The Expanded and Annotated My Life and Work

Money Is Not Wealth
Money should be a lubricant and not an obstacle to the creation and dis-
tribution of genuine wealth. Speculation in money, including currency 
speculation, levies a tax on the production of actual wealth and, therefore, 
promotes hardship and poverty.
Ford (1922, p. 31) elaborates that wealth consists not of money, but 
rather of “things in use” and then adds (p. 329) that “use is better than 
economy.” The context of economy indicates not prudent thrift, but rather 
nonuse of an asset to the point where it might as well not exist. Ford and 
Crowther (1926, p. 93) cite the example of coal in the ground, which does 
not become wealth until somebody mines it and puts it to use.
The stereotypical miser who hides money under a mattress or buries 
it in the ground is another example. He may have access to the money 
during time of need, but it gains him nothing in the meantime. Chapter 
13 of this book shows further that Ford speaks almost as badly of those 
who hoard resources as he does of those who waste them, and for the 
same reason.
* * *
The wealth of the world neither consists in nor is adequately represented by 
the money of the world. Gold itself is not a valuable commodity. It is no 
more wealth than hat checks are hats. But it can be so manipulated, as the 
sign of wealth, as to give its owners or controllers the whip-hand over the 
credit which producers of real wealth require. Dealing in money, the com-
modity of exchange, is a very lucrative business. When money itself becomes 
an article of commerce to be bought and sold before real wealth can be moved 

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166  •  The Expanded and Annotated My Life and Work
or exchanged, the usurers and speculators are thereby permitted to lay a tax 
on production. The hold which controllers of money are able to maintain on 
productive forces is seen to be more powerful when it is remembered that, 
although money is supposed to represent the real wealth of the world, there is 
always much more wealth than there is money, and real wealth is often com-
pelled to wait upon money, thus leading to that most paradoxical situation—
a world filled with wealth but suffering want.
These facts are not merely fiscal, to be cast into figures and left there. They 
are instinct with human destiny and they bleed. The poverty of the world is 
seldom caused by lack of goods but by a “money stringency.” Commercial 
competition between nations, which leads to international rivalry and ill-
will, which in their turn breed wars—these are some of the human significa-
tions of these facts. Thus poverty and war, two great preventable evils, grow 
on a single stem.
Let us see if a beginning toward a better method cannot be made.

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167
13
Why Be Poor?
This chapter contends very accurately that industry offers the only certain 
solution to poverty. Attempts to legislate poverty out of existence violate the 
impartial economic aspect of Ford’s universal code, and this is why Lyndon 
Johnson’s “war on poverty” was as much a failure as the Vietnam War.
“Leveling down,” or taxing producers for well-meaning social welfare 
programs, spreads poverty instead of relieving it. Consider, for example, 
the provision of the Affordable Care Act that assesses a $2,000 per worker 
penalty on businesses that employ 50 or more people, but do not provide 
healthcare benefits. A business that employs 49 people, therefore, can save 
$100,000 a year by not hiring a 50th person. A business that employs 50 
people can do the same by discharging at least one. A financial incentive 
to eliminate or not create jobs is hardly the way to fight poverty.
This is not to say that employers that can afford to do so should not offer 
health benefits regardless of the size of their workforces, and the tax code 
makes their cost every bit as deductible as wages. The jobs, however, must 
create enough value to support these benefits. In contrast, well-meaning 
efforts to legislate poverty out of existence make the dangerous assump-
tion that there is, in fact, such a thing as a free lunch.
* * *
Poverty springs from a number of sources, the more important of which are 
controllable. So does special privilege. I think it is entirely feasible to abolish 
both poverty and special privilege—and there can be no question but that 
their abolition is desirable. Both are unnatural, but it is work, not law, to 
which we must look for results.
By poverty I mean the lack of reasonably sufficient food, housing, and 
clothing for an individual or a family. There will have to be differences in the 
grades of sustenance. Men are not equal in mentality or in physique. Any 
plan which starts with the assumption that men are or ought to be equal is 

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168  •  The Expanded and Annotated My Life and Work
unnatural and therefore unworkable. There can be no feasible or desirable 
process of leveling down. Such a course only promotes poverty by making 
it universal instead of exceptional. Forcing the efficient producer to become 
inefficient does not make the inefficient producer more efficient. Poverty can 
be done away with only by plenty, and we have now gone far enough along 
in the science of production to be able to see, as a natural development, the 
day when production and distribution will be so scientific that all may have 
according to ability and industry.
The extreme Socialists went wide of the mark in their reasoning that 
industry would inevitably crush the worker. Modern industry is gradu-
ally lifting the worker and the world. We only need to know more about 
planning and methods. The best results can and will be brought about by 
individual initiative and ingenuity—by intelligent individual leadership. 
The government, because it is essentially negative, cannot give positive 
aid to any really constructive programme. It can give negative aid—by 
removing obstructions to progress and by ceasing to be a burden upon the 
community.