Thursday, February 09, 2006

perception of money

People obsess about money. However, the manner in which they discuss money depends on how much of it they have. Now, I'll admit that my experiences with participating or listening to discussions about money are somewhat limited, but I've heard more than a few stories.

Many people feel like they never make enough or have enough money. In a way, that's a good thing. The desire for more drives people to work and provides motivation for people to participate in a capitalistic economic system, which I have found to be fairly efficient all things considered. But in another way, it's a terrible thing to listen to people complain about their money problems without actually doing anything tangible to address them. (I suppose the same could be said of almost all problems.)

On the other hand, a much smaller number of people have, or feel they have, enough money (for their current station in life) and consequently view their money differently. It's as if there is some sort of point of inflection, like a change in perception of what money really is. If you don't have enough or don't think you do, it's this daily thing, this need to constantly scrounge for more to make ends meet. It's as if money is viewed as a possession continually to be parted with. It continually loses value in that situation. However, if you have enough or feel you do the value of money changes. To me, it appears to change positively, both from a sort of happiness standpoint as well as an economic standpoint. It becomes an asset to use to exchange for goods or services or other assets. It gains value in this case.

So how do you end up on one side or the other?

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

If you don't plant the money tree and nurture it, the inflation will eat it all up! If you want to just "get by", in that case you can always go on welfare. Welfare isn't a bad thing. Who needs to work and keep laboring when you just let the government takes care of you from cradle to grave. You can always join the union, work for the government, take a paid leave of absence, be on a disability leave. All kinds of ways to help the government spend money. If you really want to work, work for the government, towards your retirement, try to pump in lots and lots of overtime pays, by the time you retire a few months later, your monthly pension will be as big as your regular paycheck!

Brian said...

What ever happened to anonymous lady?

Anonymous said...

Still around