The Value of a Dollar

Me: Why buy this thing?
Her: He’d look really cute with a tie.
Me: He’s a Border Collie, a tie is utterly superfluous to the satisfaction he derives from life.
Her: He’d look great on Instagram.
Me: He has no concept of a tie, and if you wrap it around his neck it will probably piss him off. He ate your 87 dollar sweater and all it did to him was hang in the bathroom.
Her: It’s a doggie tie, only 9 dollars.
Me: There are starving families in India who live on 9 dollars per month.
Her: Hold him still while I take the photo, but stay out of the photo.
[dog: eagerly twisting his neck around trying to rip the tie to pieces, succeeds]
Her: Got it.
Me: If we’d chartered a plane it would’ve cost less per minute.

The value of a dollar at this point is a matter of speculation, but there’s some value in these green rectangles, nonetheless. I tend not to conceptualize it in numbers. Rather, in the understanding that there are things I need to buy, and most things that I don’t. Did you know that white men are the worst consumers in the country?

I also tend to think of it in terms of me engaging in a productive activity, then being remunerated with this currency that I can exchange for goods and services. We’re all getting that 1,200 bucks. A lot of us really need it, so I’m not complaining. It just makes me feel very uneasy.

When I was in grad school, all I was making was a TA stipend. It was quite a hand-to-mouth existence yet when I fired up Turbotax, it said I was getting some kind of tax credit, which was basically a few hundred bucks worth of free money. I was incredulous when the check arrived and paranoid that I’d committed fraud. It made me genuinely worried to get free money. Other demographics are clearly not wired this way.

As a kid, getting free stuff meant somebody had died. Elderly family member is deceased, we get a new(er) couch or TV set. The car I drove in my late teens came into my possession because my Grandpa died, and therefore no longer had any use for a vehicle. I think my parents got the bulk of their furniture from the Grim Reaper. I suppose that’s how I formed my conception of what it means to get free stuff.

My Grandpa told me that during the Great Depression, his father lost his job driving a truck, so he walked down to the shipyard and picked up a blow torch. He was never a complainer, and even nearly died when his appendix burst, but chose not to complain. With the exception of WW2, he’d spent his whole life hard at work. He only stopped when he had a heart attack and was no longer allowed to return. Similar situation with my other grandfather.

They were great role models to have, so I guess that’s how I’ve always thought of life at a subconscious level: You’re gonna work, then you’re gonna keel over and die from a heart attack. Ain’t no point in complainin’.

Other cultures have different concepts of getting paid, and I’m not just referring to the lechery of our usurious overlords or vibrant co-inhabitants. For example, the Chinese expect to be paid in perpetuity by their descendants. They burn “ghost money” for their ancestors to spend in the nether realm.

I spent a lot of time among them and can attest that it gets really annoying when people are constantly burning up stacks of fake money in front of their homes and businesses. It does make sense to me, however. If you’re not burning money, granny’s ghost is going broke.

They like to burn in multiple currencies, including US dollars. I’ve got an extensive collection of them, including the ones in the photo below. I’ve always wondered why, in principle, they couldn’t just create one billion dollar bills so that they only have to burn one piece of paper per year. Although, I’ve been preoccupied lately with the question of when my real dollars will be worth as much as my ghost dollars.