"In a month, you'll be a millionaire"
- Thread starter Doug Otte
- Start date
Given a moderate annual rate of inflation, it's likely that everrybody who has a job is a millionaire by the 23rd century. Someone calculated this on the forum a few years ago.
It brings up an interesting thought. Anyone who is about 30 years or older must have wondered about this at one time or another: how high can the costs of things go?
Most everything gets more expensive. Incomes also rise, although we can argue likely not as fast, but for many not as as fast as costs. Many of us can remember paying much less for the same thing we still purchase decades later.
- I used to go to the store for my mother in the '70s and buy three loaves of bread for a dollar with change.
- I could buy a comic or a chocolate bar or a bag of chips for 15c.
- in 1979 I could fill the tank of my VW Rabbit for $10.
- in the mid '60s in Canada gas averaged about 45-50c a (Imperial) gallon.
- I remember the ads for McDonald's: buy a Big Mac combo with a dollar and get change.
- in the mid '80s the new Sony Walkman cost about $250.
- In '79 my new VW cost me $7800 including taxes over the curb.
- in 1970 my parents bought a Zenith colour TV in a wooden cabinet for about $1000.
Those are just a few examples. Mind you the Sony Walkman and Zenith TV are interesting examples. Because tech is one of the few things that noticeably go down in cost as the tech improves. Spend $1000 today for a TV and it is light years removed from what you could buy in 1970. Mind you then you could watch TV by antenna while today you essentially need cable or satellite which is an ongoing cost so in the long run you're are still paying more. A sony Walkman in the '80s was a radio/cassette player. Today it's an MP3 player and much less expensive.
The cars you buy today are often much more fully equipped than ever before. They also have features perhaps only dreamed of in the '70s and earlier. They have materials that simply didn't exist then. One could argue that cars to a large extent have kept pace with overall incomes while gaining more equipment and tech.
Today I think there are greater expectations. There are simply more things to buy. In 1970 most families shared one television and likely one house phone. Today there are likely more than one TV in the house, more than one celphone and likely more than one computer, both the latter not even available in the '70s.
But could there come a time when the economy reaches a point where everything is re-evaluated in terms of costs and incomes? I make more money today than I ever have yet it often doesn't feel like it.
Sorry, didn't mean to go on and get too far off track.
Most everything gets more expensive. Incomes also rise, although we can argue likely not as fast, but for many not as as fast as costs. Many of us can remember paying much less for the same thing we still purchase decades later.
- I used to go to the store for my mother in the '70s and buy three loaves of bread for a dollar with change.
- I could buy a comic or a chocolate bar or a bag of chips for 15c.
- in 1979 I could fill the tank of my VW Rabbit for $10.
- in the mid '60s in Canada gas averaged about 45-50c a (Imperial) gallon.
- I remember the ads for McDonald's: buy a Big Mac combo with a dollar and get change.
- in the mid '80s the new Sony Walkman cost about $250.
- In '79 my new VW cost me $7800 including taxes over the curb.
- in 1970 my parents bought a Zenith colour TV in a wooden cabinet for about $1000.
Those are just a few examples. Mind you the Sony Walkman and Zenith TV are interesting examples. Because tech is one of the few things that noticeably go down in cost as the tech improves. Spend $1000 today for a TV and it is light years removed from what you could buy in 1970. Mind you then you could watch TV by antenna while today you essentially need cable or satellite which is an ongoing cost so in the long run you're are still paying more. A sony Walkman in the '80s was a radio/cassette player. Today it's an MP3 player and much less expensive.
The cars you buy today are often much more fully equipped than ever before. They also have features perhaps only dreamed of in the '70s and earlier. They have materials that simply didn't exist then. One could argue that cars to a large extent have kept pace with overall incomes while gaining more equipment and tech.
Today I think there are greater expectations. There are simply more things to buy. In 1970 most families shared one television and likely one house phone. Today there are likely more than one TV in the house, more than one celphone and likely more than one computer, both the latter not even available in the '70s.
But could there come a time when the economy reaches a point where everything is re-evaluated in terms of costs and incomes? I make more money today than I ever have yet it often doesn't feel like it.
Sorry, didn't mean to go on and get too far off track.
I'm not sure if I would call two or three references to money "numerous".
That doesn't work either since they very clearly still used money in DS9.
Really, there aren't any excuses for how all Trek shows and movies have fubared this concept by introducing it with a couple of throwaway lines even though the concept demands far more thought and development than the writers gave it.
None of the fan-made excuses hold up to scrutiny, whether it be playing semantic games with the word 'money' and saying they use 'credits' instead (which is clearly not what the canon of the 'no money lines' are declaring), or any other speculations which the canon does not support.
Bottomline: it's an irreconcilable writing fubar, period.
In TOS they did use some form of money or currency referenced as credits. Done. TAS, TMP TWoK and TSFS don't contradict that.
TVH makes a reference to not using money. That's a contradiction with TOS unless one assumes something changed after the TOS era. TNG seems to reinforce this notion of a moneyless society.
Then DS9 apparently reintroduces the idea of money. Now this furthers the confusion.
I don't have a problem because I dismiss most of everything after TMP anyway. I don't have a problem because I don't accept that it's all one continuity. But if you do accept it as all one continuity then you're left trying to rationalize the apparent contradictions.
TVH makes a reference to not using money. That's a contradiction with TOS unless one assumes something changed after the TOS era. TNG seems to reinforce this notion of a moneyless society.
Then DS9 apparently reintroduces the idea of money. Now this furthers the confusion.
I don't have a problem because I dismiss most of everything after TMP anyway. I don't have a problem because I don't accept that it's all one continuity. But if you do accept it as all one continuity then you're left trying to rationalize the apparent contradictions.
I recall Kirk talking about 'how much Starfleet has invested in your training' to Spock in The Apple; and telling Scotty he'd earned his pay for the week in another ep.
Kirk also made a similar remark to Spock about both of them in Errand of Mercy.
A moneyless society would sound extremely unlikely any decade.
Maybe that's why TOS writers, as well as the writers of other shows, forgot the memo so often and included so many references to currency...
There are more references to money and buying things than there are references to "moneyless" economy (something like 3-4 times in the entire franchise).
That could work, but that would make Picard et al. look quite ignorant, since electronic currency is still money.
It was always a silly idea in the first place, period.
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The funny thing is one of the prime quotes "No Money" proponents use is the one where Kirk and Gillian are in the pizza restaurant:
KIRK: "Come on! We don't have much time."
GILLIAN: "Uh, ...could we have that to go, please?"
WAITER: "Sure! Who gets the bad news?"
GILLIAN: "Don't' tell me they don't use money in the twenty-third century."
KIRK: "Well, they don't."
First, at this point Kirk does have money, at least he did after selling the eye glasses.
Second, there isn't a second of confusion on Kirk's part that the pizza and beer weren't free.
WAITER: "Sure! Who gets the bad news?"
KIRK: "Excuse me?"
WAITER: Sorry, who pays for the pizza and drinks."
Kirk : "I don't understand, what is pays."
Waiter: "Oh great, another one."
KIRK: "Come on! We don't have much time."
GILLIAN: "Uh, ...could we have that to go, please?"
WAITER: "Sure! Who gets the bad news?"
GILLIAN: "Don't' tell me they don't use money in the twenty-third century."
KIRK: "Well, they don't."
First, at this point Kirk does have money, at least he did after selling the eye glasses.
Second, there isn't a second of confusion on Kirk's part that the pizza and beer weren't free.
WAITER: "Sure! Who gets the bad news?"
KIRK: "Excuse me?"
WAITER: Sorry, who pays for the pizza and drinks."
Kirk : "I don't understand, what is pays."
Waiter: "Oh great, another one."
I took TVH line about not using money to mean they didn't walk around with wallets full of cash; i.e., a cashless society. In Richard K. Morgan's excellent Altered Carbon novels, you'd pay for something by licking your thumb and swiping it across a DNA reader pad.
