Here’s Why Money is Scarce

Don’t give me your abundance bs

Photo by Alexander Mils on Unsplash

In 1997 I had a job paying ten dollars an hour, and I was the righest guy I knew. I was 25 years old, had an undergraduate degree, and had worked in a part-time government field position for two years. Minimum wage was $5.15 an hour, I think, where it would remain another few decades, and I made a little more because of my degree and experience. During that twenty years, the price of things I bought increased dramatically.

More importantly, I could take $5 out of the atm. Today I think the mininum amount is twenty, and we don’t even make pennies anymore. The ‘expense’ side of our budgets had gone up in a crazy way, but that ‘income’ column sure hasn’t changed much. You know what minimum wage is today (2026)? If you don’t know, you don’t want to know.

It’s $7.25. Less than I made in a not-so-special situation circa 1997. Almost THIRTY YEARS AGO. And that $5 I used to get out of the atm? I could do MULTIPLE things with the money. Sometimes I would get a meal at a fast food restaurant for $3.25 (including tax) and then a pack of smokes for $1.50. Or a beer at happy hour for $1 and the food.

This really should be the end of the article. Anything else I write is just a complaing. A rant about ‘the way things should be’ or ‘doomerism’. Most people seem to realize that costs have increased dratically while wages are mostly stagnant. This, of course, has exacerbated the gap between the haves and have-nots.

The naysayers will diagree and say that good deals today, too. But you have to look hard. Truly affordable deals are few and far between. Back then, it was the norm. Every fast food restaurant had a $2.99 meal deal. Cigarettes were cheap everywhere. So was gas. Things just didn’t cost as much. Prices for everyday goods seemed to be commensurate with wages.

My point is, I could do something with the $5 I got out of the atm. It was a unit with meaning and value. Now it seems $20 is the de facto smallest unit of financial meaning in the US. That’s four times (400%) the expense in thirty years vs. 43% more income. If it isn’t clear to you, and apparently this isn’t clear enough to most people, that’s AN ORDER OF MAGNITUDE difference in expense and income.

One more time. Things today are 400% more expensive, yet we only earn 43% more. That’s a shortage of 357%. If anything there is abundant it is tragedy.

And we all know the punch line. There’s no money to be made because there are no jobs. Or the only jobs out there pay so little it literally can’t pay the bills. Or that the Epstein class hoards 99% of the wealth.

And there’s the thing. You can’t simultaneously say there’s enough money for everyone AND that it isn’t equivalently available to all.

That’s not how abundance works.

Abundance means that there is plenty to go around and be shared by all peoples and that it is equivalently available to all peoples.

Does that sound anything like money to you? It sort of sounds like the opposite of money.

My point is not to upset anyone about global and personal financial security. I simply think it is important to call a spade a spade and be honest about what we are talking about. Is that so much to ask?

Until we agree about an issue, it is pointless to discuss it. In fact, discussing an issue using opposing language is going to do more damage than good. Truly, it’s insane.

When talking about money it is critical to recognize the dichotomy between the haves and the have nots. If you’re someone with little money, getting more is not easy. If you have money, maybe getting more is easier or maybe it’s not. But you already have some. People with money have more money abundance than people without. The abundance is unequal.

That there is a discrepancy at all means there is no abundance. Abundance is for everyone. If one person doesn’t have abundance, there is no abundance. Do you see?

So, who would claim money is abundant? Someone with money or someone who wants your money. Certainly not someone with no or little money.

If something isn’t abundant, what is it?

Scarce.

And don’t tell me I have a scarcity mindset. You can accuse me of being realistic all you want, but saying money isn’t abundanct is not a negative outlook. It’s accurate. And honest. And ‘factual’. I’m not choosing to believe money is scarce. It is scarce. The value of money depends on it’s scarcity. If there were enough money for everyone, things would cost more. The value of money would go down and there wouldn’t be an abundance. By definition. It’s how it works.

Why would you hoard something that is abundant? I don’t see people stockpiling fallen leaves. Or old tires. Or anything most people don’t want. What about this doesn’t make sense, and why do we pretend it all does?

So, yeah. Money is scarce because if it wasn’t, it would be devalued. Becuase money is scarce, and it is hoarded. When you don’t have money, it’s really hard to get. When you have it, it’s yours to lose.

So stick that in your pipe and, if you’re among the lucky, light it with a $100 bill, and smoke it. Why not? There’s plenty more.