ENGL 200 D: Reading Literature: Literature in the Marketplace

My name is Phillip Leland and I just finished my sophomore year here at the UW. I am a computer science major.

I believe money is a tool that humans created to help make trading goods easier and more consistent. We created a currency and gave it a specific worth, upon which we value goods and items. Rather than simply trading one good for another as people did long ago, goods are traded for their equivalent amount of money, which can be later used to trade for an entirely different good. Money can also be traded for an individual’s time and labor, which is prevalent with the salaries people receive from their jobs. Because of this, money also acts as a key incentive for individuals to work and produce goods and services that others desire and need. The more money an individual has, the more they are capable of possessing. This is often seen as being more successful and powerful.

The economy is the system through which these transactions occur. It is a way that allows people to monitor where the money is being traded and what it is being traded for. Money is constantly being traded and moving from one place to the other, so the economy never remains in the same state for long. The economy doesn’t contain high numbers of physical dollar bills. Rather, it monitors the money in a credit form. While the money that an individual possesses and the money the economy keeps track of are essentially the same thing, they occur on much different scales. The amount of money that circulates in the economy is unimaginable to the individual.