Money is a necessity in the world we live in, you need it to survive. It’s just a piece of paper but it has so much value to it. When people get ahold of a lot of money whether it’s inherited, won from a lottery, or earned, people grow a different behavior. Money causes people to become greedy and careless. This has always been an issue but of course as the years go by it gets worse. The prices in the market gradually increases making it easier for the poor to struggle while the rich are living no differently. There isn’t many people in the world that are willing to help the ones that are less fortunate. Money has become a dangerous necessity.

We know that money is ‘valuable’ but every one doesn’t know the history or background of it. Money truly has no value, it’s just a piece of paper. When trading first started it was with gold. In the broadcast by the Planet Money team at NPR, they explain how money began and that money just represents the value of gold but it’s not worth anything. Now with this information it’s confusing how people can be considered ‘wealthy’ because of the number in their bank account. It’s odd how this also causes a change in behavior, we are all human and deserve to be treated equally. Money should not be causing a division in our world.

Another example of people acting differently with money is when they suddenly win a big amount of it. Anyone could be greedy, when being wealthy their whole whole life and even if they had hard times themselves. All anyone cares about is themselves, this could be good but also bad. If someone has the money or opportunity to help someone, they should. There isn’t enough good in the world. We are divided into classes and it’s normal to us. The lower class gets treated poorly while the higher class gets worshipped. People with more money have more opportunities in life, they get advice from other rich people on how to continue having a good flow of funds or maintain it properly.

There are experiments that have been used showing how people’s behavior change in situations. In the article “The rich are easily offended by unfairness” the author explains how studies were held to show if the less wealthy or the more wealthy would accept the unfair offer. “In this game, the proposer gives the responder an unfair offer of CN¥2, but keeps the remaining CN¥8 out of CN¥10. If the responder accepts the offer, each receives the proposed amounts; otherwise both receive nothing. We chose the ¥2/¥8 offer that can elicit roughly 50% rejection rates” this states the basics of the experiments. The three studies were all very similar, showing that more of the poor would accept the unfair offer and the rich would deny it. This shows how money has such a quick effect on ones behavior, the less wealthy, only are thinking about how they never had that amount of money and how much it could benefit them. Money is so important in our lives that they don’t even second think in these situations.

Another unfair act is our taxing system. There should be greater acts in taxing the rich more than the poor. It is unfair given that the poor are already struggling as it is and now they are being taxed more than the ones who have enough money to pay. It makes absolutely no sense and is one of the inequalities in our world. Stated in the article “Taxing the Rich”, “Scheve and Stasavage argue that governments don’t tax the rich just because inequality is high or rising—they do it when people believe that such taxes compensate for the state unfairly privileging the wealthy.” This just explains how messed up our government is. It shouldn’t be that hard to make both the rich have higher taxes and if not then both classes have equal taxes. Our world is built on inequality and no matter how much things are changed everyone will be treated unequally.

Resources:

Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, The rich are easily offended by unfairness: Wealth triggers spiteful rejection of unfair offers Published, 5April 2017

Scheve, Kenneth and Stasavage, David. Taxing the rich , published 2018