Money is the Most Important Thing

Question: “Money is the most important thing in this world.” Do you agree?  Step 1: Defining key terms • “Money”  Simply put, money/currency is both a measure of value and a medium of exchange of the commodities/things that is produced and bought in the market  Money (in terms of bank notes) parallels stored pieces of value in them – in which you can exchange for other goods with a similar value  Case in point: When you pay $10 for a notebook: that $10 represents the value of that notebook, measured in terms of $10 currency  If you obtain $10 from working at a restaurant for 1 hour, that means that the value of your work at the restaurant for an hour is equivalent to the value of that notebook in the market, selling for $10  Of course, this is a very simplified explanation and how the value of these products and commodities just cannot quantified so easily  Money can come in many forms: need not be the cash notes/coins that we are familiar with now: people used to transact with seashells, gold bars, and now digital transactions via computed digits on screen have replaced tangible bank notes  ‘Value’ of commodities: determined by many factors – how much consumers demand for it, the availability of its supply, the socio-cultural significance attached to it (for instance, how Gold is seen as a precious metals and thus is attached a high value) and also its utility function (how useful is it for us)  ‘Money’ or currency today however, is unwittingly mistaken and taken to be a living, breathing entity by many in their pursuit for more cash notes  Increasingly, discussions on money refer to it not in relation that what can be obtain from its exchange but rather what it represents in itself – it has become an independent product  “Money” does not remain just a measurement of value, it becomes pursued/chased after not for what it is able to bring out in exchange when we use it to buy goods, but rather for the sake of its possession • “Most important thing”

 There are two things that we need to pay attention to here: 1. The word ‘most’ is an absolute word and it also contains the comparative element – what is money compared to? Is the statement suggesting that other things such as love, care, empathy, kindness, passion, creativity, selflessness, religion, and more – are not as important as money? 2. “Important thing” – what makes money important? We assume that the question means money is the most important thing to US (as human beings who make use of them to acquire what we want and need).  But we need to clarify what is this importance based on – what aspects of importance are we looking at? 3. Dissecting this idea of ‘most important thing’ is therefore two fold. It is crucial to analyse the requirements of this term carefully because it holds the criteria to the question, and will guide you in terms of constructing the framework of your argument and facili