Is Money Really Yours?
THEY SAY time is money. Indeed it is so, particularly if you spend all your time to acquire money.
But money has wings; it is like a fugitive. Money changes hands. The exchange is an endless and unstoppable process. Each one of us takes part in the game of exchange and our labour is disappearing! Money is spent for your subsistence, surplus money is spent to enhance your quality of living and further to add up to your savings.
Saving is important as it is to raise your rank in the society. And then money is invested and the amount swells as time goes on. Money goes through all kinds of mathematical operations as it is added, subtracted, multiplied and divided as per the situation’s demand. The ability of multiplication takes you up the ladder.
The amount of money earned by you tries to escape your hand and lands up in other people’s coffer. It is happening every moment. Consumers are always letting it go in lieu of procuring some goods. So the ability to hold money is crucial.
The economists will say that the money has velocity and that means it has direction too. There is volatility; the evaporation that is counted. Left naturally in a society, the rich gets richer and the poor gets poorer. The government intervenes and imposes tax. Then the money gets its colour- black or white.
Inflation hits hard the poor and middle class. It is so because they have to buy things for their subsistence and with a higher price. So their saving gets compressed and the extra bit of money gets deposited in the account of the rich, the manufacturers.
More than a century ago, an Italian engineer-sociologist, Vilfredo Pareto observed a peculiar thing. Irrespective of any society and time, it was noticed that the distribution in money assumes a peculiar form. The tail ends (rich people) follow a universal character (mathematically a power law), which is still more or less a mystery. The interpretation turns out to be that merely a handful of people have access to the lion’s share of the total wealth/money in a society or in a country. This is popularly known as 80-20 rule. Twenty per cent of the people hold 80 per cent of the total wealth/money. In a capitalist country like America, it is even 90-20 or 97-03 or so on. But the overall character is same everywhere, even in the the case of communist regime in Russia as it has been claimed. So the inequality or disparity is a hard fact and there is a tendency of its increase all the time.
Let us now consider two propositions by a sociologist John Angle.
First proposition - Where people are able to produce a surplus, some of the surplus would be fugitive and would leave the possession of the people who produce it.
Second proposition- Wealth confers on those who possess the ability to extract from others. So netting out each person’s ability to do this in a general competition for surplus wealth, the rich tend to take surplus away from the poor.
So if you are in the competition, time is always running out!
Development: Is it only for the rich?
The rush for development attempts to uproot the weaker section of the society, abolishes its identity. Influence of real development should be the value added to culture; the lifting of millions from the below poverty line!.
But money has wings; it is like a fugitive. Money changes hands. The exchange is an endless and unstoppable process. Each one of us takes part in the game of exchange and our labour is disappearing! Money is spent for your subsistence, surplus money is spent to enhance your quality of living and further to add up to your savings.
Saving is important as it is to raise your rank in the society. And then money is invested and the amount swells as time goes on. Money goes through all kinds of mathematical operations as it is added, subtracted, multiplied and divided as per the situation’s demand. The ability of multiplication takes you up the ladder.
The amount of money earned by you tries to escape your hand and lands up in other people’s coffer. It is happening every moment. Consumers are always letting it go in lieu of procuring some goods. So the ability to hold money is crucial.
The economists will say that the money has velocity and that means it has direction too. There is volatility; the evaporation that is counted. Left naturally in a society, the rich gets richer and the poor gets poorer. The government intervenes and imposes tax. Then the money gets its colour- black or white.
Inflation hits hard the poor and middle class. It is so because they have to buy things for their subsistence and with a higher price. So their saving gets compressed and the extra bit of money gets deposited in the account of the rich, the manufacturers.
More than a century ago, an Italian engineer-sociologist, Vilfredo Pareto observed a peculiar thing. Irrespective of any society and time, it was noticed that the distribution in money assumes a peculiar form. The tail ends (rich people) follow a universal character (mathematically a power law), which is still more or less a mystery. The interpretation turns out to be that merely a handful of people have access to the lion’s share of the total wealth/money in a society or in a country. This is popularly known as 80-20 rule. Twenty per cent of the people hold 80 per cent of the total wealth/money. In a capitalist country like America, it is even 90-20 or 97-03 or so on. But the overall character is same everywhere, even in the the case of communist regime in Russia as it has been claimed. So the inequality or disparity is a hard fact and there is a tendency of its increase all the time.
Let us now consider two propositions by a sociologist John Angle.
First proposition - Where people are able to produce a surplus, some of the surplus would be fugitive and would leave the possession of the people who produce it.
Second proposition- Wealth confers on those who possess the ability to extract from others. So netting out each person’s ability to do this in a general competition for surplus wealth, the rich tend to take surplus away from the poor.
So if you are in the competition, time is always running out!
Development: Is it only for the rich?
The rush for development attempts to uproot the weaker section of the society, abolishes its identity. Influence of real development should be the value added to culture; the lifting of millions from the below poverty line!.
THE SAME thing can be good for you but can be bad for me as well. If it goes in your favour it is good; it is bad otherwise. Likewise, development always has two sides.
Development is a process. Consumption is the fruit of development. Each of us takes part in the process in some way or the other. But not all of us are able to share the fruit in the same way. To reap the fruit, one has to be at a favourable position. Some consume more, some less, some consume even more and some can’t at all, beyond their marginal subsistence.
Development usually means changing our lifestyle in all practicality. The need for the change comes from the inevitability stirred by the scientific and technological revolutions. Commonly, the so called development often undermines the enrichment of the thinking process as a feedback. Although that is a result of that!
There is an undeniable presence of typical wealth distributions in the societies. Majority of wealth is concentrated at the hands of a few (’80-20 rule’). The race for development is on. If you are a front-runner, you can have the lion’s share; the tail-enders trail more and more; the gap widens. The aspirant middle class wants to move forward in a bigger way; they thrive to accelerate and thus the need for the race intensifies.
The ’development’ in a developing country is like a road always under construction and thus is never taken (by the ordinary)!
The economists will tell you the development means a growing value of your country’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) or some other index going up and up. However, arguably that hardly establishes the existence of the people whose aspiration never goes beyond just survival. To others, the overwhelming excess bears the testimony of it.
Think of the boom in real estate. Home is where you will be living, and which should suit your requirement. But the wealthy people are capable of buying and thus owning multiple apartments, houses or prime locations thereby acquiring asset. Thus, in a way, it is a kind of wastage of space. Same is true for the cars. If you have money you can add a numbers of cars to your collection whereas the need could be satisfied by accessing the facilities of public transport system. Car industries proliferate. Let us think of clothes, cosmetics, electronic gadgets and the list of endless accessories for our modern lifestyle. Yes, they are perhaps important. But do we ever think that the sum of all those sometimes surpass our bare self? Do we get into the sheer madness of being?
In the developing countries, the development comes in big ways! Big dams, big factories, big projects, big money and bigger kickbacks....
The rush for development attempts to uproot the weaker section of the society, abolishes its identity. This strengthens the hands of the strong! The farmers fade into oblivion leaving their land at just one stroke, the tribal march towards nowhere, all to make way for development. No one cares; no one has the time for sentiments. The influence of real development could have been the value added to the culture; it could have been the lifting of millions from the below poverty line! Perhaps, there is no time to ask any such academic question. The debate could have been how development might influence the culture - the scientific endeavours, the literary pursuit, the philosophical thinking in a society or in a country.
Development: The question is - is it inevitable the way it is now? Fundamental questions can be asked- whose development is it anyway? Does this mode of development contribute in any fundamental way to the quality of life of the mass? Questioning thus far does not mean I am trying to take things back to the old days of cavemen. I am merely questioning the excess that is happening and the fact that this does hardly contribute to the quality of life. Enhancement of the quality of living is apparent though. I wonder, is it really questionable? Of course, I fear, this may lead to the very old and fundamental question that is repeatedly asked: What is the purpose of life? If this is not the time to ask, let us leave it to the eternity: We are born, we consume and we die one day!
Development is a process. Consumption is the fruit of development. Each of us takes part in the process in some way or the other. But not all of us are able to share the fruit in the same way. To reap the fruit, one has to be at a favourable position. Some consume more, some less, some consume even more and some can’t at all, beyond their marginal subsistence.
Development usually means changing our lifestyle in all practicality. The need for the change comes from the inevitability stirred by the scientific and technological revolutions. Commonly, the so called development often undermines the enrichment of the thinking process as a feedback. Although that is a result of that!
There is an undeniable presence of typical wealth distributions in the societies. Majority of wealth is concentrated at the hands of a few (’80-20 rule’). The race for development is on. If you are a front-runner, you can have the lion’s share; the tail-enders trail more and more; the gap widens. The aspirant middle class wants to move forward in a bigger way; they thrive to accelerate and thus the need for the race intensifies.
The ’development’ in a developing country is like a road always under construction and thus is never taken (by the ordinary)!
The economists will tell you the development means a growing value of your country’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) or some other index going up and up. However, arguably that hardly establishes the existence of the people whose aspiration never goes beyond just survival. To others, the overwhelming excess bears the testimony of it.
Think of the boom in real estate. Home is where you will be living, and which should suit your requirement. But the wealthy people are capable of buying and thus owning multiple apartments, houses or prime locations thereby acquiring asset. Thus, in a way, it is a kind of wastage of space. Same is true for the cars. If you have money you can add a numbers of cars to your collection whereas the need could be satisfied by accessing the facilities of public transport system. Car industries proliferate. Let us think of clothes, cosmetics, electronic gadgets and the list of endless accessories for our modern lifestyle. Yes, they are perhaps important. But do we ever think that the sum of all those sometimes surpass our bare self? Do we get into the sheer madness of being?
In the developing countries, the development comes in big ways! Big dams, big factories, big projects, big money and bigger kickbacks....
The rush for development attempts to uproot the weaker section of the society, abolishes its identity. This strengthens the hands of the strong! The farmers fade into oblivion leaving their land at just one stroke, the tribal march towards nowhere, all to make way for development. No one cares; no one has the time for sentiments. The influence of real development could have been the value added to the culture; it could have been the lifting of millions from the below poverty line! Perhaps, there is no time to ask any such academic question. The debate could have been how development might influence the culture - the scientific endeavours, the literary pursuit, the philosophical thinking in a society or in a country.
Development: The question is - is it inevitable the way it is now? Fundamental questions can be asked- whose development is it anyway? Does this mode of development contribute in any fundamental way to the quality of life of the mass? Questioning thus far does not mean I am trying to take things back to the old days of cavemen. I am merely questioning the excess that is happening and the fact that this does hardly contribute to the quality of life. Enhancement of the quality of living is apparent though. I wonder, is it really questionable? Of course, I fear, this may lead to the very old and fundamental question that is repeatedly asked: What is the purpose of life? If this is not the time to ask, let us leave it to the eternity: We are born, we consume and we die one day!
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