Most Philosophers Agree…

“A lot of people, mostly people without a lot of money, say that money can’t buy everything. Especially it can’t buy happiness: people with 25 million, for example, are not perceptibly happier than people with 24; and besides, rich people are generally unhappy. Still the rich have many consolations, as Plato observed—the chief among them presumably being their money. And despite the fortitude it takes for the rich to endure their disadvantages (Rex Stout), most modern philosophers agree that money is better than poverty—“if only for financial reasons,” as Woody Allen speculates.”

-Marshall Sahlins, 2002.  (Waiting for Foucault, Still.  Chicago: Prickly Paradigm Press. Pg 30)

Banknotes

“A descriptive analysis of banknotes is needed. The unlimited satirical force of such a book would be equaled only by its objectivity. For nowhere more naively than in these documents does capitalism display itself in solemn earnest. The innocent cupids frolicking about numbers, the goddesses holding tablets of the law, the stalwart heroes sheathing their swords before monetary units, are a world of their own; ornamenting the facade of hell.”

-Walter Benjamin’s Tax Advice, 1926 (in “One Way Street”. Walter Benjamin: Selected Writings Volume 1 1913-1926. Cambridge MA: Harvard. 1996. Pg 481.)