Today I'm trying to finish my application for a spot in a prestigious (expensive) summer writer's workshop. Requesting at least a partial scholarship involves writing a letter explaining my financial hardship and a statement explaining why I am a good candidate for this scholarship; this is turning into an essay on money and asceticism, sending me back down rabbit holes I delved into years ago.
This excellent Current Affairs article took me a series of increasingly abstract Google queries to find again (what eventually worked was "rich people's wealth 'is a conversation'"):
https://www.currentaffairs.org/news/2021/01/trumps-taxes-and-the-nature-of-money
The paragraph that has haunted me since I first read it in 2021:
"āØThe purpose of money is to establish an exchange rate between labor and finished goods. It allows capitalistsānot us, we are not the primary 'users' of the toolāto compare worker to worker, good to good, investment to investment, and translate between them. It does a pretty good job of describing the lives of wage earners because thatās what itās designed to do. Our hours worked, productivity, and consumer habits are all numbers in a spreadsheet. But any attempt to turn it back on capitalists is like an amoeba trying to look at a human being with a microscopeāthe lens doesnāt go both ways. A poor personās tax liability can be calculated to the cent. But when a wealthy person does their taxes, there are a number of arguments to be made about how much they own, how much they made, and how much they lost. Your net worth is a number. A capitalistās worth is a conversation.ā©"
The author is correct about how the world works, but of course we agree it should work differently. My worth is a conversation, too, and so is yours.
oscarfalcon
stephen!
