Funny Money

Funny money is like Monopoly paper. It is when the value of the "money" is not based of useful value. It's hiked up by individuals who don't know or care anything about economics and what happens to everyone when artificial "value" is attached to what we call currency. Money is way too easy coming and going, these days. It is not something you hold in your hand and count and see go out of your pocket. It is a blue, maybe gold, flash of a plastic popped into a little machine that either takes it out of a bank account or slaps you into the red.  This day, as I speak my condo is valued up and up and I haven't done a thing to make it more "valuable". Somebody sold one here for more than they were asking, and it caught on like a disease. Everyone in the building suddenly wants to sell and they can ask almost anything. Fake value has become reality. I live in an old building and the price since I came here about a year ago has almost doubled and by, who knows, the end of the day, it may have gone there. It is ridiculous when an almost forty year old place that needs  a hundred thousand dollars to renovate, if you are lucky enough to find someone who will do it at that rate, is being valued purely on a fairy tale. They excuse it as Market Value. Market means whatever you can get for it. The people who bought in here years ago are making big bucks without having much to offer over what they paid for it twenty or more years ago. But. And there is always a big one, I am told. Those who move out of this beautifully located building that offers large units and self- management and cautious maintenance, will have to find other accommodations and to do so, they are unlikely to find the same space, peaceful self-management or location where they purchase with their bag of money. They will, if going into one of the towers abounding nearby if they can afford it even with their bundle of cash in hand. They will find lots of showy stuff such as concrete, marble and glass but they will also find assembly line construction, security up the arm, pages of bylaws and rules, hard-nosed management and lack of neighbourly company. And don't believe the classy flashy little brochure that promises the opposite. It is not worth the ink. I speak from experience. Sure there are gyms and pools and recreation facilities, even bowling alleys seldom used, but you won't find anything warmer there socially, than the marble in your bathroom. And the prices are unreal. Truly unreal. It seems that prices are put up at will. In this building I live in, you can't tell me that a unit grows in value two hundred thousand dollars overnight. An elder I know, is planning to go into a "home" for the elderly. You are looking at five thousand a month and that does not include dish soap if you are lucky enough to have a sink to put it in. If you need medical care routinely, up goes the bill. You still have to buy your groceries and personal items and maybe get the grandkids a gift at Christmas or whatever holiday for your kind. Most nice places in the city, range at six thousand a month. Or more. Now add that up. How come you can live in your home and pay for it way less than that and still keep your investment. Who can afford over sixty thou a year when elderly? Oh yes, the person who sold their home for up to and more than a million. A million is but the average home. So that's how it works. What happens, I ask, to the elderly who cannot do this? Where do they go and how?  And why are housing prices moving up and up and up as well as other costs? Let's hear some reasons. Butter used to be three bucks a brick a few weeks ago and today it is five. And chickens must be wealthier, too, because three dollars a dozen eggs are history. Why? Is it better butter? Are the hens wearing diamond earrings? Nope. Someone simply decided to charge more. And did. Who's to ask? That pound of butter used to be called the study of economics. Funny about money.