Money is Fiction

Ira Glass: For money, afterall, long ago, we used to use gold, and if you wanted to buy something, you had to carry around these heavy, shiny pieces of metal. Then we decided, no, let's just leave the gold in a bank. Instead of the gold, we're going to carry around these pieces of paper, and the paper on them says, "Yes, there's gold. You can take this paper money to a bank, you can swap it for gold." Maybe you've seen old dollars that say on them "Promise to pay the bearer so many dollars in gold." You could swap it.

Then we decided, it was the year 1933, we decided you can't trade in dollar bills for gold anymore in this country. Dollar bills are just gonna represent the idea of money. That's it. They're not gold, they're just money. And when I talked about this with Jacob, he said, it get's more abstract:

Jacob Goldstein: Because now, if you think of most of the money that you have or most of the money that I have, it's never currency, right? I get paid, that is just a direct deposit from NPR, from my employer to my checking account. I never--It's not like they give me a few hundred dollar bills every week. And then, you know, I pay my bills online, so now, currency even now is like old fashioned. You know, you don't have to touch money, you don't have to see it. It's just information.

[...] The money doesn't really exist. Not only is there no gold, there aren't even bills for most of the money that exists. Most of the money that exists is just the idea, it's just the bank saying "Yes, there is this much money in your account."

Notes:

Today there is not gold backing money, nor even bills for much of the money possessed by the people of the United States. It's just and idea we agree upon.

Folksonomies: economics memes ideas money currency

Taxonomies:
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/business and industrial/advertising and marketing/marketing (0.342425)
/finance/bank/bank account (0.312903)

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Concepts:
Money (0.951107): dbpedia | freebase
United States dollar (0.798950): dbpedia | freebase | yago
Cheque (0.723361): dbpedia | freebase | opencyc
Currency (0.706641): dbpedia | freebase | opencyc
Numismatics (0.647239): dbpedia | freebase
Dollar (0.565613): dbpedia | freebase
ISO 4217 (0.560938): website | dbpedia | freebase | yago
Legal tender (0.502430): dbpedia | freebase

 The Invention of Money
Audiovisual Media>Audio Recording:  Glass, Money, Goldstein (01.07.2011), The Invention of Money, This American Life, Retrieved on 2011-03-12
  • Source Material [www.thisamericanlife.org]
  • Folksonomies: intrinsic value value money currency


    Triples

    13 MAR 2011

     If Money is Fiction, What Happens When People Stop Believ...

    Money is Fiction > Cause and Effect > What If People Stopped Valuing Money?
    This American Life argues that money is a fictional idea that we all agree upon; Kurt Vonnegut speculates on what happens if we stop believing in money.