What is the whole point of money? Money is key in today’s society. The significance of money has been around for decades. Most people in my generation would say, “If you ain’t getting money, then what you doing?” Money is power and that is what everyone needs to help them get through life. In general, money is supposed to make people happy. This green paper bill allows people to purchase items that are needed, but is that all the money can do? Money is generally the root of all evil! Money can cause depression, financial stress, divorce and gambling problems. Is money significantly important to society or is it just a social problem that keeps the world going? It amazes me how much money is in the world right now currently being spent.
Money can come in any shape or form. A small country in the Pacific Ocean called Yap created their own source of money. The way they created this was from limestone. But they created this stone to be a huge rock deposit. The people on the island Yap knew that they had to make things do with the resources on the small island. They realized that they needed to put value into this mass stone. When I first listened to the podcast by NPR, I would have never thought a rock could be a source of money for people. Milton Friedman talks about the island of Yap in his research report called “The Island of Stone Money”. He shares that the Yap islanders brought their own manifestation of wealth by creating the stone money (Friedman 4). Also, their source is worth a significant amount of money even when it isn’t being used.
Some objects that we have today are known to be materialistic items. Purses, shoes, clothes, cars, etc. Personally, I am one of those people who spend money frequently and focuses on stuff that money shouldn’t be deprived on. When spending money on objects that have no degree or meaning to life isn’t helpful in society. The items you purchase shows where you come from and how much money you have. We as people see famous celebrities or business gurus with their items that they purchase with all of the wealth we have. Rappers spending thousands of dollars at jewelry stores and strip clubs; causally throwing money down the drain. People who are “rich” or “wealthy” don’t care about their money as much. These people know that they will always have money that can just be replaced with another movie deal or music video. Their value of money isn’t the same as regular citizens idea of money. The idea of money can come from several perspectives; everyone sees the value of money differently.
Money has definitely changed over time. As decades went on, technology has come through over the years to show that spending money can be in different forms than just cash, coins, and checks. Society can use cards through apps to transfer and receive money. Apple products can now pay for food and other items through there device. There once was a time you had to go to a store and actually purchase items. People don’t have to get out of bed to do any shopping. Technology and money go hand in hand in today’s world. Linking your credit or debit card will have us to make purchases whenever we want. Money has also changed by people converting money into bitcoins or people trading Forex. By watching the charts or letting money sit will give you some fast money in just a couple days. More people find the easy way out to make quick money and it seems to be working just fine for some people. I tried to make fast money by doing Forex for a couple weeks and surprisingly I made a couple hundred dollars by just marking up my stock charts and picking good currencies to trade with. Everyday money is changing as the years go on.
Even the way money looks its starting to change throughout the years. The faces of paper bills have changed several times decades after decades. The. bigger bills like 20, 50 and 100 are always switching up from the original. The $100 bill would have new enhancements while the smaller bills (ex: $1 or $2 bill) would receive no improvements(Mcmorrow-Hernandez). When creating new enhancements to the bills, people of today’s society are always thinking of ways to make “fast money”, counterfeit money is being used each day for spending. Along with making counterfeit money, bad money checks are being used get $1000s of dollars within hours. People put too much thought into having fast money. My mother always told me, “Fast money isn’t good money.” Stated previously, money can cause problems that could jeopardize futures.
When it comes to different terms regarding money, they are always misinterpreted. Society gets the term wealth and the term rich mixed up. Wealth is the idea of having valuable possessions that are abundance over time. Being rich is having money at the moment for big success. Cash is the paper form of money, people use cash sometimes due to the fact that there are debit and credit cards. The value of money goes hand and hand. Each amount of money has a different value, every bill, a coin has a significant value than another. The form of money can be converted through several forms. An ATM helps transfer money in and out for people to make deposits and withdrawals. The ATM is also known as an electronic bank machine.
the importance of money is very valuable. It could be for valuable for people who are rich or poor. The idea that money isn’t everything, isn’t true. Money holds a lot of power to society. It is how we get our household items, personal items, cars, houses etc. Without money or another form of money, what would we do and how will we react each day if money wasn’t in demand?
References
Friedman, Milton. “The Island of Stone Money.” Counterintuitive, Stanford University, Feb 1991. https://counterintuitive2015.files.wordpress.com/2015/01/stonemoneyessay.pdf
Glass, Ira. “The Invention of Money.” This American Life, 19 Feb 2018. https://www.thisamericanlife.org/423/the-invention-of-money
Hernandez-McMorrow, Joshua. “How Paper Currency Has Changed In Our Lifetime.” CoinWeek, May 23, 2017. https://coinweek.com/paper-money-2/paper-currency-changed-lifetimes/
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