When I was a kid, I collected coins. That led to reading about the history of the U.S. Mint, which began producing coins in the 1790s: exotic denominations such as half cents and gold eagles, but also familiar coins such as dimes and quarters. Strangely, one of the happiest times I recall as a child is spending a winter night with my uncle and a cousin in our family's dilapidated hunting shack out in the snowbound woods near Harrisville, N.H. There, nestled in my father's old sleeping bag, and with infinite darkness all around and above us, I read and reread my little dog-eared paperbound "Black Book" of U.S. coins in the light of a kerosene lamp and in the heat of a wood stove. Never was anything more real or vivid to me, including the history of the coinage.
But reading about the U.S. mint, and watching the pattern of trial and error and low mintages and design experiments that led all the way to the change in my pocket, wasn't enough. In late 1974, on the verge of turning 11 years old, I got the idea of starting my own coinage: designing it and then producing it, and recording the quantities. It was a project that made sense to me numerically, if for no other reason, because the year "1974" had the same numerals as "1794," one of the first years of the U.S. Mint. (I was that kind of kid. I still am.)
I designed them with magic markers, and made them out of construction paper, a different color for each denomination. I proudly dated each specimen "1974," and knew that these would be extremely rare in the future because the year only had a few weeks to go, greatly limiting the quantities that could produced. (Plus there was the distraction of Christmas.) I knew I would soon be marking coins "1975," and those would come to be much more common as production continued throughout the year.
But production depends on demand, and early in 1975, school started up again after Christmas break, rendering demand non-existent. And so the few construction paper coins dated "1975" came to be much more scarce than their "1974" predecessors—just the kind of unexpected turn of events that influenced the way the U.S. Mint seemed to operate at first.
Unlike the U.S. Mint, my own efforts did not continue. But it remains a great example, I think, of how an interest in money is a natural human thing at any age, even in childhood, when it really shouldn't matter. But the problem, as we become adults, is that our natural interest is blunted and then diminished because, as adults, we begin to find the topic either scary or just plain incomprehensible. And it's also bad form: few people want to be seen as obsessed by money, at least in the manner of Ebenezer Scrooge. So the topic of money becomes subject to fear and apprehension, with the economy now global in scale and subject to instantaneous transfers of wealth at the touch of a button, and so on.
It's impossible to grasp, it seems, even as it affects us all in many ways.
So I've come to admire anyone willing to try to put it all together and make sense of it in a way that an average person can understand. And I recently came across a provocative example of this among the online comments to a story in one of our area's daily newspaper, the Union Leader. The story was about a guy panhandling at a busy intersection, and readers started offering economic theories about why an able-bodied guy should be out begging. And a guy identified as "Biker Bill" came up with something that's perhaps oversimplified and a little xenophobic, but more to the point than anything I encountered in three years of business school.
Here it is:
"Let me tell you what is going on, but you already know in your heart of hearts. It's a vicious circle so never mind what I choose as a starting point:
"Greedy American CEOs and Boards, under pressure from greedy Wall Street tycoons, outsource work to China, Mexico, and India. American consumers buy the foreign crap. American companies (who grew and became profitable and international on the backs of Americans) lay off those Americans. Jobs become scarce. Liberal Democrats increase tax burdens on American companies to pay for the social welfare programs for people out of work.
"Companies leave America in droves. Americans with jobs soon take jobs beneath their skill and experience levels. More and more are "under-employed" and can't afford college for their kids. Wealthy foreigners send their kids to American colleges. Americans can no longer compete, and there are not enough low and entry level jobs.
"America becomes a third world nation, but everyone's attention -- including nit wit Selectmen and the few who are employed -- is on persecuting one Chris O'Toole who is trying to feed his family somehow.
"Government needs to cease all foreign aid, cease all corporate bail outs, cancel all scholarships and double tuition for foreigners in American colleges, ban H1B visas that allow foreigners to work here, and heavily tax outsourcing. Now.
- Biker Bill, Derry NH
Not so sure I agree with the fear of "foreigners" being educated in America and some of his other claims, but a lot of it seems to make sense, which is refreshing. So many economists you hear about in news seem to get lost in their own jargon, and because there are no real absolutes in economics, clarity is really hard to come by. So it's nice to find something that even a kid in a sleeping bag might be able to follow.
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