Lying for "profit"

Consumerist had a post today about parents who lie to get discounts for their kids.

Well, not exactly. They also teach their kids to lie to get the discounts (saying they're younger or older than their actual age).

I found this troubling in several ways, not the least of which being that from a purely practical standpoint, none of the examples mentioned was exactly the sort that would collapse your finances otherwise. The article made it sound more like a game: where can we and Junior "save" a buck today?

One of the first comments captured my feelings about the article pretty well: "Terrible parenting. She advocates lying and dodging responsibility. The few bucks saved now are meaningless when your child grows up with poor morals."

The rest of the comments break out fairly evenly into shock (what are you teaching your child?), approval (my parents used to blah blah blah), and apathy (who cares about anything). To be honest, I was surprised there were so many who disagreed with the practice. I figured more people on the innernets would be willing to trade honesty for a few bucks, like in the post they had a couple of days ago about how to use your student ID and save. Completely different, of course. (My Purdue ID looks nothing like me. at all. and is also clearly not modern. Plus my PSU ID doesn't have a picture on it because, you know, I haven't been to campus. Although that I should probably change at some point. It's always nice to have another picture ID if you need one.)

Don't teach your child to lie.