Money, money, money

[Dan]

Hello everyone:

At the last meeting I volunteered to present discussion questions for
the next get-together. Afterwards I remembered that I will be in
Seattle visiting my daughter this weekend so I won’t be able to
attend.

Still, I think this issue has some great topics for discussion and in
truth I’m hoping you don’t get through them so I can participate on
June 3rd.

Anyway... here goes.

The child in Dombey And Son asks “Papa! What’s money?” If Papa were
an economist he would likely answer, “Well son, money is a medium of
exchange as well as a store of value and unit of account.”

Not very satisfactory is it? The economist’s definition completely
avoids the human/emotional component of money.

Try these thought experiments:

Think about an issue regarding money. Now, how does thinking about
that issue make you feel?

Next, try thinking about an issue, any issue, that does not in some
way involve money.
Can you conceive of such an issue?

Further, if you could divorce yourself from considerations of money
(no... not because you won the lottery, rather because you simply
decided that money wasn’t worth bothering with). In what ways would
your life be different?

Imagine a world without money. How would such a world work? John
Lennon suggested that “... it’s easy if your try.” Me - I don’t think
it’s so easy.

Finally, is the overall effect of money in our lives constructive or
corrosive? Stated in slightly different terms, what kind of society
would allow money to have an impact on a child in the way it is
described in After All This Is Over?