Frank and Ernest by Thaves for March 11, 2021

All mine ever says is goodbye.

It does, but it makes no cents.

money talks, but talk is cheap…

Takes a ton to be heard. Average person’s wage doesn’t even make a squeak.

“Money doesn’t talk, it swears.” – Bob Dylan

Wonderful one!

Love/hormones talk louder than money, just ask the De Beers family.

All my money seems to say is “Goodbye”.

And more than anything money walks

""Money talks, B.S. walks."

The Golden Rule. Alas.

It always has……

Money talks. What does it say? What do you hear it saying?

“Spend me. Spend me.” or “Save me. Save me.”

“This interest rate doesn’t make any cents.” or “It makes cents to invest in the future.”

“Trust me. Worship me.” or “In God We Trust.”

But it can’t sing and dance and it don’t walk.

Yes, but it’s getting so you can’t hear a dollar bill anymore.

Money has no intrinsic value. It only has value to the extent that you can talk someone into giving you something you want in return for it. It is a medium of exchange in place of direct bartering. The money required to buy a loaf of bread or an hour of a worker’s time changes with time. It is not a fixed value relationship. Basing money on gold or silver is no better. People who do not value gold or silver might refuse to trade you a well-made wooden cup for it. Indeed, the Romans mentioned the difficulty in getting the german tribes to accept roman money in exchange for produce or labor.

It is the artificiality of money that made it possible for a few unscrupulous individuals to take advantage of the artificial foreign exchange rates to build factories in foreign lands and buy foreign labor to run them for a modest sum in our money but a living wage for the foreigners.

They then brought the finished products back here, and competed with locally-made products. They could sell for half as much here as the home-made product prices and still get rich on the procedure. Over time, many businesses that did not wish to leave had to, in order to compete, because the public bought the cheaper foreign goods. Bumper stickers like, “Hungry? -eat an import!” did nothing to change the situation. Import duties could have saved the day, but Congress did not do that, so we became a ‘service economy’, with most people providing ‘services’ to other people.

China used our money to buy essential mineral rights around the world, while casual environmentalists were pleased to move the smokestacks halfway around the world. The former impacts our strategic ability to support and defend ourselves, while the latter is merely moving your toilet to your neighbor’s yard.

Money is a belief system. It only works so long as people believe in it. The instant people lose confidence in its value, it has no value, and cannot even whisper effectively.

Wait — what happened to the artwork?

Kind of reminds me of the Golden Rule. He who has the gold rules.