The Value of Money

Money: It’s the root of all evil, right? Not necessarily. Actually, the original quote from The Bible (King James Version) comes from 1 Timothy 6:10—“For the love of money is the root of all evil.” Money, finances, and all which they entail intermittently come up in conversation. Prior to discussing money as a quantitative entity, let’s look at it from a qualitative perspective.

I have seen, over the course of my years, so many people who have seen examples of people whom they do not want to become, exhibiting traits which they do not care to exhibit. For every person who is financially successful, a person can point out an example of someone who they’d ridicule for their actions—because of their wealth. Using this fear as a crutch, they limit themselves from seeking true financial success—often for very irrational reasons.

A culture has developed in this country—something that has been around the world for longer—steeped in the tradition that the various people in their various income classes throughout society have been dealt an unfair hand. Politicians with agendas have long engrained into people of the inequality of income and that it should be re-distributed among the different economic classes of individuals: Transfer payments derived from taxes on the affluent become welfare payments for the poor. Sure, there is a time and place for everything, but when the public is constantly being told that one person’s success over another’s complacency is unfair and that one should be punished to subsidize the other, a perception becomes commonplace amongst people that money can be a bad thing.

I’m a die-hard free enterprise capitalist at heart: In a generally unregulated economy (other than central banks and select industries) that each person is free to lawfully pursue making a dollar either by selling his or her labors to another in return for a salary or hourly wage or going into business and producing and/or selling a product or service to someone willing to purchase it, we are all free to earn as much for as much work and/or innovation which we are willing to put into something. Left and right there are examples of people becoming successful either way, even if you choose to work for someone else. Some statistics from About.com show:

· In 1999, average annual earnings ranged from $18,900 for high school dropouts to $25,900 for high school graduates, $45,400 for college graduates and $99,300 for the holders of professional degrees (medical doctors, dentists, veterinarians and lawyers).

· Over a work life, earnings for a worker with a bachelor's degree compared with one who had just a high school diploma increase by about $1 million.

Additionally, there are fluctuations within degree field & occupation (courtesy of the Royal Society of Chemists):

“The average earnings premium of having a degree relative to those with 2 or more A Levels was approximately £129,000 [about $257,500 USD]. The figure represents the difference in lifetime earnings after tax. Graduates in chemistry or physics on average earn well above this value, with a £185,000 - £190,000 [$370,000 to $380,000 USD] premium above those with no degree…Year-on-year statistics show that these subject differentials start to become apparent in the mid-career years: it is beyond the age of 30 that chemists and physicists start to pull away from their contemporaries in their earning power…For any graduate, the average rate of return is about 12% per annum but rises to 15% per annum for chemistry graduates. Psychology graduates will enjoy only a 10% rate of return.”

Regardless of how much working for someone else will gain you, the hallmark of the great American economy is the stalwart of entrepreneurism fueled with a hefty amount of innovativeness, is the best path to financial success and affluence, even if it can be the most difficult.

At any rate, people often equate money with power. People also tend to equate money—in a financial inequity sense—with greed.

Power: “Possessing or exercising power or influence or authority” or “possession of the qualities (especially mental qualities) required to do something or get something done.”

Greed: “excessive desire to acquire or possess more (especially more material wealth) than one needs or deserves,” or, more generally, “avarice.”

Paul Johnson, British journalist, historian, and author, recently wrote a column published in Forbes Magazine entitled “Greed is Safer Than Power-Seeking” in which he begins, beautifully, by stating:

“Able, industrious, imaginative and creative people— the top 5% of mankind—divide into two broad categories: those who make money and those who make trouble.”

The stage is certainly set for a tour de force comparing and contrasting a potential effect on an individual with wealth versus one with simple enthusiasm, zeal, and an agenda. “It is striking that the hugely wicked are quite innocent of avarice,” Johnson writes, showing that tyrants and dictators such as Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, and Mao Zedong weren’t oriented towards the accumulation of wealth; rather, they were obsessed with the accumulation of power. In people that you and I come across each day, he goes on to categorize groups of individuals which exemplify “troublemaking” through their activities. Among them: Attorneys who are concerned more with their interpretation of justice and fairness than an enriched society; Politicians who exist solely to translate their agendas into legislation; and the self-proclaimed environmentalists who, “buoyed by a sense of mission and high-principled idealism that often make them a little careless about the accuracy of their assertions,” have helped push the world into a shortage of energy supply by zealously convincing anyone they can that alternative sources such as atomic energy should not be pursued.

Oddly enough, he closes his column with the thought that “Of course, we need troublemakers,” in the sense that they have, historically, been the impetus for societal changes in civilizations throughout history. Whereas greed—the excessive desire to acquire wealth—can be a bad thing—the net result can always be reflected through the character of the individual in the sense that money only fuels the flames of character traits, be them good, bad, or ugly.

I once worked with a staff sergeant in the South Dakota Army National Guard who had the saying: “Money is like oxygen—the more you have, the easier it is to breathe.” Try this thought on for size: Money, wealth, does not accomplish things—people do. Money is a tool for accomplishing those things which the individual wants done; in doing so, it accentuates character traits that are already present in the individual: If you are predisposed to be greedy and love to acquire “things,” money will only make it worse; if you are predisposed to not like a certain race of people and believe that your land is home to a “master race,” then chances are that wealth will only fuel your need for power, manifesting itself as genocide and a world war.

If you have a predisposition, however, of trying to benefit humankind, no amount of riches will stand in your way of filling the shoes of purpose, desire, and motivation to accomplish something. However, with wealth as a tool, you might be able to accomplish great things.