Grifting is nothing new, the idea of the Confidence Artist appears in books going back centuries. But how can you truly tell if something is a grift, or a real issue? The answer is through identifying the people involved, their past activities, and trying to understand the situation, because in reality, there is no shortcut.
Now, if you encounter someone who is a known grifter, assuming what they’re doing now is a grift might just save you, but on the other hand, people do deserve the right to change, and to try and get better. However, it should be understood that people are often reliant on their past patterns, and have a hard time shaking them off.
But on the larger stage, when dealing with politicians and political pundits… grifting seems to be a truly bipartisan issue. And unfortunately, there’s no real escaping that with the type of power being a politician entails, corruption often follows.
At the end of the day however, the best advise I could possibly think of is this: If you don’t need it to live, and you’re not in a position to put money towards it without using credit or going into debt, just don’t. There will always be more opportunities, but, the harder you make the here and now, the harder it will be to move forward.