By: rodgerlvu

rodgerlvu — Fri, 15 May 2009 06:48:03 +0000

I agree, my way to say it is: “I want to have enough money to not have to think about them.”

By: Terry

Terry — Sun, 24 Dec 2006 00:17:30 +0000

Money is the product of hard work? I know idle rich and I working poor, who works harder?

By: English Major

English Major — Sat, 23 Dec 2006 23:05:57 +0000

It’s interesting to me that the Ayn Rand quote, though it’s meant to shore up her idea that how much money you have is a reflection of how you rate on her zero-to-Howard Roark scale of ideal man-itude, also perfectly describes the alienation of the workers from the means of production that underlies Marx’s idea of commodity fetishism.

By: thomas

thomas — Sat, 23 Dec 2006 07:44:51 +0000

My favorite:
The best way to keep money in perspective is to have some.
-Louis Rukeyser

By: Mihaï

Mihaï — Fri, 22 Dec 2006 22:27:52 +0000

I agree, my way to say it is: “I want to have enough money to not have to think about them.”

By: Keter

Keter — Fri, 22 Dec 2006 22:14:58 +0000

You nailed it exactly: materialistic greed is the root of many evils, and is abetted by ignorance which feeds the greed on many levels.

“If you’re going to talk about poverty, you need to have experienced poverty.” — This is a large part of what is wrong in government and public policy circles. Even the best motivated generally can’t solve economic problems because they haven’t had to deal with them personally.

Worse, those in the position to be problem-solvers are usually disincentivized to solve economic problems because the same behaviors and systems (and those who perpetuate them) that create the problems also serve to put money in their personal (and campaign) pockets.

The ignorance issue most directly afflicts the vast majority of consumers: they don’t understand, as Ayn Rand stopped short of demonstrating, that money no longer is worth anything…it is all faith-based. I work because I *believe* I will be paid something that I *believe* I can use to acquire things I need for my continued well being.

A dollar is a piece of paper…or, more commonly, an electron or two…worthless unless the belief in its value is held by many — and you and I as workers and consumers have no real say over whether that will remain true. We could all wake up tomorrow and find our hard-earned money worth nothing if the money men so declare.

The Benjamin Franklin quote is also spot-on and entirely appropriate here, because it addresses the question of “purchasing” something that cannot be purchased. Only a tangible thing — a work product such as a shirt or a meal — can really be purchased: safety is not something you can hold in your hand and its production cannot be described by a work process known to reliably produce that outcome, therefore it cannot be purchased at any price.

Too many people are selling too many things that are intangible (insurance, for example) — and getting rich off of it because consumers don’t know they’re buying snake oil. This, BTW, is the same fallacy used to promote wars against ideas such as drugs or terror in the absence of an identifiable enemy (the enemy in both cases is a systems problem too big to have a nationality or face). The common identifier for this sort of snake oil is that it is usually sold via FEAR, as Franklin hinted.