“It’s just money,” he said, throwing down a twenty for a beer and walking away.
What does “just money” mean? I have two jobs and, as you fellow students may sympathize, a lot of bills. If what he said means “money isn’t important,” then why have I worked so hard saving enough money to pay for tuition? Wouldn’t the university understand money’s unimportance? Hell, any one of their economics professors could tell them, right? Surely my car insurance carrier, with all of its number crunching, would also come to realize money is not important.
But it is.
Some people consider money to be a pure object and take it for granted. Money actually is a metaphor — one of those terrible words from high school English. The bills and coins form emblems of the abstract notion of value. Now, the immediate assumption that a person’s wealth determines their value forgets that we do not live in a perfect society. But we’ll concern ourselves with how things should be, in an effort to realize the ideal.
When a person performs a service or produces a product, they add value to society. Society has grown to be too vast, too advanced an entity for one person to realistically barter their value throughout life. Too much time would be spent on establishing a market for their individual products or services to produce anything of the quality we enjoy today. Efficient management levels and corporations would not exist. Manufacturing would be impossible. Technological achievements would disappear with the inability to effectively produce them. No matter how good I am at growing chickens in my backyard, it’s not going to get me a car so that I can drive to my girlfriend’s. Money solves that. Money doesn’t go stale, doesn’t rot and doesn’t depend on if the person holding what I want desires what I specialize in. I can accumulate money and store it until I have contributed enough value to exchange it for the car.
Alternatively, say I developed a software package that made Internet commerce much more secure. The local grocery store would not exchange me food for the bits of coding I develop each day. Instead, a company will provide me with money, since they do not have food, that stands as an indicator of the value I am providing society. I can then take that value and exchange it for someone else’s: I can exchange it for the value of food. That 20 spent on a beer would buy me at least four valuable meals — but maybe he valued the beer at $20.
Anyway, while the paper of the bill isn’t of much use, it stands as a voucher for what you have contributed to society. How many of us students said last weekend, “It’s just a football voucher,” and then handed it to a random freshman? Money forms a portable, intra-societal trade item that, although physically is nearly worthless, represents previous individual value earned. It doesn’t matter if you earned it designing software, flipping a burger, ringing up a sale or raising chickens. The next person you encounter will accept your money in exchange for what they have regardless of their interest in chickens.
Logically then, monetary wealth should indicate the amount of benefit each individual contributes to the public. Unfortunately, some people seek ways to exploit the system of trade, or even outright steal value. Mistakenly referred to as “capitalism,” this taking value not earned actually describes exploitation, no different from slavery or pirating. Capitalism consists of fair trade in a free market — you can exchange your value with anyone who desires it, for however much you and they determine the value to be. Each individual should receive value (money) equal with the value they contribute to society through production and service. Nobody innately deserves money; money should not be distributed based on need (who could fairly determine that, anyway?). Money doesn’t create value, it only reflects it. Remember: people make money — money does not make a person.
So “it’s just money” really is a simple concept, after all. It’s just the value you’ve added to the world — or, possibly, stolen from it. Money simply constitutes your resources for buying and selling, for living and creating, for learning and enjoying. Feel free to glibly spend it; you’ve earned that right. But let’s remember that saving money will also help us. The more each person saves, the more purchasing power they have, and so the higher quality of living they may enjoy. They can quickly spend their value, living hand-to-mouth as in a bartering society, where they hope that they have enough value to trade for their wants; or, they can save their money and use it to vault themselves to even higher levels of trade. One day you may desire a house, a new car or to have children. You will need to care for those children and educate them. We can’t take our money with us when we die, but we can pass it on. The more value you contribute to society and then save up provides an advantage for you to direct towards whatever you choose, whether it’s the college education for your children or grandchildren or contributing to scientific research. Every person wants to leave a legacy.
Or maybe you won’t want to spend all twenty bucks on a beer because rent comes due again in three weeks.
Matthew Clausen ([email protected]) is a junior majoring in English.
