You are not a beautiful snowflake

After years of earning and spending money, a person gets to believing that dollars are real things. And why should we believe differently? Of all the things we surround ourselves with, money has the most day-to-day impact. Whether it takes the form of dollar bills, checks, or electrons whizzing around in a data center somewhere far away, money is how we most alter other people's behavior to our benefit. The difference between me walking out of Fry's Electronics with a flat-screen TV and either (1) going to jail or (2) not going to jail has everything to do with money. So in a way, money is as real as anything else: it has cause, and it has effect.

But most of us agree that money is a peculiar kind of real thing. We've all read or heard enough history to know that sometimes money loses its ability to cause much effect. Markets occasionally collapse, and money goes from real to imaginary—and it does so quickly. (Picture pre-WW2 Germans shoveling Mark banknotes made worthless by hyperinflation.) Though few people alive in the United States today have lived through such a scenario, so sharp are our imaginations about it that we get the feeling the essence of money is transient and illusory.

And yet, despite knowing this, many Americans act as though it's our birthright to live a long, healthy, and rewarding life as paid for by money. Anything less and we're not getting our due. It's tacitly agreed across the bitterest of political rivalries that in any fair world (most) Americans get to consume an order of magnitude more resources than the typical Asian factor worker assembling our gadgets. Pressed about the inequality and we may proclaim that opportunities are evening out and eventually Asian factory workers too will have such abundance—such is the marvel of the modern world. But how easy faith is when it upholds one's privilege.

Now, I generally try not to hold it against someone when they do what's in their self-interest. If it's possible for someone to get away with consuming more than most other people on the planet, then I expect that person to do so. To expect otherwise is to set oneself up for disappointment. Blame the rules, not the person—if one insists on blaming something.

But such selfishness aside, the belief in “our due” is leading Americans to a crippling cognitive dissonance. On the one hand, our hopes for long, healthy, and rewarding lives will manifest only through the efficient, uninterrupted flow of resources made possible by a stable monetary system. On the other hand, we realize that money isn't always real, and current circumstances suggest that the First World's current monetary reality isn't so strong.

So which is it? Is abundance our birthright, or will the misfortunes of the past visit us once again? Though we hope for continued abundance, no one knows with certainty what will happen in the future. But the sane course is to realize that both scenarios are possible—as well as all shades of gray in between—so that one needn't add bafflement to grief should our future lead to lesser wealth.

To put it in plainer perspective, the per capita GDP of the world, normalized for purchasing power, is about the same as the poverty line for a single American. Poor is average. What makes you deserving of wealth?