Most of us in the English-speaking world grew up hearing the saying, ‘money is the root of all evil.’ I daresay few have even questioned the wisdom or accuracy of that phrase. But, I wish to be the one to do it.
I’ll just come right out and say it, money is not the root of all evil. Far from it. Money, per se, is neutral. It is a medium of exchange, replacing the barter system of our ancient ancestors. Without it, international trade, in fact, a lot of our domestic trade, would be impossible. Money, as money, does neither good nor evil.
What does good and evil, are those with money. Like the gun and bullet, which locked in a drawer can neither defend nor harm until a human agent takes them in hand, money is paper or coin, or promissory note, that has no agency until a human directs it in a given direction.
Money can be used to do good. Witness the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation which is using their great fortune to provide essential health services to underserved regions of the globe just as one example. Money, though, can also be used to do great evil in the wrong hands.
Studies in the United States, for example, have shown that the richest 400 families in the country own assets that exceed those of the bottom 60 percent of all American households combined yet pay taxes at a lower rate than working class people, many of whom aren’t making much more than the minimum wage.
The CEOs of the Standard and Poor (S&P) 500 companies average over $14 million per years, earning more in a day than the median employee of their company makes in an entire year. Now, ask yourself, except for a rare few, how many of these people use their wealth to benefit the less fortunate? The answer is, not many.
The superrich as a category – there are always exceptions – tend to be the type of personality who is willing to manipulate and exploit people and circumstances for personal gain.
The prime examples of that are the Enron scandal when senior officials propped up the company’s stock price artificially leading to thousands of the company’s employees losing all their retirement savings when their manipulations led to the company’s collapse; General Motors ignored manufacturing defects that caused injury and death to drivers, and spent years trying to cover it up; and R.J. Reynolds and the other major tobacco companies withheld scientific evidence showing the harmful effects of smoking.
All of the aforementioned, and believe me they’re just the tip of the iceberg, were in the blind pursuit of profit by people, many of whom already had more money than they could spend in two lifetimes. We see it today with large for-profit training institutions luring students into expensive programs with deceptive advertising promising them guaranteed future employment, that is not delivered, or the pushback by some financial institutions and the politicians who get large campaign contributions from them against forgiving student loans while those same politicians push for more tax cuts for corporations and the wealthiest taxpayers.
So, there you have it. Maybe we should change that old adage to ‘The pursuit of money is the root of most evil.’
Sonat ius mihi, it sounds right to me. | NWI
