The Ascent Of Money By Niall Ferguson

Money— sweeter than honey but oh so destructive. It facilitates a man’s life, while a lack of it imprisons him in the streets of penury. It raises his social status, while an absence of it leaves him unnoticed. It gives him an aura of superiority and importance among others, while a deficiency of it makes him worthless in society’s eyes. Considering these two roads, most do not take more than a second to decide to chase riches.

In the article “Money: The Real Truth about Money” by Gregg Easterbrook published In Time Magazine (2005), the author compares two different generation’s attitudes towards money, and how it affects their happiness. The author’s standing qualifies him to write and appeal this issue, he’s a contributing editor of The Atlantic and The Washington Monthly, and he also writes the Tuesday Morning Quarterback column for ESPN.com. Easterbrook’s primary audience appears to be middle class Americans however he draws a wider secondary audience’s attention. The author succeeded in convincing his readers through his rhetorical appeals, credible sources and his clever use of language.

In the book Money and Class in America written by Lewis Lapham, the way Americans look at money is exposed. It compares other nations view on monetary value against that of the Americans. It is a fact that we place more value on money than anything else. This book illustrates the corruptness of the “American Dream” as it focuses money as the “currency of the soul” and through the dream, men remain free to rise or fall. Their life is the product of the effort and the decisions put forth by them.

Throughout our lives, we have moments that may impact us negatively and/or positively. In the short story “the money” by Junot Diaz we see his mother saving money to send to her parents in the Dominican Republic but his family is already in a struggle to survive. Then there was a turning point for the whole family, they were robbed. Diaz’s mother was enraged by the event “she cursed the neighborhood, she cursed the country, she cursed [his] father, and of course, she cursed [the] kids,” assuming that one of Diaz’s friends or his siblings’ friends had something to do with it (Diaz 3). Diaz suspected one of his friends and he was right. So, he then took it into his own hands and went to steal the money back. Once Diaz retrieved the money, he

Junot Diaz is a professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is very widely known for this writing and his background story. In Junot Diaz’s story, “The Money: Starting Out,” he shares a story from his childhood. The story is about when Diaz and his family had just recently moved to New Jersey from Santo Domingo and they felt as if they were “targeted.” The neighborhood that they were living in was not the top of the line, lots of robberies were taking place. The Diazs’ themselves are a victim of robbery, but in the end, everything turns out to be good. Throughout Diaz’s story the reader can better understand and sympathize with this family because of the many uses of pathos and ethos in the passage.

The bizarre economy that we live in has affected us in many ways than our simple mind can fathom. After World War II there was massive push in innovation. Human were gifted with inventions like the Airplane, color T.V., polyvinyl cups, and precooked dinners. Nevertheless, these “gifts” came at an enormous cost. That cost was pushed onto the environment and people living in that environment. “The Market Economy” by Marge Piercy illustrates the movement in American aimed at bring attention to a global problem as well as an effort to save the planet along with the people living on it.

In “On the Want of Money”, a 19th century text, William Hazzlit presents a strong position on the role of currency in society and the ironic relationship between man and his status through use of rhetoric; such as but not limited to syntax, repetition, and imagery. In doing so, Hazzlit strengthens his argument and gives more weight to his claims that support the idea that in possession of money and lack thereof man is miserable in his ways. Ownership leaves man alienated from friends and family, to be commemorated by a lonely, seldom frequented monument of massive proportions. Austerity dictates lives, limiting those in pursuit of wealth to a constant, consuming search. In summation, the concept of money is hopeless

“Money makes the world go round.” This popular saying, while portraying society as a whole in a rather negative manner, is undeniably true. Evidence of this is seen in our everyday lives, from mowing the neighbours’ lawn for 5 bucks to liquidating a multimillion international company. Money is in everything we do, directly or indirectly. However, some people are too busy chasing after money that they forget to live life.

Jeffrey Reiman, author of The Rich Get Richer and the Poor Get Prison, first published his book in 1979; it is now in its sixth edition, and he has continued to revise it as he keeps up on criminal justice statistics and other trends in the system. Reiman originally wrote his book after teaching for seven years at the School of Justice (formerly the Center for the Administration of Justice), which is a multidisciplinary, criminal justice education program at American University in Washington, D.C. He drew heavily from what he had learned from his colleagues at that university. Reiman is the William Fraser McDowell Professor of Philosophy at American University, where he has

Going line by line of the poem MONEY by Dana Gioia. The first stanza, 3 lines are all syllabi for money, all different names that people usually call money. The next stanza are things that you do with money, spending it. You are either spending it or “watching it burn a hole in your pocket, so you are either spending it or itching to spend it. Stanza 3 again is using different names for money. “greenback” is another name for a dollar bill. “double eagles” is another name for a gold coin that is worth twenty dollars and so on.

In the book “All Money in the World” by Laura Vanderkam discusses about ways that people get and spend money in their lives and the relative between money and happiness. Each title, the author shows us different ways to use and earn money like getting, spending and sharing. But in chapter 3, “Rethink Retirement” of getting, Laura Vanderkam shows the creative way to approach retirement. There are three of the ways that the author suggests people can rethink and plan for retirement such as saving, making extra, and using time efficiently.

The plot and general focus of the novel “Money Run” by Jack Heath revolves around two important characters. Ashley “Ash” Arthur is a professional teenage thief who uses her prodigious abilities to pay for her private school and assist her destitute father. Ash is extremely conscious of her environment, and is seemingly always aware of what is occurring in her presence. She is consistently very calm and emotionally collected, and rarely if ever loses her composure- even if a situation becomes tense or dangerous. She is cunning and resourceful to the point of ruthlessness and will resort to varying degrees of extreme to achieve her goals. Ash revels in the thrill and danger of impromptu feats she achieves and admits that she enjoys scaring her partner as she does this. Although the course of the novel lasts less than 6 hours, Ash's perspective in regard to money and thievery shifts as the novel progresses, making her a relatively dynamic character. It is obvious that she is the protagonist as she is a stereotypical good person, abstains from killing of any kind, and is also extremely skilled and charismatically intense. She is undoubtedly the most explored and developed character

In his latest work, The Ascent of Money, Niall Ferguson goes to great lengths to convince the reader that finance is the foundation of human progress. Ferguson starts with an attempt to answer the questions; what is money, how is it used, and how has it evolved over time? He argues that the evolution of credit and debt is as important as technological innovation. The specific interest to military leaders is how money, or the lack there of, played pivotal roles throughout history. Money to generals “is the sinews of war”.1 Niall Ferguson is well qualified to discuss this as a renowned British historian and professor of history at Harvard University. He is a bestselling author who has published numerous books on historical topics.

“Money is, in other words, a complete abstraction—one that we are all intimately familiar with but whose growing complexity defies our comprehension.”(J. Surowiecki, 2012)

In the first episode of The Ascent of Money, a man by the name of Niall Ferguson was set out to explain how powerful money was. Money has the ability to turn you into a powerful individual, but it can also crush you. Like Ferguson stated, “the power of finance is everywhere we look and it affects all of our lives”. Everyone needs to eat, everyone needs a place to live, and everyone needs transportation to and from work and school. We all need money to provide for products and services we use on a daily basis and that is what Ferguson is trying to get across. We can’t escape the the use of money.