Category: Money Matters
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Einstein ‘Quotation’ Abuse
Written 7 March 2005. ……………………………….. Senator Charles Grassley (R) was on C-SPAN this morning talking about Social Security reform among other things. He attributed the following quotation to Albert Einstein: "Compound interest is the only miracle in the world." Did Einstein say that? I rather doubt it. It is too stupid a thing for Einstein…
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Did the Catholic Church Change its Doctrine on Usury?
A useful article on an intriguing topic. I take no position on its content, but merely note it for future reference, in keeping with my motto, "Study everything." Did the Church’s change of teaching on usury constitute a doctrinal change? No. What changed was our understanding of the nature and function of money, neither of…
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Money, Happiness, and Conditiones Sine Quibus Non
Money can't buy happiness. What it can buy are the conditions without which happiness is impossible. Thus spoke the Sage of the Superstitions.
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Love and Money
Don't say that money is the root of all evil. That's just silly. Say something that is true: The inordinate love of money is the root of SOME evils. Point proven in Radix Omnium Malorum. ……………………………….. Addendum (7/17). Claude Boisson sends the following: As you already know, your interpretation is exactly that of some careful…
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The Irrationality of Playing the Lottery
I have posted several times over the years on the irrationality of playing the lottery and on the immorality of state sponsorship and promotion (via deceptive advertising) of lotteries. The following e-mail, however, raises an interesting question that gives me pause: As I was reading this story of an impoverished young rancher who won $88 million net…
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The Wages of Frugality
Some of us from modest origins will end up with more money than we will ever need or be able to spend. The wages of our frugality will not be spent by us but passed on to benefit others. We credit our success to the old-time virtues. We understand that poverty is more a lack…
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The Stock Market is Tanking. Do Nothing.
Good advice. I learned the lesson back in '87. New to the game, I freaked out on Black Monday. Of course you remember the 508 point drop in the Dow. I got out, locking in losses, but then took too long getting back in. Now I am older, wiser, and if truth be told, a…
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More on Tipping: A Server Weighs in with Insights and Advice
Long-time reader R. B. sends us his thoughts: I appreciated your post. I am on the other side of the coin: I am a server and I depend on tips to help get me through nursing school. So hopefully I can help bring some insight. I agree with your overall point that one ought to…
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On Tipping
Here, in no particular order, are my maxims concerning the practice of tipping. 1. He who is too cheap to leave a tip in a restaurant should cook for himself. That being said, there is no legal obligation to tip, nor should there be. Is there a moral obligation? Perhaps. Rather than argue that there…
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Why Are People So Easy to Swindle?
People are so easy to swindle because the swindler has as accomplices the victim's own moral defects. When good judgment and moral sense are suborned by lust or greed or sloth or vanity or anger, the one swindled participates willingly in his own undoing. In the end he swindles himself. How is it, for example, that…
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The Worst Thing About Poverty
Theodor Haecker, Journal in the Night (Pantheon, 1950, tr. Dru), p. 38, written in 1940: 155. The worst of poverty — today at any rate — the most galling and the most difficult thing to bear, is that it makes it almost impossible to be alone. Neither at work, nor at rest, neither abroad nor at home, neither…
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Gray Flannel and the Matter of Money
Sloan Wilson's The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit appeared in 1955 two years before Jack Kerouac's On the Road. I never finished Gray Flannel, getting only 80 or so pages into it. It's a book as staid as the '50s, a tad boring, conventional, and forgettable in comparison to the hyper-romantic and heart-felt rush of the unforgettable On the…
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On Relative Poverty and Status
I have a little disagreement going with the Dark Ostrich. He asserts, "Relative poverty is all about status." In an earlier entry, I quoted him as maintaining that We are born with a natural inequality which soon turns into economic inequality. The reason it turns into economic inequality, I believe, is that humans have a natural desire…
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The Predictive Powers of the Trumpianly Deranged
Not good: Since the day Donald Trump was elected president in November 2016, the Dow Jones industrial average has risen by some 35 percent, making the last 14 months one of the greatest bull market runs in history. Some $6 trillion of wealth has been created for Americans — which is very good news for…