Samantha Kessel
Blog Critique of “Why does money have value?”
I chose to critique this blog entry simply because of the article title on which it is based. I have always wondered how money works exactly. It’s simply pieces of paper with various prints on it yet we can use it worldwide to buy various goods or services. In class we discussed money and how it is useful due to the phrase “this note is legal tender for all debts, public and private” meaning that its value is actually backed by the government. This just sounds so crazy to me, the idea of a paper being worth something simply because of the words that are on it; also the fact that the government, which is in more debt than I can even begin to wrap my head around, is the backer of our currency. The author of this blog focused on the primary point I also caught onto in the article which is the idea that money is simply a good just like everything else that is produced. I never thought about the fact that money is simply a good that is produced and that it really can be traced back to the old days of the barter system where we were simply trading one good for another good. The article also relates the idea of money to something that we can all relate to; if someone else has it then it is something that we want also. This idea is seen from childhood on, we always want what other people have and money as a good is no different. The article also makes a good point when it comes to the idea of inflation. For many people in class we learn about inflation yet we do not actually completely understand it because it is not something that we have actually had any experience with in our lives. The author of this article however makes it much more understandable by describing it as a time where we no longer know what our dollars are actually worth. For example we could take an entire barrel of money, as stated in the article, to the store to buy something as basic as a loaf of bread. The article also directly relates inflation to what we have learned in class by describing why inflation or deflation even occurs. It states that inflation is related to the same principle as a supply/demand system. This tells us that the supply or demand for money can be affected not only by money directly but also by the rise or fall in the supply or demand of other goods. This article is a great summary of a product that we take advantage of every day yet many people do not actually stop to consider.