My reflections on money reached the pages of The National in Scotland today:
I am not a regular Sunday columnist there, but the editor rang me yesterday afternoon when she realised she was a column short for the paper due to problems that had arisen. An hour later I had filled the blank space in this morning's paper. When necessary, I can be a word machine.
My basic thesis is that being an adult means you worry about money. What we need to do is reduce that stress. Hence, my discussions on this site on money education.
The article is here.
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If I was in charge I would provide community centres where people worried about money could go and get some along with a cup of tea and a chat. For those unable to travel I would provide a visiting service to give them money along with a cup of tea as well.
Tea helps most things
My father-in law’s answer to every moment of crisis – make a brew
free money as well as free tea, what could possibly go wrong?
Who said free money?
Actually I did, or implied it. The money would be gifted along with the brew and a biscuit of course.
How many people are stressed because of debts repayable to the government? Rather a lot I reckon, so making it a gift negates the creation of future money worries.
The concept of the gift is an important one and interesting to introduce in this blog.
From Margaret Sleeboom-Faulkner (2014) “The Twenty-First-Century Gift and the Co-circulation
of Things”,
Anthropological Forum: A Journal of Social Anthropology and Comparative Sociology, 24:4, 323-337
Link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00664677.2014.948380
“Mauss’s conceptualisation of the gift as the social glue of small-scale autarkic societies questioned the advent of a social life world dominated by capital. Living in a transitional era, where social obligations intermingled with liberty and rights, Mauss warned against a weakening of charity, community care, and solidarity (Mauss 1990, 87). Before the commodification of society was complete, he argued, ‘the rich must come back to consider themselves – freely and also by objection − as the financial guardians
of their fellow citizens’ (Mauss 1990, 88). In his seminal essay ‘The gift’ (‘Essay sur le don’) Mauss was not just concerned about the justifiability of returns, but also strove to preserve ways of maintaining long-term social relations. Instead of a society dominated by utilitarianism, individual interest, and economic rationality, Mauss advocated the pursuit of reciprocity and the congenial; he defended irrational expenditure, and abhorred the notion of ‘man’ (sic) as economic animal and calculating machine. The gift was the key to long-term social relations marked by a balance between generosity and obligation, self-interest and solidarity.”
This is interesting, but what is your own argument?
Thank you for the challenge, professor!
I found Antonios Micheli’s comment about free tea and free money as gifts reminded me of this article and other discussions about gift-giving as a basis for social glue. It provides a different way of talking about how people relate to one another and seems to be something that has been submerged in our culture of commodification.
However, your question prompted me to think more practically about how it could be a useful way of thinking about money and worry. For instance, universal basic income can be seen as a form of gift. It can provide security from the basic worry about money and institute a different kind of relationship between citizens and their government, and also moreover between citizens themselves if it contributes towards solidarity between people as opposed to division. Perhaps more significantly, and picking up on your own work again, pensions can be seen as an inter-generational gift that contributes to solidarity between young and old.
When travelling through settled communities, strangers are often welcomed, fed and accommodated as part of reciprocating social relations. There is a bond of indebtedness, not so much between the individuals as between established communities and strangers in general. None of us know when we may be the stranger and so providing for others creates a bond of mutuality over time.
So I think the idea of the gift can be part of the distinction between financial initiatives, policies or instruments that seek to foster or consolidate community, society, mutuality, solidarity and even empathy, from those which tend to reinforce division, competition, individualism, selfishness, inequality and even hate – so characteristic of neo-liberalism.
This is fascinating
Gifting is actually fundamental to wellbeing – because we are all dependent on the generosity of others on occassion
But gifitng to the stranger is also fundamental – because we never know when we will be the stranger in need
The economic assumptions on human behaviour flatly contradict all this – or rationalise what can never be rationalised as risks cannot be known.