After Hours

Money originally was supposed to represent something and was redemable for that item, if everything went to Hell in a Handbasket. It could have been baised on anything really but now it's baised on Nothing at All.

Just I don't understand what Wealth Creation is. Or for that matter what the term Wealth means.

It's supposed to be good but it's measure is something that has no real value as said above

You can't eat or drink it, and can easily live without it.

So what exactly is Wealth?

Also why was Quantitative Easing when practiced by Japan so bad but is perfectly acceptable when done by the US?

From my very limited understanding QE it is the first step in debunking the Value of Money and those who worship it. Have a big enough incident that adversely affects the Wealth or Money, like the US Defaulting on it's obligations and the Donald Trumps of this world have lots of paper and no real wealth. Even then they don't even have all of the Paper as it's not really possible to actually get, they are just told that a Organization will hold that much for them, however if it was ever demanded it would prove impossible to provide, if enough Owners wanted their Money at the same time.

After all they can not eat it or drink it and it's perfectly possible to live without it though I'll admit that Living Without it will be radically different to life as we now know it currently.

I had a similar conversation recently with someone who thought I was taking the P!$$ when I said I had more Shells than they did, and they where unable to comprehend that any society could have their currency based on something as silly as Shells.

Apparently having a institution print paper and call it money is OK but basing your currency on anything else is not acceptable.

By the same token I understand why the various Governments get really Narky when their citizens print their own money as it adversely impacts on that countries ability to pay for things but I then find it difficult to comprehend why the same Government who stops their citizens from printing their script is quite happy to do it themselves. Of course they use a Fancy Name for it and would never consider it Counterfeiting.

Col

You might try reading Ruskin: Munera Pulveris. This book of very elementary economics was originally published in installments in a magazine, but the liberals (in the proper, historical sense of that much -abused word) disliked it so much that the serialization (and the book) was never completed. Nevertheless, Ruskin did manage to get out his definition of wealth and a description which is still valuable of the nature of money.

I never would have known. And value to whom? The holder?

As I read this, wealth is relative: if you think you are wealthy, you are wealthy. I have things that are invaluable to me, yet valueless to others. Does that make me wealthy in your eyes? (Not that it matters to me...)

If all the money in the world, notes and gold, were destroyed in an instant, it would leave the world neither richer nor poorer than it was. But it would leave the individual inhabitants of it in different relations.

This could be a fun experiment. Destroy all the money in the world. I wonder how much of the world's population determines its self-worth by the number of dollars, pounds, yuan, rubles, pobble beads, or ningis in its possession. It's probably a majority; for the financial industry, I suspect the percentage approaches 100.

Interestingly, Ruskin's definition of money appears to exclude linking it to an outside standard, so I guess the gold standard is out completely.

but since the rising prosperity stopped being passed on to wage-earner salaries, (70s?) the value of money became fundamentally disconnected.

Part of the underground economy, aided by the Internet. You join an online collective, post what you can do and what you need others to do. A committee assigns point values to various tasks.

Crypto-tribes, for example.

Money serves as a unit of account, a medium of exchange, and a store of value. That's textbook.

Money enables us to set a price on things, and to reduce the friction involved in buying and selling them. You want to sell your barley to buy my coal? You sell your barley for money, give me money for coal, and we're both happy. Without money, you'd have to barter, and if I don't want your barley, you'd have to figure out what I <i>do</i> want, find somebody who has that and is willing to swap for barley, and then bring that to me and complete the exchange. Without money, buying and selling is a big pain. People would make fewer things and less of them, because they'd be hard to sell, and they'd sell within their own village, except for a few wandering trading speculators. It's the kind of economy you get in a serf society.

I think there's a fourth fundamental purpose to money, which is: money liberates peoples' ability to specialize and create objects and services of value. Human beings simply can't, or won't, create wealth without an effortless means of transacting exchange. Humans are different creatures because of money; they are more human than they would be without it.