Money

There is no gold standard anymore, so money is basically a way to exchange goods and services and to plan for the future on personal and public levels. I got trained in science, so materials are more real than money for me. We will eventually come to a point where wealth per person can only go down or stay at a level if population stays steady.

Money only has meaning if we think there is a future and the money is still worth something. For this reason people want the near future to be very much like the present. If there is a drastic change in the future, the cash you stashed away is not worth as much as you thought. Both right and left wingers resist huge change. This is why many Democrats are centrists. They get lobbied and the lobbyists want things to stay the same or improve for their issue.

When you go to the bank for a loan or you save for retirement the money is most closely related to material. Only people with huge amounts of "collateral" (things: real estate, factories, hotels, airlines etc) are trusted with this imaginary money to spend, build etc etc. Your investments are most likely in stocks or CD accounts, so these also relate to actual property. The bank holds your money, but it can lend it to reliable customers who then convert  the borrowed money to real things. Shops, stores, trucks, retail goods etc. Your money is tied to physical objects.

The future is the tricky part. You have to try to imagine the future. So does your government. They have to plan for social security payments, Medicare etc. All this is based on the calculated work force and the GDP and the GDP per person. You think your money is worth something in the future. If the entire population or earth were to disappear in say 20 years, the value of your money would quickly go down to almost nothing. The cash (with ongoing inflation) would exist for a short while, as we would all disappear sooner or later, but would still need to eat and function for 20 years. It could be something like an asteroid that we knew was going to wipe us out. Or drought from climate change etc. etc.

Back to the present, the working class person that gets by, just, understands quite well that money is not wealth, and work no longer is worth much. Getting a paycheck and spending it by the next paycheck is a very real state. Work is simply converted to goods and to pay the rent. These people are unlikely to own anything more than the furniture etc. as well as a car. With maybe a car loan.

Economics is an odd field that seems to be too big for its pants. It thinks it can overrule material things. Libertarians have an undying faith in free market. This book is otherwise OK but since it is so optimistic it has no Plan B.

I've read a few bits, not spending my dollars on it. It will have no bearing on my decisions even if i read it.

 Individual situations, the opposite end compared to  GDP or national levels is the focus of Freakanomics. Famous quotes deal with items like "why do drug dealers still live with their mom and dad?"

This Michael Lewis book is my favorite. It tells how individuals calculate value on personal issues and decide. It also describes some bigger things where we have decision makers make decisions, but based on too small a sample population or other group. We try to do statistics in our head. We are very conservative when faced with a situation where we could lose. We go out of our way to prevent loss. The two Israeli psychologists who worked on this economics issue are profiled in the book. The economics outlined relates to consumers, marketing, insurance etc.