Dollars & Sense: A Kid's Guide to Using--Not Losing--Money - Couverture rigide

Scott, Elaine

Couverture rigide

ISBN 10 : 1580893961 ISBN 13 : 9781580893961

Editeur : Charlesbridge, 2016

A propos du livre

Extrait

            Bread. Dough. Cabbage. Clams. These are just a few of the hundreds of slang terms that people use for money. Notice how much of this slang is based on food? That’s probably not a coincidence. Food is necessary to sustain life, and so—in a way—is money.
            In the classic film Cabaret, Liza Minnelli and Joel Grey sing a duet with these words: “Money makes the world go around, the world go around, the world go around.” Yet a famous Bible quote says, “The love of money is a root of all kinds of evil” (I Timothy 6:10).
            So which is it? Does money make the world go around? Or is the love of money the root of all evil? Surprisingly, both statements can be true.
            A business cannot operate without money. Sometimes the owners provide the necessary funds, and at other times people invest, or put their money into, a business they think will be successful. Once established, most businesses hire people and pay them a salary. With the money they earn, these employees buy food, clothes, and perhaps a car or house. They go to the movies. They take a vacation. They give gifts to their children. They may be so busy working that they hire a teenager to mow their lawn or to babysit—even kids can make money!
            Meanwhile, the businesses that sell the food, clothes, cars, and houses, or that run the movie theaters and the hotels at the seashore—all of them are making money. So they hire more people, who in turn buy more goods and services. These are some of the ways in which money makes the world go around, which is another way of saying that money is needed to make an economy—the way a country uses and produces goods and services—work for everyone.
            On the other hand, what people do with their money can hurt an entire economy, too. Greed—the desire for more and more of anything, especially money—can become a root of evil. Driven by greed, people have come up with schemes to cheat other people out of their money. Enron was a giant energy company with headquarters in Houston, Texas. In February 2001, Fortune magazine named it “America’s Most Innovative Company.” Enron claimed to be earning more than one hundred billion dollars every year! That is one hundred thousand million dollars, and it’s written like this: $100,000,000,000. That’s a lot of money. People were eager to work at Enron and to invest their money in the company.
            However, just a month later, in March 2001, Fortune magazine ran another article, titled “Is Enron Overpriced?” This article raised questions about the true value of the company. The truth was that Enron was not earning one hundred billion dollars a year. In fact, it was deeply in debt, owing more than thirteen billion dollars to creditors that had loaned it money. The fraud was gradually exposed during a two-month period, from October to November 2001. The company collapsed, and some of its executives went to jail. But average people, who had done nothing wrong, suffered, too. Those who had invested their money in Enron lost all of it. More than four thousand employees immediately lost their jobs. Arthur Andersen, a large company that provided accounting services for Enron, was forced to close its doors, causing another twenty-eight thousand people to lose their jobs. Without jobs, these people had no money; without money, they could not pay for food and housing. There were no toys for their children, no trips to the movies, and no dinners at restaurants. In other words, there was no money going back into the economy.
            When the spending stops, everyone suffers. Some economists— people who study the economy—believe that the Enron scandal helped bring about the economic decline known as the Great Recession (2007–2009), from which we are all still recovering.
            That Bible verse, written around two thousand years ago, is often misquoted as “Money is the root of all evil.” That isn’t accurate; money itself is neutral, neither good nor bad. But money is important, because in many ways it does make the world go around, depending on how you use it. In 1931 car manufacturer
Henry Ford said, “Money is like an arm or a leg—use it or lose it.” The question is, how will you use it?
            Many items, such as cars, televisions, games, and toys, come with instructions that explain how to operate the product. Unfortunately, money doesn’t come with a set of instructions. Many people learn how to use it—or lose it—by trial and error.
They make mistakes and learn from their mistakes. The information in this book is a little like basic operating instructions for money. After reading it, you will know more about money, how it came into existence, how it has been used through the centuries, and how it is saved, spent, and sometimes wasted. Once you understand money, you can make wise decisions about your own dollars and cents

Revue de presse

A sporty guide to the wide, weird world of money. Scott starts with the early forms of barter; when barter outgrew itself as the population increased: "things that were traded simply didn't match up evenly. There was no common medium of exchange." Those mediums came, in the form of salt, cowrie shells, wampum, feathers, and precious metals and gems. Buoyed by Clark's comic, explicative ink drawings, Scott sallies on to cover the evolution of currency and economy, mediums of exchange and standards, and charts the evolution of banks (" ‘Bank' comes from the Italian word banco, meaning a long bench on which money changers set up shop"). Numerous sidebars serve as attending footnotes to cover such topics as personalities, Hammurabi's Code, banking supervision, and the Dodd-Frank Act. It is too much to ask this brief introduction to get into the mechanics of banking, but some illustrative examples would have been heaven sent. For instance, what triggers inflation? That would have helped the latter discussions of recession and depression. But even at surface level, readers will follow the dominos and get a good grasp of debt. They will also take a long look at "The Government Steps In," and especially the Troubled Assets Relief Program, and likely ask, how has that alleviated the banking situation? An informative primer on how money functions that doesn't trigger the dismal science's snooze button.
- Kirkus Reviews

"Unfortunately, money doesn't come with a set of instructions," writes Scott in her introduction to this practical guide to earning, spending, saving, and understanding the role that money plays in our society. Scott walks readers through economic concepts like supply and demand, banks and how they operate, debt, interest, inflation, and investing, all accompanied by Clark's cartoon caricatures of people and animals. One of eight chapters discusses the Great Depression and its aftermath, and another explores the 2007-2009 Great Recession ("There was simply too much debt in the economy, and it couldn't be repaid"). Day-to-day basics, such as the correct way to fill out a check, should help give solid footing to readers dealing with earning and spending for the first time.
- Publishers Weekly

At first glance, this title appears to be a guide to budgeting and spending money wisely, but upon closer inspection, readers will discover this work to be an overview of the history of money—from the exchange of goods and services to the current economic climate. The introduction includes famous quotes from the film Cabaret, the Bible, and Henry Ford as well as a brief overview of the Enron scandal, all in a snappy attempt to show how money is essential to life (even if it is often considered the root of all evil). Beginning with ancient methods of exchange, the text covers the evolution and current state of banking systems in the United States. Other chapters take a break from the history lesson to discuss corporations, stocks, loans, bank accounts, checks, and other types of accounts. A section on handling debt is not only thorough but also timely. Readers will find that the highlighted terms (defined contextually and in the glossary), such as recession, depression, stock, inflation, and foreclosure, clarify a complex system and give a better understanding of the economy on an everyday scale. A solid introduction to economics and the history of monetary systems.
- School Library Journal

À propos de cette édition

• Éditeur: Charlesbridge
• Date d'édition: 2016
• ISBN 10: 1580893961
• ISBN 13: 9781580893961
• Reliure: Relié
• Nombre de pages: 112
• Illustrateur: Clark David