Is money valuable or is it just paper?

In todays society we realize that the value of many items and things increases over time. A house back in 2003 0r 2019 isn’t as great as the value as it is now. Now just for a 2 bedroom and 1 bathroom is as much as it was for a 3 bedroom and 2 bathroom many years ago. Now the value for the 2 bedroom is almost $400,000. That’s sounds ridiculous right? Yea it does. Add that with school university tuitions, and grocery shopping, and car payments of $700 to almost $1,000 dollars a month and clothes, think you’d have enough to pay with a job that has a minimum wage of $17 dollars? Working 40 hours a week getting paid bi-weekly? No. Its not enough to survive. This is the problem in America today. Our government thinks that its okay to live like this while they’re behind an office desk still raising the prices in things cause inflation.

            Money to certain people is everything. They believe that if you have money you are a certain ranking in the economy pyramid depending on how much money you have. You can either be described as first class. Meaning someone who is rich. Has value to their families name and privilege because of how much they have, own, and created with their money. While in middle class you have access to certain things but not a lot as first class. While in lower class its much more harder to have access to things people have in middle and first class. That’s like an every day argument in todays society. For example, children who are the kids of first class parents have access to a better education. They have private school tuitions paid for by their rich parents. While kids in middle class can have the opportunity to receive a scholarship to pay for some or a full ride to schools like high schools or universities. Though kids in lower class have to go to public schools and receive the same education but not in such a great environment. Environments where other children make fun of them for their clothes or broken shoes they own because their parents can’t afford something newer, but have just enough to buy a pencil and a notebook for school. Some are even fortunate enough to to have just a book bag to carry whatever is distributed in school. 

            As I listened to the podcast about Yap and the stone money it occurred to me that money back then was a rock basically which had some value back then but not most value. Though in todays society that is no longer valuable. So as it was stated in the podcast moneys value does decrease over time all the time. We had evolved through stones cut to money shapes to have value. We went from trading gold for valuable items. To making coins where if you give too much you can get some back in very little amount. Then to paper that was printed, stamped and disbursed to everyone.n then to lastly using coins and paper that was verified by the government just in case of fraud. As you can see money has evolved, but so did its value as planet money stated in the podcast. Money was described as fiction. When the market had crashed people had wondered where did all the money go. Though the truth was stated that the money was never there. So if the money was never there then what was that in our bank accounts? Oh supposedly it was just an idea so that when people sent that it was there they were relieved about it. Just as I said in the beginning planet money stated that money was created out of nothing, but just the idea that a rock would be able to carry value then it would be called money. It was to believed that yap was massive stone money. It was created out of this lemon stone and shaped. This money was as big or even bigger than a human being. Well how did it fit in a wallet or bag or sack you ask? Well it was just stored for something big such as for funerals back then. It wasn’t used for every day items like we use today. This money weighed thousands of pounds. That money wasn’t actually made on that island it was made at another 250 thousand miles away and was brought to the island but for some it didn’t make it to the island. It was lost as the bottom of the sea but still to this day you can travel down there hand see it. 

            To me I feel like if money was created from just a stone does it really still have value today if it bills were just an evolution of what was created thousands of years ago? What makes the difference now. Though you know what is the reason why it has more value now? It because money holds structure in this world. Just as I said before about the economy class. They all hold structure. That’s like us without a government and people doing whatever they want we can’t allow that because it is holding structure.lets say if we didn’t have police then what structure would that be then? There wouldn’t be any there’s just crime everywhere. That’s exactly how the government feels with money they believe if they put value to money there would be structure between the classes. The government feels that not everyone can be rich and have privilege. They believe that because they are still biased, sexist, and racist. Not everyone can be as good as people in the government. Though that needs to change because they are the ones causing inflation. They also do that for a reason because not everyone can win at life, so many have to fall so some can rise and stay above others. 

            Which leaves me to when planet money was talking about the inflation in Brazil and how it had started in the 1950’s and is still trying to be controlled because not many people can deal with it and take care of their families due to this problem. Now a days items in Brazil is paid for in installments. Things such as clothes, shoes and cars and much more. It is paid for in 6 installments over the course of 6 months. So while you are trying to buy other things you have payments you probably can’t keep up with because you might forget because you have other items your paying for. Which is the reason why inflation is caused in situations like this. The more people by the higher the prices rise because so many people are buying because it’s cheap. This is called supply and demand. As supply goes down demand goes up and will continue to rise so much that people wont have enough to afford items anymore. Planet money interviewed a lady named Maria Lia Podente who has 4 kids and is trying her hardest to feed the and keep up with the economy today as they are trying to raise these prices. As Maria traveled to the stores trying to do grocery shopping she had realized that everyday the same man was constantly changing prices of the items everyday. Which had upset Maria and made her come up with a plan to remove the new price tags and pay for the old prices to save her some money. Though as money evolving overtime so did technology. So Maria realized that she couldn’t keep taking off the tags because it was now printed on the items. So it wasn’t the same as before. Brazil was in great inflation and this caused a lot of people to lose money. So it was hard to provide for families. 

            The overall message In this is that money shouldn’t have value now if it wasn’t made with much value back then. Since it was actually just created from stone. This shows that a name is just put to things to give people the idea that it has meaning. So their for they have to work and get taxed a lot for it can all just be taken away. So to me money is still the same as it was before. Just a piece of Stoney that sits and waits for it to be used.