When Money Becomes Everything

Written by George Ford Smith, this article opens with the 1964 film The Pawnbroker, in which a Holocaust survivor treats money as the center of his life, to explore the nature and social meaning of money. It traces the evolution of currency from precious metals emerging spontaneously to government intervention and the shift to fiat paper money, noting that leaving the gold standard led to excessive money supply, persistent long-term inflation, and the erosion of people's savings.