Politics And Facebook

... don't mix for me. At all.

I've got a couple of friends who like to post political videos and comments on their Facebook pages. One of them posted this little video from Robert Reich.

I didn't watch it at the time, but I tuned in long enough right now to watch about half of it and see that Mr. Reich, like Mr. Greenberg, sees only money. Good for him.

In any case, at the time my friend posted it, I wondered how to reply if I did watch it. You could point out Greece as a warning to us against borrowing, marital status and its correlation with poverty and social pathologies and all manner of other things. I didn't post any of that.

To me, Facebook is a way of keeping in touch with friends. Travel photos, stories of my kids, pictures of the family and hobby updates are why it exists. It's personal, not public. Politics doesn't belong there any more than it works well at a large dinner party. Instead of launching on the guy, I changed the subject and gave him some of my favorite personal finance and economics books, starting with Dave Ramsey's The Total Money Makeover. Most of the time I ignore the political stuff on Facebook, but in this case I wanted to reply with something, and that was the best I could do.