways from the book were: we do the most harm to ourselves when we don't know how much we know (either over- or underestimating our knowledge), and that our ability to make good decisions changes across time, so make good plans when you can and trust them when things go to shit. On a systemic level, it's that the financial world has gotten crazy confusing and inefficient (like... where do I put my small amount of teacher-savings, the 457, 457a, 403b, or the hybrid county not-pension plan?) and that there are those with a vested interest to keep it that way and blame failures to master an increasingly complex system on the individual.
Reminds me of The Good Place, a bit.