There’s a strange view people have about money: that it somehow is permanently theirs. Stranger still that this view only seems to work for the wealthy.
RICH
It’s quite a thing to hear amid a global economic system
(whose very existence is the flow of currency) that we
should stop the flow at a specific point, as if that same dollar,
traversing the globe instantaneously is always and eternally
in the pocket of a man. Despite our protests, commerce
doesn’t ever stop, even when backed by paper or gold,
the money itself never stops, never stays put. The paper appears
to stay, but only for a moment. The symbol of expectant loss,
it flows in and out, a constant ebb and flow through your bank.
Even if you handed the teller a bill at the start, that same bill
is long gone by now. It isn’t yours and it never was.
It’s quite a thing to hear from a rich man that any dollar
(a digital number always changing)
is somehow his, that it never moves or gets used,
always and forever owned, never spent or taxed or limited,
like a pet or a bit of property – both foolishly treated as eternal,
present, never aging or changing, and certainly never dying –
that this dollar, this currency, a number
into ones and zeroes which can be tracked around the globe
like a package sold to a customer, arriving at their door
only to find its contents were never relinquished.
They bought it, but they can never own it.
As if being rich means money never really changes hands.
It can go, for sure, but they may always demand its return,
a boomerang flung free into the air,
expected
confident in its inevitable return.
But for the rest of us,
it’s a frisbee, flung, caught. Kept. Forever.