There is nothing like money. Can you think of anything else which is both
real and unreal, or concrete and abstract, simultaneously? Of course it takes a physical form: this very week, no-one could have missed the launch of a new £1 coin, as a major media event. Coinage has been around for about 3000 years; before that, goods and services were paid for by exchange and by bartering, everything from salt to sheep. Not easy to slip in your pocket when popping out for a pint of milk: banks must have been more like zoos.
So coinage and paper money have been the currency of exchange until now...(or roughly 11.55 on the human clock). The rot of unreality started with promissory notes, which became banknotes, all bearing the legend 'I promise to pay the bearer the sum of...', but what? Sheep? Certainly not gold, our bullion reserves are just that, reserves, money for a rainy day, like a private hoard kept under the mattress. It would run out somewhere around Milton Keynes if people were to queue to get their 'money' back.
But it is the digital revolution which has sent 'money' into the ether. Now money can exist only on screens, to be transmitted, debited or credited, bought and sold for its changing exchange rate value, borrowed or loaned, without ever touching the ground. Zillions of pounds, dollars and yen exist only as electrical impulses or memory traces. It is quite terrifying that we might reach a point where sophisticated hackers could wreck a national or international economy by producing a virus which 'ate' all the numerals it encountered. Delete is a very simple command. If you have a garden, think about keeping some sheep.
At the individual level, we are already vulnerable to smaller scale scams. I am now talking with HSBC about compensation for the third unauthorised use of my debit card to take a payment of about £70 a month, despite being issued with a new card after the second....work that one out. Arguably, the banks themselves are the worst scammers, in a different way: luring people into over-extending their expenditure (debt by any other name) by dangling good things in front of their eyes - and the means to get them now. Live now, pay later came in with Hire Purchase in the 1950s; credit cards are now given away to all-comers, with apparently minimal checks on their ability to pay them off. It creates the illusion of wealth, but it is a fantasy of wealth wrapped around a time-bomb.
The Editor lacks the skills or software to abbreviate this; you may want to edit it with the pause facility. Alternatively you could give yourself a treat and watch the whole thing.
Credit card
advertising is clever: it conjures up a world of free spending, effortless
travel and unlimited consumerism, peopled by sophisticates who can have it all, now – and
if they can’t, why that’s what the card is for.
Back in
1992/3, I maxed out my Visa credit card. Well-schooled by a financially
diligent father, I was nevertheless obliged to break my own rules and go into
debt by pursuing a property venture which would house me (after the end of my
first marriage), and also provide more income. Nevertheless, as the figures on
the Visa statement climbed, so did my anxiety. It felt as though, at any
moment, the phone would ring or a letter be delivered which would call me to
account, freezing my card, requiring explanation of the overspend and my
intention to repay the sum, perhaps even threatening legal action to recover
their money. How very naïve. None of this happened. Instead, a discreet note
was added to my monthly statement saying that my credit limit had been raised
from £1000 to £2000. Doubled. I had not requested it, I would not have had the
nerve to: why would they offer more credit to someone who apparently couldn’t
repay his existing level?
To make a
short story shorter: this happened several times. Over a period of five months my
credit limit escalated from £1000 to £10,000, without me ever requesting it, or
being asked to reduce the debt, or produce evidence of how I could do so, then
or in the future. Eventually my property venture crashed and me with it, with a
debt of £14k. My fault, but I couldn’t have done it without the helping hand of
Visa.
Why? Because they want you to be in debt, they make huge sums from the inflated interest you pay on it, the more the better. It is a trap which is set to catch people, to entangle them in paying ever higher interest, which itself erodes the possibility of paying back the capital. Eventually I was called to account and told off like a naughty schoolboy, then rescued by a near and dear relative. They didn’t take away my card or lower my limit. The first thing I did when I got home was to cut up my card.
Why? Because they want you to be in debt, they make huge sums from the inflated interest you pay on it, the more the better. It is a trap which is set to catch people, to entangle them in paying ever higher interest, which itself erodes the possibility of paying back the capital. Eventually I was called to account and told off like a naughty schoolboy, then rescued by a near and dear relative. They didn’t take away my card or lower my limit. The first thing I did when I got home was to cut up my card.
I do have a
credit card, now: payment is automatically debited from my bank account every
month, so it’s effectively a debit card. BUT, I have probably used it only twice in the last 20 years, only in
dire emergency. Having escaped the trap once, I’m not ever going there again.
It is so subtle it is almost imperceptible, as it drags you towards the
precipice, but it is pure usury: invidious, iniquitous and in your wallet; and
under your control. Or not.
a fool and his money are soon parted Proverb
A fool and his money are soon elected. Will Rogers
A bank is a place that will lend you money if you can prove that you don't need it. Bob Hope
If you want to know what God thinks of money, just look at the people he gave it to. Dorothy Parker
Money isn't the most important thing in life, but it's reasonably close to oxygen on the 'gotta have it' scale. Zig Ziglar
Greed is Good. Gordon Gekko
Money doesn't talk, it swears. Bob Dylan
There can be few words in the English language which have given rise to more idioms than 'money': possibly 'love' or 'sex' (or both if you're very fortunate)
My money's on you not having read half of that list, nevertheless it's quite an impressive catalogue, and that's without the hundreds of other money-related words and expressions, for example 'filthy rich', 'filthy lucre', 'poor as dirt', 'poor as church mice' and so on.
Why so much, so many? We have a love-hate relationship with the stuff: we love it but it makes us work. Because money is about survival: we have to work, to earn money, to live. Work and money are inextricably intertwined. Work is our central activity for most of our lives and most of our days, much more than leisure, or family, and often more than sleep. The luckiest people are those who love their jobs, are absorbed by them, are also their hobby, 'would do them for free'. For the rest there are just varying degrees of habit, boredom and drudgery, managed and tolerated simply for the pay-packet, the money.
A little old lady sold pretzels on a street corner for a dollar each. Everyday, a young man would leave his office building at lunchtime and, as he passed the pretzel stand, he would leave her $1.00 - but never take a pretzel !!
Without blinking an eye, she said, "They're $1.25 now."
(with thanks to Julian Gold for this working definition of chutzpah)
  
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