On Facebook yesterday
I was discussing Pres. Obama’s comment that being a SAHM was “not a choice that
we want women to make,” (what an arrogant statement—who is “we” and how come
you get to make my choices!) on a friend’s post, and some guy was saying that
America was getting poorer and throwing around terms like Labor and Capital
that showed that he was full of economic quackery. And I just wanted to make sure that my
esteemed friends are aware of an Important but Neglected Truth: WEALTH does NOT
equal MONEY; WEALTH equals TIME—specifically, the ability to do what you want
with your time—CHOICES plus TIME.
Sometimes wealth also confers more ACTUAL TIME on this earth—extending
our mortal life--but for most of us it just means more spending more time doing
what we want, less time doing what we don’t want. This is not sugar-coating—this is the actual
definition.
We’ve all heard “Time is Money,” and you can exchange your
time for money by working at a job. You
can also exchange your money for time, by paying someone to do things for you
that you don’t want to do. Think about
it: What is the difference between a poor person and a wealthy person? The poor person has fewer choices about what
to do with his time each day. He must
either go to work—usually at a job that he doesn’t love—or if he’s on welfare
he can stay home but must live a very narrow existence, very few choices. The wealthy person, when he wakes up in the
morning, can say, “What do I want to do today?” and do it. It may include going to work, but at a job
that excites and fulfills him, one where he gets to make a lot of choices.
Let’s take some extreme cases—a billionaire and a person on
welfare. On their birthdays what do they
do? Out of his multitude of choices, the
billionaire hops on his Leer jet and goes to Hawaii to celebrate; the welfare
recipient walks down to the corner store and uses food stamps to buy a birthday
cake—one reason why obesity is an epidemic of the poor and not the rich today. When the billionaire’s clothes are dirty, his
personal assistant calls the laundry service to come pick them up—he never even
has to spend time THINKING about getting clean clothes, much less doing
anything about it—he can choose something more fulfilling to do. When the poor person’s clothes are clean, he
may have to spend time scrubbing them out in a sink—something I had to do on my
P-days on my mission in Peru—I’d have rather gone sight-seeing on my P-day, but
I didn’t have that choice most weeks.
So how do we know for sure that America is NOT getting poorer—there
are all sorts of economic indicators that say this and that-- inflation and GDP
and personal debt, etc. etc. But we know
we’re getting wealthier because each day we have more CHOICES about what to do
with our TIME! When I was a kid I lived
far from both sets of grandparents, and we almost never called them because
long distance was so expensive. Today I
can not only call but Skype with my grandbaby, and it’s FREE (discounting the
cost of computers and internet). When I
was a kid I could read books that we had at home, read the local paper, and go
to the library for more choices. Now, for
a “low monthly fee” I can not only read books in my own library, but I can read
things all over the world. I can stay “up
to the minute” on world events. There is
of course a down-side to all these choices: I can spend my time watching billions of
mind-sucking videos on Youtube. But I
can also contemplate nature by visiting a camera on an eagle’s nest and
watching the babies. I can see images of
space from Hubble telescope, and view the latest, most beautiful images captured
by photographers all over the world.
Computers and internet have made our world immensely wealthier than
anything the kings and queens of the past dreamt of.
What about clothing and food? It’s pretty easy to tell that there are ever
more choices, and they take up an ever smaller percentage of our paychecks. I love shopping at Wegman’s, where I can buy
cereal that is the same price as when I got married 26 years ago, but as our
family income has at least tripled since then, I can also go over to the cheese
section and buy some exotic varieties that I have never seen before. I can do the same thing with clothing at
Wal-Mart (no, I don’t care that it’s made in China—that benefits them AND us)
where I find clothes for the same prices I paid years ago, but I can now go
elsewhere for upscale things if I wish.
Since I can spend a smaller percent of my income on things I don’t
really care about, I now have more income to make choices with.
Housing? People worry
about the amount of money tied up in debt, and I certainly advocate staying out
of debt where possible—it causes stress!
But think about it: I am living in a house that is at least four times
the square-footage of my grandparents’ house, and you probably are too. “But it’s not paid for.” So what!
Day by day you live there. No one
is coming to kick you out as long as you keep up with your payments. Debt is just numbers in a computer—it doesn’t
exist in the real world. We are all
spending our TIME living in much larger houses than people did a few
generations ago. We have the CHOICE to
live in a small house if that makes us HAPPY, but a large one (by 1900
standards) is an option for most Americans.
Which brings us to the real point: happiness. “Money can’t buy happiness” and neither can
lots of choices and lots of free time to exercise your choices. From the outside looking in, it seems the majority
of the rich and famous are actually pretty miserable (“Wickedness never was
happiness”). Happiness is a state of
mind that can exist anywhere, anytime. It itself is a choice, and is unrelated to the
definition of wealth that we’ve been talking about, as a laborer in a rice
paddy can be joyful each day in his blessings, though he has few choices about
how to spend his time.
As a stay-at-home mom, I have my share of difficult days,
where I ALMOST wish I were back in the work force, like Pres. Obama wants me to
be (so he can tax my income). But as a homeschooling mom, I am EXTREMELY
wealthy. I can wake up each day and say,
“What should I, what should WE do today?” and do it. I am spending each day with those I love
best, doing what I love to do (education, music, home-making, writing, serving
in the church, directing a 501c3 corporation—all of which bring me immense
satisfaction and no money) and I am the richest person I know.
