BARRY RITHOLTZ: Bad news - changing your mindset does NOT make you rich
'This deceptive and disingenuous nonsense is rampant in the marketing materials aimed at gullible and desperate consumers'
The past three decades of minimal real wage growth have led some people to wonder why they haven't gotten ahead. And in much the same way that nature abhors a vacuum, con artists hate missing an opportunity to separate suckers from their money. This might explain why we see a special class of self-help gurus - none of whom were rich until they developed this particularly odious grift - who have dedicated themselves to convincing people that if you only believe it, it can happen. Typical of the genre are platitudes like this: What’s the main thing that separates the rich from the poor? Ask any of the financially free people, and they will tell you the same: their mindset. This deceptive and disingenuous nonsense is rampant in the marketing materials aimed at gullible and desperate consumers. Indeed, the quote above comes from the website “Psychology for Marketers,” which should scare us into the horrifying but inevitable realization that behavioral finance has been weaponized. “Nudge...
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