File spoon-archives/marxism-intro.archive/marxism-intro_2001/marxism-intro.0110, message 64


Date: Tue, 23 Oct 2001 08:31:01 -0700 (PDT)
From: hansolo-AT-pseud.pseud
Subject: M-INTRO: Spell of Money


Professor Ehrbar stated in one of his emails to our Marxian
Economics class that "whenever there is a problem anywhere,
the gut reaction is usually: if we had more money, this
problem could be solved.  This is quite irrational.  It is
easy to see that overall, money is a big obstacle which
creates more problems than it solves.  But everybody treats
money just the opposite, as if it was the big remedy for
everything."  He called it the spell of money and I thought
it might be an interesting topic to discuss.

I know that I have felt like many of my problems would be
solved if only I had more money.  For example.  My car was
made in the early 90's, has some nice features, and most
importantly gets me where I need to go.  It kind of has a
history of needing an expensive repair every seven or eight
months and it really irritates me.  Every time it goes into
the shop I honestly yearn for more money.  The last thing I
want to do is spend a lot of money on car repairs.  I feel
that if I had a lot of money, I would either have a better
car or it wouldn't matter how much the repairs cost.  As I
read Hans' quote I thought to myself, is money the cause of
this problem, or is it the solution?  My gut feeling is
that if I had more money things would be better.  Chances
are things wouldn't be different, if not worse.  If I had
more money I might feel like I could afford a more
reliable, newer car.  This would increase my car payment,
and insurance payment.  I would probably drive it more as
well using more gas.  These things could potentially use a
greater proportion of my income causing me to be worse off.

If anyone has any examples of how money has caused more
problems then it has solved I would be interested.

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