{"id":62385,"date":"2014-04-24T09:00:07","date_gmt":"2014-04-24T14:00:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/?p=62385"},"modified":"2014-04-12T23:34:19","modified_gmt":"2014-04-13T04:34:19","slug":"money-as-a-social-construction","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2014\/04\/24\/money-as-a-social-construction\/","title":{"rendered":"Money as a Social Construction"},"content":{"rendered":"

We all know that, on some basic level, money is purely symbolic. \u00a0It only works because everyone collectively agrees to participate in the fantasy that a dollar bill is worth a dollar, whatever that is. \u00a0Moreover, most of our money these days is purely electronic, represented by ones and zeros and real only in the most abstract sense possible.<\/p>\n

Christopher Ingraham at the Washington Post<\/em><\/a> offered another way of thinking about money as a social construction: how much it costs to make it. \u00a0None of our coins are actually worth what they cost, and pennies and nickels are worth quite a bit less.<\/p>\n

\"1.jpg\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The excess cost of producing pennies and nickels means a budget deficit for the Treasury. In 2013, producing the coins cost the government $105 million dollars above and beyond the coins’ value.<\/p>\n

\"1\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Interestingly, moves to eliminate pennies have been successfully opposed by the zinc industry for years, illustrating another sociological phenomenon: the power of corporations to shape government decisions.<\/p>\nLisa Wade, PhD<\/a> is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of <\/em>American Hookup<\/a>, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender<\/a>; and a forthcoming introductory text: <\/em>Terrible Magnificent Sociology<\/a>.\u00a0You can follow her on Twitter<\/a> and Instagram<\/a>.<\/em><\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We all know that, on some basic level, money is purely symbolic. \u00a0It only works because everyone collectively agrees to participate in the fantasy that a dollar bill is worth a dollar, whatever that is. \u00a0Moreover, most of our money these days is purely electronic, represented by ones and zeros and real only in the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":62395,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[36,3920,8118,304,293,23622],"class_list":["post-62385","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-economics","tag-nation-united-states","tag-organizationsinstitutions","tag-the-state","tag-social-construction","tag-social-construction-symbols"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2014\/04\/1.jpg4.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62385","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/51"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=62385"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62385\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":62399,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62385\/revisions\/62399"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/62395"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=62385"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=62385"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=62385"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}