Stone Money Rewrite- wvuhockey

P1. What is wealth? To some, wealth may mean money or possessions but to others it may mean power. Prior to reading about Stone Money I viewed wealth as money. Now I am having mixed feelings toward the idea of money. I always used to think of money as a physical object. I also believed that the more money you had, the wealthier you are. In reality money is not even a factor in being wealthy. Money is just what we use to trade for goods. You dont even need a physical dollar bill to buy most things. You can just swipe a card that has money tied to it and the item is yours. If somebody really liked cheerios, you could trade them a box of cheerios for something in return and it would have the same effect as a dollar bill.

P2. When the NPR stated that there is a giant ball of limestone sitting in the middle of the ocean somewhere still being claimed by someone who is deceased is unsettling to me. Donald Trump has created a value for his own name. Unlike banks that pay huge naming fees to have NFL stadiums named for them, Trump can get developers to pay him millions to attach his name to a project. His name is not an object like the sunken fei. Its insubstantialable doesn’t matter at all. And neither could anybody steal it and be richer. If he’s a billionaire, it’s because he can sell his name for a billion dollars whenever he wants to. Like in the island of Yap, we use this object that we do not have possesion of to make trades for other goods. Where they had a big ball of limestone to trade for food and supplies. We trade money Physically or electronically for our goods in today’s world.

P3. Brazil’s idea of money was that it literally grew on trees. They figured if you just print more money, there will be more wealth in the country. If it weren’t for the four brothers, they would still be using that form of economics and their country would eventually fold. Money needs to have some sort of value. If you just print out more, it would not be worth anything. It would be the same thing as picking leaves off of a tree and buying a car with them. Money needs to have value. You then would have to convince the people that the money is now worth much more than it did before and they need to value it more.

P4. Once a country is in debt they will do anything to try and get back on track. For Japan, this means an increase on inflation says the New York Times. As if the people are not paying enough already, they are about to get hit with an increase on everything they buy just to pay off the country’s debt. The Japanese government will announce around 12 trillion yen ($136 billion) in fiscal stimulus measures to boost the nation’s shrinking economy (Bloomberg). I could see the United Stated implement a similar strategy to try and fix our nations debt problem as well. It is a shame that the people who did not create the issue are paying to fix it. The civilian’s hard earned paychecks are being hit hard by taxes for the government’s debt.

P5. Every country has their own various methods to regulate their economy. One thing that is common between them all is the use of a made up object of value called money. Every economy is based on money and every person believes that the more money they have, the wealthier they are. If the money has no value to it, then there is no wealth associated with the green paper. Look at it like this; lets say for example you sell your car in exchange for 10,000 dollars. That 10,000 dollars has value. Where if you just printed out 10,000 dollars with nothing in exchange, it would have no value. Luckily here in America we have a pretty good sense of value when it comes to money. We just have too big of a problem with spending more than what we have.
Works Cited
“Abe Seen Spending 12 Trillion Yen to Boost Japan’s Economy.” Bloomberg.com. Bloomberg, n.d. Web. 13 Sept. 2016.

“How Fake Money Saved Brazil.” NPR. NPR, n.d. Web. 13 Sept. 2016.

“Japan Tries to Ease Fears That Its Policies Will Lead to Currency Wars.” The New York Times. The New York Times, 25 Jan. 2013. Web. 13 Sept. 2016.