"Adam Corolla" wrote in message
...

snip


Money is probably the most desired thing there is, because it can be
exchanged for just about anything. So, the varying factor in its value
will be how easy it is to get.

If all the tree leaves and blades of grass became various denominations of
money, then money would be worthless. Not because there's more OF it, but
because it's easy to get. If the government printed five hundred trillion
dollars tomorrow and sealed it all away so no one could get to it, the
value of money wouldn't change even there's a hell of a lot more of it
because it's no easier to obtain. Do you agree?

Now, do you see where I'm going with this? When the government prints
additional money, how does that extra money make it easier to obtain a
given amount of it? Let's say the government opened the vault with the
500 trillion in it and did with it whatever they do with all the extra
money they print (which is what? I don't know.) How does that extra
money make money easier to obtain? Do all companies suddenly give raises
when they find out there's more money in the economy, so that money
becomes easier to obtain? I think the key here is in finding out what the
government does with the extra money. I'll be grateful to anyone who can
explain that to me.

Printed dollars are only a small portion of the "money" that's available in
the economy. Most of it is in the form of demand deposits -- ciphers on a
page, or, today, bits in a computer. The cash is just based on a calculation
of how much of that "money" is needed to keep the wheels of commerce
greased.

The story of money is a confusing and tricky one. There are good
explanations written for college students of economics, and others written
for laymen. One of the most enjoyable of the latter is John Kenneth
Galbraith's _Money: Whence it Came, Where it Went_, but there are newer ones
that probably are more to the point. He takes you by way of the Babylonians
and ancient Greece to get to Wall Street. g

--
Ed Huntress