|
Nominations and Campaigning for the 2024 RationalWiki Moderator Election are now open |
Talk:Money
|
This economics related article has not received a brainstar for quality. Please consider expanding the article appropriately. See RationalWiki:Article rating for more information. |
| ||
|
| ||||
We could really do with an article on money rather than a disambiguation page. I could write on but it would suck there are people better at econ than I. ТyNo 21:48, 16 August 2011 (UTC)
I keep seeing claims like "97% of all money isn't real, it's just debt invented by the banks." Is this true? and if so, is it relevant? It seems to run parallel to the freeman on the land stuff I come across. SophieWilder 09:07, 31 July 2012 (UTC)
- It sounds like typical crackpot stuff, mixed with what is probably gross misunderstandings of financial mechanics, but unfortunately I don't know enough about the subject.
Radioactive afikomen Please ignore all my awful pre-2014 comments. 09:16, 31 July 2012 (UTC)
- It does come down to what you mean by money; economists have several definitions (M1/M2/M3/M4/M5) which range from hard cash through all the savings and certificates of deposit - many of which are only realised over long periods of time. Niall Ferguson's book The Ascent Of Money gives a good overview of how the monetary system has developed over the millennia, but most significantly over the last 600 years with the rise of fractional reserve banking.
ГенгисRationalWiki GOLD member
09:46, 31 July 2012 (UTC)
- Based on what I learned in economy class, as well as what my father's related to me from his buisness degree, 'money' is different from 'wealth.' Money is what you earn when you have a job, and is fluid: it gets spent and saved and changes hands. Wealth does not change hands as easily. For example, if you buy a house, that house has value. So long as that house has value, you have wealth in the form of your house. If your house grows in value, you get more and more wealth, same as if you buy more houses with your money. Wealth generates money in a way, and in other ways can be considered potential money. It's hard to describe. But if you have a stash somewhere generating interest for you, that's wealth. Cars are not wealth; they go down in value rather than increase or stay the same. So a person's base income is VERY DIFFERENT from their actual level of wealth or the value of their collective money. A person could have a decent salary but live in an apartment and fail to stash and manage the money such that their income is their only asset, and they'd have a relatively high money income but low wealth. A person could have a relatively low income but own a lot of land that for example their family bought when land was cheap. Each acre of that land is wealth and may be gaining value to be sold at increasingly higher prices; that's a case of a low income but relatively high wealth person. So when you hear about the super super rich and their money, it's not just about income. They have enough money to acquire wealth in the form of highly profitable interest, valuable stocks, land, houses, and other things. Each of those units of wealth is effectively a money-generator, with secondary 'incomes' of their own. There are many people out there who, even if they lost their incredibly lucrative jobs, could live very comfortably off of the ambient money generated by their units of wealth. And that is my TL;DR for the morning. ±
KnightOfTL;DRjust shut up already 12:51, 31 July 2012 (UTC)
- "Ambient money" sounds like elevator music for rich people. Radioactive afikomen Please ignore all my awful pre-2014 comments. 16:58, 31 July 2012 (UTC)
- It's the elevator they ride while soaring high above the glass ceiling and the heads of unwashed peasants. ±KnightOfTL;DRcritical thinking is the key to success! 17:16, 31 July 2012 (UTC)
- It's the elevator they ride while soaring high above the glass ceiling and the heads of unwashed peasants. ±
- "Ambient money" sounds like elevator music for rich people.
- Based on what I learned in economy class, as well as what my father's related to me from his buisness degree, 'money' is different from 'wealth.' Money is what you earn when you have a job, and is fluid: it gets spent and saved and changes hands. Wealth does not change hands as easily. For example, if you buy a house, that house has value. So long as that house has value, you have wealth in the form of your house. If your house grows in value, you get more and more wealth, same as if you buy more houses with your money. Wealth generates money in a way, and in other ways can be considered potential money. It's hard to describe. But if you have a stash somewhere generating interest for you, that's wealth. Cars are not wealth; they go down in value rather than increase or stay the same. So a person's base income is VERY DIFFERENT from their actual level of wealth or the value of their collective money. A person could have a decent salary but live in an apartment and fail to stash and manage the money such that their income is their only asset, and they'd have a relatively high money income but low wealth. A person could have a relatively low income but own a lot of land that for example their family bought when land was cheap. Each acre of that land is wealth and may be gaining value to be sold at increasingly higher prices; that's a case of a low income but relatively high wealth person. So when you hear about the super super rich and their money, it's not just about income. They have enough money to acquire wealth in the form of highly profitable interest, valuable stocks, land, houses, and other things. Each of those units of wealth is effectively a money-generator, with secondary 'incomes' of their own. There are many people out there who, even if they lost their incredibly lucrative jobs, could live very comfortably off of the ambient money generated by their units of wealth. And that is my TL;DR for the morning. ±
- Economics minor here. Most 'money' is indeed 'numbers in the bank computers', due to the money multiplier of people re-lending the money. This is nothing new, nor is it some sort of insidious plot. You deposit $10,000 to the bank, they lend out $9000 for someone to buy a used car, the dealership deposits that money back in the bank, who lends out $8100 to someone to go to college, college deposits the money, etc. The result is $100,000 from only $10,000 in actual dollar bills. So long as no one acts insane, this is not a problem. If everyone decided to stuff their money under mattresses, sure the money would equal the money in bills, but what people don't seem to understand is that their incomes would be reduced by the same amount as the money supply. If you lent those mattress-bucks to your neighbors, who in turn bought stuff and re-lent that money elsewhere, it'd be the same thing. If we switched to shiny metals, and lent them to each other, it'd once again be the same thing, only worse because metals rust/corrode and unlike money the government can't make more to stabilize the economy (the ability to print money is a GOOD thing). If the bank puts the money to good use like education or productive industries, the economy grows by more than the borrower owes to the bank. If not, like instead of putting money into education or industries the banks decided to put the money into money sinks like houses and cars which do NOT grow the economy, the extra debt becomes far more than the growth of the economy and the result is a banking crisis.CorruptUser (talk) 04:14, 5 February 2015 (UTC)
- It does come down to what you mean by money; economists have several definitions (M1/M2/M3/M4/M5) which range from hard cash through all the savings and certificates of deposit - many of which are only realised over long periods of time. Niall Ferguson's book The Ascent Of Money gives a good overview of how the monetary system has developed over the millennia, but most significantly over the last 600 years with the rise of fractional reserve banking.
What money really is[edit]
Extra Credit has a series on how paper money came into being but also defined what money is: a third good that can be traded for and everyone agrees has value. Originally as long as it is durable enough and hard enough to get it it could be used as money. In fact, a staple of some science fiction is that what is valuable varies wildly.
For example in Lost in Space's "Treasure of the Lost Planet" the treasure of a pirate from Betelguese is pig iron - because gold, silver, and jewels are so common on his homeworld that buildings are made with them with common items like shovels, knives, forks, and even frying pans being made of silver and gold but there was no iron on Betelguese. Minecraft's emeralds similarly serves as how much the value of something changes depending on setting.
In Star Trek's "Catspaw" Kirk points out the Enterprise can make a ton of diamonds, rubies, emeralds, and sapphires making them "valueless". Yet dilithium is so valuable that if Henry Mudd can be believed you would buy planets with them.
One of the gag emotes by the female Draenei in World of Warcraft is "This planet has a tremendous supply of sandstone. The inhabitants must be wealthy beyond their dreams."
In one of Rocky and Bullwinkle's Fractured Fairy tales King Midas tricks everyone into beleiving he can turn things into gold (using a gold paint) and so devaules gold that his nation abandons gold and uses turnips instead - making him the poorest man in his own kingdom.
In the Dungeons and Dragons cartoon Eric is from a wealthy family but in the Realm he is effectively dead broke as the money he has on him is worthless. The Howells of Gilligan's Island are in the same situation for their stay on the island as the money they brought with them is effectively worthless.--BruceGrubb (talk) 22:50, 23 January 2022 (UTC)
Yap Rai[edit]
Would the Yap Rai stone at the bottom of the ocean count as the ultimate notional currency?
(And in what story did the local king have 'a treasure' of stones on the grounds that nobody would wish to steal them?) 171.33.222.26 (talk) 15:06, 18 October 2013 (UTC)