Table of contents for Issue 43 - March/May 2024 in New Philosopher

“Few rich men own their property. The property owns them.”– Robert Ingersoll In contemporary society, it’s all but impossible to operate without money; without joining the game of chasing and building wealth. Sure, there are a brave few who attempt to operate outside of the economic system, as well as historical examples like the Iroquois in North America, but a moneyless economy such as a Time Bank or Core Economy is – at this stage, at least – no more than a utopian vision. Perhaps the interdependence of the family household is as close as we’ll ever get. Obtaining money in order to live is serious business: without money, surviving and thriving is cast adrift. No ticket, no entry; without money the human essentials of seeking food and shelter shift…

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I teach at a Hispanic Serving Institution where more than half of the students are first-generation college students. Most are also working-class, living at home and paying a portion of the family’s bills. Many aspire to take care of their parents and grandparents, and to provide for a family of their own in the next ten years. So, they work part- or full-time while taking as many credits as the university will allow. Some of these young people daydream about extreme wealth – Versace driveways and golden toilets – but the majority just want enough money for money not to be an issue. My students’ ideas about money were inherited from their parents, many of whom grew up with dirt floors and who still struggle to keep the lights on.…

In 1600, as Shakespeare worked on his great tragedies, the Mughal Empire, stretching across modern South Asia, was arguably the wealthiest place in the world. It produced about a quarter of the world’s manufactured goods and dominated the global textile industry. As British historian William Dalrymple put it, “for their grubby contemporaries in the West, stumbling around in their codpieces, the silk-clad Mughals, dripping in jewels, were the living embodiment of wealth and power – a meaning that has remain impregnated in the world ‘mogul’ ever since.” Then, something happened to reverse this flow of wealth. India became a paradigmatic impoverished nation. In its place, European nations – and their settler colonies – ascended. By the middle of the twentieth century, a clear hierarchy had emerged, with the wealthy nations…

What does it take to live a flourishing life? If social media is any indicator, flourishing equates to happiness, and our happiness depends on wealth. How often have we heard people say, “If I could only get rich, then everything would be OK,” or “When I win the lottery, my life is going to change.” Not to mention the get-rich schemes promising to give you the life you’ve always wanted. A 2023 poll reported that 6 in 10 Americans believe money can buy happiness, according to financial services firm Empower. However, research has shown that money can only do so much for us. In 2010, Princeton University economists Daniel Kahneman and Angus Deaton found that our day-to-day happiness rose as our annual salary increased. But then happiness plateaued at 75,000…

Eleven o’clock had just struck at the Bourse when, making his way into Champeaux’s restaurant, Saccard entered the public room, all white and gold and with two high windows facing the Place. At a glance he surveyed the rows of little tables, at which the busy eaters sat closely together, elbow to elbow; and he seemed surprised not to see the face he sought. As a waiter passed, laden with dishes, amid the scramble of the service, he turned to him and asked: ‘I say, hasn’t Monsieur Huret come?’ ‘No, monsieur, not yet.’ Thereupon, making up his mind, Saccard sat down at a table, which a customer was leaving, in the embrasure of one of the windows. He thought that he was late; and whilst a fresh cover was being…

The greatest improvements in the productive powers of labour, and the greater part of the skill, dexterity, and judgment, with which it is anywhere directed, or applied, seem to have been the effects of the division of labour. The effects of the division of labour, in the general business of society, will be more easily understood, by considering in what manner it operates in some particular manufactures. It is commonly supposed to be carried furthest in some very trifling ones; not perhaps that it really is carried further in them than in others of more importance: but in those trifling manufactures which are destined to supply the small wants of but a small number of people, the whole number of workmen must necessarily be small; and those employed in every…

Philippe Van Parijs Philippe Van Parijs is Professor at the University of Louvain and Director of the Hoover Chair of Economic and Social Ethics. He has been a Visiting Professor of Philosophy at Harvard University and at Oxford University. He is a member of the editorial boards of many international journals, including Journal of Political Philosophy and Philosophy & Public Affairs and is the author of 19 books. In 2001, he was awarded the Francqui Prize, Belgium’s most generous scientific prize. Samuel A. Chambers Samuel A. Chambers is Professor of Political Science at John Hopkins, co-Editor-in-Chief of the journal Contemporary Political Theory, and is series co-editor of Routledge’s Innovators in Political Theory. He has authored eight books and published three dozen journal articles and has published three related books on…

When construction entrepreneur Jack Whittaker won the record-breaking $315 million Powerball jackpot on Christmas night in 2002, the largest undivided lottery jackpot in history, Whittaker became an instant celebrity in West Virginia for the pot of gold that had landed upon his doorstep. Whittaker vowed at once to be a good example of what happens when someone comes into riches. “I want to promote goodwill and help people,” he said to a television interviewer, adding that he intended to spend more time with his family and live as if nothing much had changed. But just one week later, Whittaker was found propped up at the bar of a nearby strip club, the Pink Pony, with $50,000 at the ready. The decades following Whittaker’s Powerball win were nothing short of tragic:…

Few things divide families so much as an unequal skew of wealth among its different members. Whether caused by a divisive matriarch or patriarch leaving everything to a favoured child, while snubbing the rest, or by one family member striking out to make piles of money, and succeeding, the less fortunate siblings – who are either disinterested or incapable of accruing personal wealth – are left rumbling with barely disguised envy and dissatisfaction. No one wants to be the poor relative, the hanger-on, the one who can’t keep up or pay their way; and while generosity is what you might expect from family members who do have resources, it’s often the case that wealthy people are least generous towards those whom they are closest to. My father was obsessed with…

My children are eight and ten years old, and have very different attitudes towards money. My daughter, eight, spends it almost as soon as she gets it – usually on soft toys, a menagerie of which are strewn across her room (and half the house). My son, ten, likes to save it up. One of his few recent purchases was a stainless steel safe of the kind found in hotel bedrooms, purchased with parental assistance at a bargain price. He is very proud of it, and keeps precious things inside: in particular, a handful of rare Pokémon cards gleaned from swaps and birthday gifts, their resale value testifying to their desirability. Which of my children gets more pleasure out of their money? I’m not sure. My daughter enjoys her wealth…

Philippe Van Parijs is Professor at the University of Louvain and Director of the Hoover Chair of Economic and Social Ethics. He has been a Visiting Professor of Philosophy at Harvard University and at Oxford University. He is a member of the editorial boards of many international journals, including Journal of Political Philosophy and Philosophy & Public Affairs and is the author of 19 books. In 2001, he was awarded the Francqui Prize, Belgium’s most generous scientific prize. Zan Boag: You have been involved in the debate about universal income for decades. What initially prompted the idea for you? Philippe Van Parijs: Massive unemployment and the absurdity of the unemployment trap inherent in Europe’s welfare states. Even in the best among them, the beneficiaries of social assistance or unemployment…

The Novelist Letitia Elizabeth Landon 1802-1838 One wide bond One great evil of highly civilised society is, the immense distance between the rich and the poor; it leads, on either side, to a hardened selfishness. Where we know little, we care little; but the fact once admitted, that there can be neither politically nor morally a good which is not universal, that we cannot reform for a time, or for a class, but for all and for the whole, and our very interests will draw us together in one wide bond of sympathy. The Economist John Maynard Keynes 1883-1946 For all rights and efforts Money is only important for what it will procure. Thus a change in the monetary unit, which is uniform in its operation and affects…

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“Pride is as loud a beggar as want, and a great deal more saucy. When you have bought one fine thing, you must buy ten more, that your appearance may be all of a piece; but… It is easier to suppress the first desire, than to satisfy all that follow it. And it is as truly folly for the poor to ape the rich, as for the frog to swell, in order to equal the ox.”– Benjamin Franklin, The Way to Wealth Benjamin Franklin, one of the founding fathers of the United States, was the 15th of 17 children, and left school at age 10. His father was a soap and candle maker. Despite his lack of formal education, Franklin was an avid reader, and spent much of his spare…

In western capitalist culture, status is determined by the individual possession of high-value items such as luxury cars, boats, and property – by one’s lifestyle choices (regular travel and membership in exclusive sports clubs); one’s network or social connections; educational achievements (elite education, career, and public recognition), all of which require the spending of cash. At its heart, therefore, status is mostly about spending dollars on oneself – either money made centuries ago by one’s ancestors and passed on via inheritance, or money made today. Not all cultures, however, were so motivated. In ancient Inuit culture, status was determined not by how much you spent on yourself, but by how much you gave away to others. Inuit potlatches were elaborate ceremonies in which those who gifted the most – gold,…

LARA AND ROGER GRIFFITHS: $2.76M In 2005, this British couple won a $2.76 million lottery jackpot, after which they did what many lottery winners do: they bought a Porsche and went on luxury holidays. Five years later, their underinsured house caught on fire, and media reports suggest their 14-year marriage broke down shortly thereafter. ALEX AND RHONDA TOTH: $13M In 1990, Alex and Rhonda Toth won $13 million in Florida, USA. 15 years later, the money ran dry after some excessive spending and gambling, including a three-month trip to Las Vegas. Eventually they were undone by a tax evasion investigation by the IRS that claimed they owed $2.5 million in taxes, with Rhonda going to jail for two years and Alex dying before the trial began. BILLY BOB HARRELL: $31M…

To many basketball fans, Wilt Chamberlain was one of the greatest players of the 20th century. To others, Chamberlain is better remembered for his claim to have slept with twenty thousand women. (The figure seems impossible, but Chamberlain insisted that he’d used quite conservative assumptions in arriving at that estimate). Among philosophers, however, Wilt Chamberlain is best known for something he never actually did. In his 1974 book Anarchy, State, and Utopia, the libertarian philosopher Robert Nozick proposed what’s known as the ‘Wilt Chamberlain Argument’, a simple but ingenious rejoinder to the idea that economic justice is a matter of how wealth is distributed within a society. For example, many of us would assume that a society where everyone has more-or-less equal amounts of wealth would be better than a…

“That man is the richest whose pleasures are the cheapest.” – Henry David Thoreau “We may have democracy, or we may have wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can’t have both.” Louis Brandeis “How many threadbare souls are to be found under silken cloaks and gowns!” Thomas Brooks “Nothing incites to money-crimes like great poverty or great wealth.” Mark Twain “Part of the beauty of me is that I am very rich.” Donald Trump “No good man ever became suddenly rich.” Syrus “If we command our wealth, we shall be rich and free; if our wealth commands us, we are poor indeed.” Edmund Burke “By right means, if you can, but by any means make money.” Horace “Virtue cannot dwell with wealth either in a city…

Philosophers are more likely to be poor than rich. Some have made a virtue out of that. Diogenes of Sinope, the original Cynic, watched a mouse that seemed to be content with very little, just a scrap of grain, and modelled his own abstemious behaviour accordingly. If the mouse could get by with so little, why couldn’t he? He lived with just one cloak and no other clothes and used a large empty storage jar for shelter. He did have a cup, but when he saw a boy drinking using his hands, he got rid of that. His was a minimalist life, and he claimed to be very content with it. He managed to get some laughs at the expense of the rich too. When he was asked what kind…

In the critically acclaimed television drama ‘The Bear’, Carmy Berzatto, a world-weary chef, departs from the glitzy confines of a New York Michelinstarred restaurant to assume control of his family’s struggling sandwich shop in Chicago, against the backdrop of his older brother’s suicide. As he faces the challenging task of reviving not only a faltering business but also healing his dysfunctional kin, he finds that the disciplined, hierarchical world of fine dining holds the key to transforming the chaotic and desolate lives of those around him. Fuelled by the ambition of staff member Sydney, a young ambitious chef, Carmy makes it his mission to transform the fat-spattered kitchen of Italian beef sandwich making, which delivered lunch through a hatch, into a prestigious dining destination. He sets out to attain a…

Samuel A. Chambers is Professor of Political Science at John Hopkins, co-Editor-in-Chief of the journal Contemporary Political Theory, and is series co-editor of Routledge’s Innovators in Political Theory. He has authored eight books and published three dozen journal articles, along with numerous chapters and essays. He has published three related books on capitalism, money, and political economy: Money Has No Value, Capitalist Economics, and There is No Such Thing as ‘The Economy’. Zan Boag: When looking at the research that has been conducted into money and wealth, it appears that few academics have studied the topic outside of economics. Not many seem to want to delve into the thorny topic of money. Samuel Chambers: I’ve basically been trying for 15 years to understand money, and my perspective now is…

The Wealth of Nations Adam Smith The real measure Every man is rich or poor according to the degree in which he can afford to enjoy the necessaries, conveniences, and amusements of human life. But after the division of labour has once thoroughly taken place, it is but a very small part of these with which a man’s own labour can supply him. The far greater part of them he must derive from the labour of other people, and he must be rich or poor according to the quantity of that labour which he can command, or which he can afford to purchase. The value of any commodity, therefore, to the person who possesses it, and who means not to use or consume it himself, but to exchange it for…

What is your demon? I don’t know, but perhaps it’s related to the fact that I’d never answer this question sincerely in public. Which thinker has had the greatest influence on your life? G. A. Cohen. For a while in college I was a pretty hardcore libertarian. I read Cohen’s arguments against Nozick, grappled with them, but ultimately they made me change my mind about some ideas with which I had very strongly identified, and had probably been dogmatic about. If you could change one thing about the world, what would that be? I think the risk of unintended consequences is high with answers to questions like this, so I’m tempted to start small. But that’s no fun. So I’d say: vastly improved understanding of how to keep our planet…