Money and Class in America

“We can tell our values by looking at our checkbook stubs” (Gloria Steinem). Many people today are being classified by the amount of money that they have to their name. If you are not “rich” or “wealthy” you are most likely considered to be lower than those who are. Being financially stable versus being rich is now being put at to completely different levels of the financial spectrum. Money is being put on a high pedestal and is practically being worship by Americans. Lewis Lapham believes that money is glorified to the extent that it changes our way of life. It has so much power that it changes the way other countries perceive the “land of many opportunities.” The desire of wealth against everything else in life has caused a twisted turn in our futures, money is being exploited throughout America and has encompassed so much of our lives, and the value of living has turned green. Are we as Americans so desperate for riches that we do anything possible to obtain it?

Money does mean so many things to us Americans. “American faith in money easily surpasses the degrees of intensity achieved by other societies in other times and places” (Lapham 1). This absolutely true. Americans measure everything by the mighty dollar. Either things are too expensive or they look to cheap or are not consider to be worthy if they are not the same as the expensive products. According to NationalPovertyCenter.com, in 2007, 12.5 percent of all persons lived in poverty. This goes to show just how much are lives are and can be affected by the love and need of money. WiseGeek.com says that, in 2007, the poverty level for a family of four was set at $20,650. So if your net income at the end of the year was either barely over or not over at all above that amount you are technically in poverty.

Now in the year of 2009, we are said to be in a recession. A recession is defined as a period of an economic contraction, sometimes limited in scope or duration. This makes the ability to obtain certain things even harder. Yet people still go and buy expensive and useless things. “When I have money, I get rid of it quickly, lest it find a way into my heart” (John Wesley). Combined it just doesn’t make any sense to buy useless expensive things just because you want to. You may not even be able to afford it, but because it may make you seem as though you are wealthy you buy it anyway. “The visible signs of wealth testify to an inward state of grace, and without at least some of these talismans posted in one’s house or on one’s person an American loses all hope of demonstrating to himself the theorem of his happiness” (Lapham 8). There are thousands of people that do this. They can not afford to buy expensive and useless things but because it creates an image of wealth they do it anyway. The value of money is gone and misunderstood.

American’s seem to be the only people struggling with the handling of money. “The only reason a great many American families don't own an elephant is that they have never been offered an elephant for a dollar down and easy weekly payments” (Mad Magazine). Lapham brings up other countries and their attitudes towards the subject of money and riches. It seems that many other countries think lowly of us, Americans, because we worship money and would do anything for it. We also nearly worship those who are rich by putting them in their own category, celebrities, instead of focusing on ourselves. Why is it that other countries that are doing well for themselves can balance money and other aspects of their lives while Americans decide whether to buy a new pair of brand named shoes so they can seem as though they are something that they are not or food that they may desperately need to survive. Decisions like this face many people on a daily basis and it is sad to say that many people choose the wrong choice. “A good many societies both in Europe and Asia manage to balance the desire for wealth against the other claims of the human spirit” (Lapham 16). It starts early. Everyday in the halls of Thornwood High School you see every name brand possible, and those same kids go to lunch and get reduced lunches or live in places that churns your insides, but no matter what, they are always in a new outfit. Is this really what our society has come to? It starts in the home, and grows outward to peer pressure and trends. America is very materialistic.

“Only when the last tree has died and the last river has been poisoned and the last fish been caught will we realize we cannot eat money” (Cree Indian Proverb). Americans have lost the true value of money. We worship and the people that have a lot of it. We try our hardest to be like them, no matter what it takes. Lapham claims that Americans are not greedy. But I beg to differ. Americans strive on image and misconception. It ranges from kids to the elderly. Other countries have found ways to strive without desperately clinging the all mighty dollar. Why haven’t we?