The Meaning of Money

[Paradoxum]

What's wrong with the wording?

It doesn't matter.

The trouble with any other approach is everybody has to agree on who gets to decide what is "fair", and what is "fair" for one might be very much unfair for another. Just look at what happened when Robert Mugabe decried the evil profiteers raising the price of bread and mandated a maximum price at which it could be sold - when people couldn't sell it at that price without making a loss they simply stopped selling it at all.

That is why we elect people. Just having random chance, a rigged system, and greed dictate what is 'fair' isn't any better. Of course things can go wrong if you do something stupid, but that is why you don't do anything crazy.

Why should people pay a higher rate of taxes simply because they were successful?

What is success? Is a teacher or nurse who devotes their life to teaching unsuccessful?

The is that the system is rigged towards the people at the top getting all the money. They can't claim to have earned it.

A flat rate of tax would be one thing but to say someone "must accept their taxes" because they did well doesn't really work. What level of taxes do you think a CEO should accept? This kind of comment is much like saying "the rich should pay their fair share" - without defining how someone is classed as "rich" or what "their fair share" is it's just tubthumping.

I would leave that to someone who knows more about economics.

Who said all persons were equal? Maybe it would generate a lot more freedom for a lot more people so they wouldn't have to work a job they hated to merely exist.

What do you mean who said all persons are equal? Are you a racist?

Companies don't exist to create jobs, they exist to make a profit. And no matter how necessary a job is, if you could teach a monkey to do it then the person doing it is never going to earn a huge amount of money because they are so easily replaceable. It's the simple law of supply and demand again, when someone is doing a job that a trained monkey could do there is an almost unlimited supply of people that could replace them. When someone is doing a highly skilled job that takes years of education and training to do it's much harder to replace them, hence the supply of replacements is very low, and hence the price goes up.

All you are saying is what happens. What happens isn't necessarily justified.

If a company generates more and more business it has to hire more and more people to cope with the workload. If it isn't generating more business it doesn't need any more people. Would you pay a team of gardeners to manage your back garden if it were only 30 feet square? If not why do you think a company would hire more people than it needed to do the work it had?

True.

 

[DaisyDay]

The multiple posts help you grasp the raw verbosity of Mrs Rands work.

QFT

 

[Steve Petersen]

Where is "here"? In 1987 I was in college in Wichita Falls, TX working there part time and making $3.15/hr. starting.

Suburb of Minneapolis.

 

[USincognito]

Suburb of Minneapolis.

Must have been nice. I might have been able to get my own place instead of living at home during those years.

 

[Museveni]

If you're gonna have a discussion about the meaning of money you probably should have chain-quoted an economical report (Hayek's are good on the pointlessness of a single monetary system for trade) and not...you know a fantasy novel..

And the notion brought up in Atlas Shrugged is still flawed. That mind and not muscle is the root of money since theory without pratice is useless. That is to say that thinking up a machine is in reality of less value then being able to actully build and protect it.

 

[DollIsMine]

The meaning of money for the individual depends on the economic structure of society, i.e. if there is no social support (no free education or other services) then money means everything: it means access to food, shelter, healthcare, to everything. In a society which has more social support the meaning of money changes to more of a status indicator and a means to acquire more luxuries, but the essentials of life are no longer dependent on earning money.

 

[Thekla]

Ok Kermit, I will give you that. Other than a technicality over verbage, what about the rest?

Money is the product of a creative mind.

It is the only alternative to violence or coercion in the pursuit of livelihood.

Huh ?

I thought products etc. were the product of a creative mind.

 

[Museveni]

money is the product of a lazy mind since its only reason it came into existence were because it was easier to throw up some coin when buying something then actual produce. The irony is that most really rich people today actully havent produced anything themselves but money still allowes them to be counted as capitalists even though they dont actully have any real capital besides their money (no producing skills or equipment)