The power of money

Unit 1

Supplementary reading

Money is a fairly large part of life everywhere. Whether or not we want to, many of us spend quite a lot of time thinking about money: how to stretch it, how to increase it, what to do with it, how to take care of it. Most of us don't have to think very hard about what we'd do if more money suddenly came our way. Money determines many aspects of our lives from where we live, to what kinds of clothes we wear, to what kind of car we drive (if we drive one at all), to where we vacation, to what people think of us and what we think of ourselves. Despite its prevalence in our lives, many people have a hard time talking about money even with their close friends and family.

Our society finds many ways to exclude people without much money. Those of us with little money may also feel guilty and ashamed, believing that if we had made better choices in life we would have more. Much of this is a remnant of the early Protestant belief that rich people were rewarded for their virtue, while poverty was a punishment for sinfulness. Many poor people today are made to believe they are poor because there is something wrong with them or their behavior. On the other hand, sometimes rich people have a hard time dealing with their feelings about money too. Sometimes people who have lots of money feel guilty and don't necessarily know what to do with their money.

Money has become such an all-consuming and all-important part of our lives that it is easy to forget that not all life decisions can be made on the basis of money. As well, much of human activity, such as women's work as providers and sustainers of life, is not done for money. Money is simply a tool that we use in our society to facilitate the trading of goods and services. "Money is just some pieces of paper and chunks of metal that you trade for food and clothes. It doesn't really mean anything except that if you have a lot of it you supposedly have a lot of power." So how have a few pieces of paper with certain squiggles and lines on it, come to be so powerful?

Throughout history human beings have desired things they could not produce themselves. Similarly, sometimes people produced more of one product than they themselves were able to use. And so they traded or bartered. Fishermen and farmers traded fish for grain and grain for fish. Blacksmiths traded with cobblers and cobblers with seamstresses. Some of us still trade things: a pair of pants for a shirt, a book for a CD, a meal for a concert ticket. Today people own their businesses and often trade their services for furniture, building repairs, and other products or services.

Eventually people started to use natural resources to measure value. Cattle were the earliest form of "money" and they are still used to set values in some parts of the world today. Cowrie shells were another early form of money used in several parts of the world including West Africa. These shells too were used until quite recently. Perhaps the most common object used to represent value throughout history is gold.

Eventually people started to use coins and later bills (money) to represent value and to facilitate economic transactions. Because coins and bills do not have value but only represent value, their value changes frequently according to the amount of money in circulation. For example, a ten dollar bill is always worth ten dollars, but the buying power of ten dollars can vary considerably.

Traditionally the value of money has been set according to the product that it represents, which is why value is so dependent upon environment. A cow is worth much more in times of famine than of plenty. Silver is worth more before the discovery of a silver mine than after. Value is linked to how rare something is, or how great the demand for the item is. In the Sahara Desert, salt was once so rare and precious that it was traded weight for weight with gold.

In 1816, the Bank of England decided to set the standard of money in gold. This measure became known as the Gold Standard. Each coin and bill was worth a certain weight of gold. In this way money was tied to the availability and thus the price of gold and it had its base in a concrete substance of real value. After the end of the Second World War, the world went off the Gold Standard and introduced a new system of 'legal tender.' According to legal tender, money is no longer tied to any real product. Its value is based simply on the strength of the economy itself.

The place that money has in our current system is not only strange, it's also terribly unhealthy both for people and for our earth. Because poverty and richness are so intricately connected with money, many of us have become blind to all kinds of wealth, and ignorant of most poverty. The system we use has often led to exploitation. This economic system also creates poverty by encouraging citizens to make decisions solely on the basis of economics. There is a tremendous poverty within our culture, namely the poverty of time. Many of us rush through our days with little time to stop and consider what we would call the truly valuable things in life. We live with a poverty of relationships and community, as well as mental and emotional health.

Дата добавления: 2014-11-29