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kentuck (69,712 posts) What is "money"?It's only paper, right? It is not backed by gold or any other asset - only the good faith of our government - is that correct? Money is only valuable so long as we can trade it for other goods. A dollar is only good for what it will buy. If it takes $10 to buy an apple, then it is not worth very much. There was a time when the minimum wage could buy a lot more, even though it was less than today. And why should we worry about inflation when 98% of the people have less and less? Money is relative to labor. If money is worth less and less, then labor is worth less and less, per its value in the marketplace. It's only good for what it will buy.
eridani (39,651 posts) 47. All currency is fiat currency If metals had some kind of inherent worth, why do their prices fluctuate?
johnd83 (519 posts) 59. I agree, commodity backed currencies are no better The gold standard was a disaster in the first half of the 1900s.
Warpy (72,347 posts) 3. It's debt that someone owes us for our labor or other considerations. Instead of bartering like goods, which is a limited system, we are given debt markers which can then be exchanged for whatever we need--food, clothing, shelter, internet service, SUVs, whatever. Money has no intrinsic value apart from being a debt marker that can be exchanged for real stuff.
kentuck (69,712 posts) 12. But if we instead had the $17 billion dollars in debt in the hands of American consumers.... It would probably create a serious inflation problem? As it is, paid to our Treasury note holders, there is little possibility for inflation. The problem with our economy is the exact opposite. There is not enough money in the hands of consumers.
quaker bill (7,252 posts) 13. I make itliterally from scratch. I start with metal and natural stone. I melt the metal, alloy it, roll it, hammer it, weld it. I take the natural stone, cut it, grind it, and polish it. I bring the two together into necklaces, pendants, bracelets, earrings, rings.... I take stuff I paid a little for and sell it for a lot more. The difference between what I paid and what I receive is money that literally never existed, because I created the new value of these physical things from thin air, with ideas and a hammer.... The total amount of "real value" in the world increases, ever so slightly. People value it, and that value is the "money" I receive. We have to stop thinking of "money" as a finite thing. If it was a finite thing, I could not make it.
quaker bill (7,252 posts) 43. a final pointin my business when I take that $50 in materials and turn it into a $500 item, and then place the item in my inventory, I am taxed on the $450 difference by the IRS, as income, exactly the same whether I sell it or not. The IRS treats it exactly the same as money, so it is money. In that they are part of the entity that issues the stuff, they get to define it, they call it money and tax it, so it is money.
Nuclear Unicorn (9,283 posts) 64. The IRS taxes on inventory? I thought they taxed income from completed transactions?
quaker bill (7,252 posts) 65. The change in value of inventory is income.
hunter (17,569 posts) 34. I think a lot about creating a society that no longer uses money. A society that is able to abandon money for something better, probably by technical and social innovations, a society that makes "money" obsolete. What would a high technology society that doesn't use "money" as a means of accounting look like? Could such a society grow within our existing economy or would the present moneyed class see such innovation as a threat and crush it?
hunter (17,569 posts) 38. With the powerful computing systems we have these days, and most every family having a cell phone... ... maybe we could implement some kind of modern multi-dimensional barter system. I don't know. First off we need to create a society in which everyone can be secure in their person, a society where everyone has good food to eat, a safe place to live, access to appropriate medical care, and a good education no matter their current economic situation. In that environment people could experiment with new, innovative sorts of trade. Until then I think we need single payer health care, free public education early childhood through college, good government jobs for the currently unemployed, government support for the unemployable, with inflation controlled by taxing people in the higher strata of the economic food chain. We need to create a "trickle up" economy with money created for the benefit of lower income people who will spend it for necessities and simple comforts (movies, camping in national parks, eating "out" a few times a month...this list is endless) and then skim that money off the top by taxation before it rots causing inflation, buying politicians, or stagnating in bizarre financial games that do not improve our society. What we have now is a eutrophic economy. The rotten money at the top is smothering the economic life below it.
Shankapotomus (2,765 posts) 36. Money is meaninglessI think practically all value on earth traces back to the sun. Plants take the energy from the sun, some animals eat the plants and still others eat the plant eaters but it all traces back to sunlight. Sunlight is the true money. People say they "worked for this" and they "worked for that" but everything we "own" traces back to either the forced appropriation of another living entity's energy or the claiming of inanimate resources that never 'belonged' to us in the first place. It's funny how "It's mine because I worked for it!" is used as the "valid" and sole justification for a person's claim to a resource while they ignore any animal's claim to its resources that exerts the same energy to acquire them. The truth is, nobody truly works for or "earns" anything on this planet. We just take it. Follow the chain of commodities and it will end with someone who is either seizing or gathering them up without payment or reimbursement. And if we are going to take it we might as well recognize there are other beings on this planet that need to live and figure out a more equitable method of distribution.
If money's meaningless, how come most of the primitives look anxiously for the mailman once a month?
Now I'm no gold bug, but that right there is downright stupid on a logic level. Premise - paper money has no absolute value; conclusion - therefore, since the price of metals measured in fiat currency is variable, it's the metal rather than the currency that has no absolute value.
Silver, silver and goldSilver and gold, silver and goldGlenn Beck wants all of your silver and goldHe doesn't care what its worth-He's hoarding it all 'til the end of the earth.Silver and gold, silver and goldMean so much more when I seeSilver and gold is on saleWith a Beck 'token' free.
Money is relative to labor.
I do love their talk about a society without money. Whilst early societies didn't have money, once it was created as a concept it stuck completely and utterly. There are widespread records of money emerging very rapidly when artificial societies are created without a currency - the example well-known by any student of even basic economics is cigarette currencies in prisoner-of-war camps.
A society that is able to abandon money for something better, probably by technical and social innovations, a society that makes "money" obsolete
eridani (39,651 posts)47. All currency is fiat currency If metals had some kind of inherent worth, why do their prices fluctuate?
quaker bill (7,252 posts)13. I make itliterally from scratch. I start with metal and natural stone. I melt the metal, alloy it, roll it, hammer it, weld it. I take the natural stone, cut it, grind it, and polish it. I bring the two together into necklaces, pendants, bracelets, earrings, rings....I take stuff I paid a little for and sell it for a lot more. The difference between what I paid and what I receive is money that literally never existed, because I created the new value of these physical things from thin air, with ideas and a hammer.... The total amount of "real value" in the world increases, ever so slightly.People value it, and that value is the "money" I receive. We have to stop thinking of "money" as a finite thing. If it was a finite thing, I could not make it.
quaker bill (7,252 posts)43. a final pointin my business when I take that $50 in materials and turn it into a $500 item, and then place the item in my inventory, I am taxed on the $450 difference by the IRS, as income, exactly the same whether I sell it or not. The IRS treats it exactly the same as money, so it is money. In that they are part of the entity that issues the stuff, they get to define it, they call it money and tax it, so it is money.
