Abraham Yeung - Blog Q3 Week 9 - Here Comes The Money
What should we do? How should we tax the rich? Does pineapple belong on pizza? What should our foreign policy be? Does mint chocolate taste good? Do I want to be friends with this person? It seems that no matter what, there’s bound to be some sort of conflict everywhere. We Americans love to disagree.
Money is the one exception. Money is power. It is American to love money, and there is no American in the world who doesn’t love money. Heck, just about everyone and their mother loves money. It’s just how society works. Capitalism is as American as cheeseburgers, Ford mustangs, and the bald eagle.
Because we have shaped society to revolve around money, money is now synonymous with power. The more money you have, the better things you can buy. Big houses. People. Spaceships. The media. The people that have money have the ability to do everything, and they in turn have power.
Now, I’m not complaining about how blatantly unfair this is. I love money too, and if somebody handed me more money than I could make in a thousand lifetimes, I would do the same thing too. The fact is, the pursuit of money has shown us society’s best (or most deranged, if you take a look at some people).
Without such a simple yet powerful motivation, we would have never managed to unearth the most peculiar specimens of the human race. Just look at the billionaires in the world. They are either immensely smart, or something is so fundamentally wrong with their brain that their whole worldview is different. That strange perspective is what makes them so rich, because they are able to conceive of the most random ways of making money.
Now, having a gaggle of crazies run the government is without a doubt, terrible. But I do have to appreciate the qualities that have made them their wealth. In a society where money is power, and the most important challenge is the pursuit of wealth, taking a page out of their book comes in handy. After all, these billionaires are humanity’s greatest soldiers, specialized in taking advantage of the system and dedication to a single goal.
I love WWE because it's quite possibly the most American thing you can think of
MONEY SONG - here comes the money [HQ] - YouTube
I love WWE because it's quite possibly the most American thing you can think of
MONEY SONG - here comes the money [HQ] - YouTube
Hi, Abraham! Money is so awesome. I remember in elementary school when I found a $20 bill at the park. I was SO excited. Sometimes, I get a little perplexed at the thought of how very wealthy people live. A lot of people around the world are forced to work for the sole purpose of getting money to provide for their families. Their entire lives are literally work and they have to devote their lives to their jobs. Rich people on the other hand, don’t have to worry about any of that. At all. I wonder what they do all day. Of course, they have jobs too, but it’s probably not to the stress level or extent to their poorer counterparts. How often do they get bored? Or maybe they never get bored? Hmm. I think if I was a billionaire, I would spend a lot of my time basking on the fact that I’m a billionaire and made it in life. Anyways, aside from my blabbing, I have a few things I want to comment on. Billionaires are truly the scum of the Earth. There is no ethical reason to hoard your wealth to that extent. It’s also incredibly selfish, and while no one has an obligation to help others, I wonder how demented and egocentric you have to be to completely disregard hundreds of millions of people and families that you could very easily help. And on the far right of that spectrum, let’s go ahead and use our wealth to infiltrate ourselves into the government and take extra advantage to benefit our car and space technology companies.
ReplyDeleteAbraham, you opened your blog with some really thought provoking, mind bending, war starting questions because what do you mean pineapple doesn’t belong on pizza?!?! I will never understand those people. As controversial as this may sound, mint chocolate is in the top 3 and it's almost undeniable. I love how you shift from these questions into the main topic of your blog: Money. I think money is the one thing Americans cannot disagree about, and I don’t mean taxes I mean just the fact that everyone loves it purely because of what it provides and what it has the ability to do to a person’s life. I love how you mentioned the media as an aspect of our society that is available to purchase because the media is a rapidly deteriorating industry. I know that sounds like a hot take but your point about how money is synonymous with power and how those with money have the ability to do everything is seen most clearly in manipulation of the media. It was very interesting to see how you transitioned from talking about money to those who have lots of it. The “gaggle of crazies” is one of the most apt ways to put it and I couldn’t agree more, but I think to really be successful and set oneself apart from the crowd you have to be crazy. However, to them they might not be crazy, they might think that society as a whole is crazy and somehow that just bolsters their confidence and ability to accumulate wealth and grow their empire. I love how you called billionaires “humanity’s greatest soldiers” because they do what many people spend their entire lives trying to do: beat the system, and in some cases, revolutionize the system completely.
ReplyDeleteYour acknowledgement of how those with more money have the power and liberty to do anything they please, and how you understand why the wealthy do what they do is a very pragmatic and realistic view that I rarely see, since most media tends to focus on how the wealthy should be doing more to help people and many people preach about how they would do so much more if they became wealthy.
ReplyDeleteI like how you posed that because billionaires are strange, they think of different ways to earn money and become billionaires in the first place! It’s not something that most think of when discussing billionaires, but it's a shockingly true statement.
Your acknowledgement of how while having these people in power is bad, yet we can still learn from their good traits is really amazing! Not often do people try to see the good in bad situations and so your reminder of how we can still improve from this is quite inspirational.
Hi Abraham, I really enjoyed your blog this week because as a fellow asian child I completely understand the “talks” which you mentioned as I have been at the receiving end of many of them, especially towards the earlier parts of high school. Oh do I miss the days where I used to be able to breeze through school from kindergarten through eight grade, even ninth grade wasn’t too horrible (except for English nine honors, but that class wasn’t bad it was just hard). How the tables turned so quickly in tenth grade needs to be studied and somehow junior year is even worse. It’s funny because I feel like a lot of your blog relates to the American Dream that we were discussing in class for the past week LOL. Abraham dont say things like i’m not special ok we are ALL special we are all very special in our own ways. Less than 2 percent of the population accomplish things that are worth noting so don’t worry you are in the vast majority percentage. Honestly though, I don't think people want to live like Americans anymore, the country, the leadership, the government, laws, it’s all going to crap. I don’t even know if we are the richest country in the world anymore. The only thing that we have going for us is we make the rich richer and the poor poorer. I feel like as a country we have forgotten how to work hard and what it means to be a self made person where you have to work for everything you have and that could be one reason that the American dream is fading or its definition is so drastically changing. Anyway, I really enjoyed reading your blog. It was a very relatable read and just remember WE got this and WE are special.
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