Breaking Misconceptions and Resentment Toward Money: Build Wealth Through Financial Knowledge

Today, our society is permeated by the belief that money is evil. It is treated almost as common sense that money makes us greedy, makes us work, and makes us selfish. But is money really such a thing? Most of us know little about economics, and especially about finance. The book Becoming Rich with Financial Knowledge, co-authored by Sung-no Choi and Insook Kim, dispels the romantic misunderstandings and hatred toward money that many of us have accepted as common sense.

Why do we seek to earn money? Because it enables us to achieve what we want. Money is a means of attaining happiness. It is not just any means, but the most widely usable, simplest, and most convenient one. For that reason, people pursue money for their own happiness, and in the process, they end up benefiting others, often without even realizing it. Thanks to the emergence of money, people came to act more diligently for the sake of others. In that way, the wealth and happiness of society as a whole have increased.

What further expanded that role of money in promoting social prosperity was finance. Thanks to the financial industry, people became able to achieve even goals they could not attain immediately on their own. They could secure the money they needed in advance based on the trust they had built up with others. Those who succeeded by faithfully providing this service were the Jews, the Rothschild family, and the Medici family. On the basis of their success in financial markets, they acquired tremendous influence beyond what ordinary people could dare imagine. For this reason, some people regard the financial industry itself as evil. But the important role they played in financial markets, and the contribution they consequently made to society, were by no means insignificant.

Our hatred and disgust toward money are often linked to skepticism, misunderstanding, and anger toward capitalism. Marxist economics has even portrayed capitalism as an abnormal economic system, saying that “money begets money.” But what money has actually done throughout history is play the role of an angel that places wealth in our hands. Proper investment leads to expanded production; that is economic growth. What has consistently contributed to this is financial capitalism, that is, an economic system in which “money begets money.” Therefore, when we came to see money as something evil that must be controlled, we lost God’s gift and became unhappy.

Venezuela and Argentina failed in their attempts to control prices and exchange rates. In our country, growth is slowing as the government gradually increases its control over the market. In such a situation, could there be a book we need more than this one? All this time, we have thought that money is evil and therefore must be controlled. We also believed it could be controlled. The misfortunes of economic crisis and low growth began with those mistaken beliefs. To stop this, we must ask forgiveness from money, that angel. This book is like the first step toward doing so.

Youngjun Kim

Representative, SFL Korea

Original title: '돈'에 대한 오해와 증오를 깨는 '금융지식으로 부자되기'

Author: Young-jun Kim

Date: 2020-01-08

Source: https://www.cfe.org/bbs/bbsDetail.php?cid=press&pn=23&idx=22273