$

$ is the root of all evil or just a reason for commodity? Is it a purpose to a means or a devil in disguise? Is it a piece of paper or a sign of wealth?

We work for $. We work for $ to buy our daily bread. We work for $ to provide our family with shelter, health care, education, and the latest video adventures. We work for $ because we don’t know how to survive without it.

For we are consumers, well, I retract that statement for we have been programmed into consuming. Through the gift of modern advertising, we have been instructed on how we must have the latest blender or refrigerator or washer/dryer or microwave oven. We are also instructed on the proper fabric softener and healthy cereal and most powerful sanitary pad that can be purchased today.

So the dream is to work hard and long and make as much $ as you can to acquire all these desirable items. This was the post-war plan. Bigger is better. Trade in last years model for the latest features. Constant rollover of desires and the ever constant demand to spend our $ is what we live for.

Like lemmings, we all followed the plan and consumed houses and cars and green lawns and country clubs and the finest schools and all associated with being normal in a society seeking prestige, while forgetting those less fortunate. Someone will take care of them.

Let the government or one of those bleeding-heart organizations take care of the poor, like they do with the trash and snow removal. A bought and sold official will come up with some law or amendment to care for the less fortunate with rotting shelter, food lines and lacking health care. Don’t worry about education or creating job skills, just keep ‘them’ out of sight. Just throw $ at the problems for committees and researchers and reports to be made and speeches before the public calming the nerves but not solving any problems. Perhaps another study group needs to be formed? 

So as good citizens of the planet, we work hard and make our $ and pay our ‘fair’ taxes and take our kids to soccer and our trophy wives to the country club dances and drives our fancy cars and wears the appropriate attire with the latest hair cut. It is $ that provides us with all of these luxuries.

So what if there was no $?

How would you buy groceries? How could you pay your mortgage? How could you buy gas? How could you show your status in society?

What if your skills and training were all there was to provide for yourself and your family? The old term is ‘barter’.

Compensation for the effort should be and often is agreed upon before the work. Both sides accomplish their intended goals and everyone is rewarded equally.

But that would make everyone equal and how could you caste each other? Religion and color and even height are obvious ways, but $ is better. Why pay a young kid with great ideas and innovative thinking the same as a long time dedicated worker who in the long run hasn’t done anything except hold down a chair? Why should a woman make equal pay to a man when she is considered a second-class citizen? Why raise the minimum wage when the employee isn’t doing any extra work?

As the separation of the “haves” and the “have nots” widen, the job requires more hours without raises and the constant threat of layoffs. The dream of a better life is slipping away, no matter how much $ you think you have.

You really don’t have any $ anyway. Those greenbacks that used to fill your wallet are now a plastic card. The banks show on the computer screen a bunch of numbers, but still you hope it will be there tomorrow. That $1.00 could be dropped in worth to .50¢ in seconds due to global wrangling out of your control.

The game goes on everyday, at the coffee shop we order and hope we have enough $ to pay for it. The gas pump varies from day to day and we wonder if we have enough $ to pay for it. The politician decides to declare a campaign for office and doesn’t worry for there are others with $ who will buy it.

Buddy, can you spare a dime?