By Jason Dagenhart
Round Table reporter
Picture this: you’re waltzing through Wal-Mart™ and you see the most magnificent wheelie desk chair, lounging on a pedestal in the office furniture section. You run up to it (in slow motion and with ambient music, of course) and sit down in silent reverie and slowly droop off into a half stupor as you comfortably recline in what could possibly be the best man-made invention ever created. You pull yourself out of your wicked trance and look down at the price tag hanging from the arm of the chair. Your eyes pop wide as you stare at the price tag, thinking about the large amount of moolah you would have to obtain to pay for this chair. You walk away slowly in quiet, unperceivable agony with a hole through your heart but not in your wallet. You suddenly turn around and someone else is in the chair, going through the same motions as you just were. He looks down at the price tag, jumps up in joy, picks up the chair, and runs off to pay for the brilliant piece of work you were just admiring.
Whether we keep it under our mattresses, wallets, pockets, or safes, money is the means of how we do anything. It keeps us safe; it gives us security, gives us food, and allows us to live.
Ever heard of how there are the four necessities we need in life; food, water, shelter, and clothing? Well now we can add a fifth necessity to the list: money.
Money is a necessary item to have when trying to live in a country such as America, or any country for the most part. It allows us to buy the other four necessities we need and without those necessities we would surely perish. It even allows us to buy these in abundance, that is, if you can afford the life of luxury presented on most reality TV shows.
Money is the root of all evil, and it also seems to be the root of where the social ladder begins, one-fourth of the divorces in America, and why McDonalds™ stays in business.
If you have money, you are popular in society. You are powerful, you are liked, and you can use this money to buy whatever you want. But that’s only if you have the money to do that. Most of the population of America is middle class, which means they have enough money to get by, and enough money to buy the necessities (food, water, shelter, and clothing in case you’ve forgotten), but not enough to go out and buy whatever they desire; that’s a luxury for the few times you have an extra bit of cash.
I bet you didn’t know that one-fourth of the marriages in America end in divorce. This happens because of financial problems or problems involving money where the couple just can’t deal with the stressors involved in being together and taking care of your own money. At some points money runs the relationship. It decides what to buy and when to buy it.
As an added bonus money allows McDonalds to stay in business. It’s cheap, affordable, convenient, and at the end you hate yourself for going there (much like Wal-Mart, actually)
In reality, though money in general has come to have such a firm grip and foothold in our society that without it the society wouldn’t even run properly. It would cease to function and it would go into anarchy. Or, we would revert to the bartering system, either one is a viable possibility but in all seriousness money is a living, breathing entity that causes more problems than it fixes.
