MP 5

The two words that I was assigned were: to crumple and to smear. The object that I chose was a dollar bill. I use cash or some form of it every single day. Lately I've been thinking a lot about many different political issues, and I have also started to learn a lot about how our economy functions and how our currency works in the rest of the world. For starters, in 1971 the U.S., while under the Nixon Administration, decided to drop the gold standard from our currency. Essentially, what we told the rest of the world is that we were 100% defaulting from all of our loans, and the value of our money would no longer be back by a raw material, but instead be valued at what we thought was appropriate for the worth of our nation. So, you might ask, what does this mean to me? "I work to make money which I then use to buy the things I need to live. No one has ever questioned the money that I give them for a good or service." This assumption is correct, our money has now become a simple median of exchange, and everything has a value, or worth that is predetermined, agreed upon, or set by the market price. So to sum up this rant about the value of our dollar, basically it's play money. All these pieces of paper which we hold so highly and what seems like we never stop chasing until we die is really only as valuable as the material its made out of. The crumpled dollar may represent whatever you see fit. I think I've pretty clearly expressed my opinion about it. 

Now, let me explore the second part of the piece. "In God We Trust" printed bold and clear in the center of every bill. Why would the U.S. Treasury put this on all of our "legal tender"? Because we were founded on Christian beliefs or because the constitution declares a separation of church and state? If I'm not allowed to pray in school then why is the world God on our money? And if you think about it, I'm sure money is the last thing God would like to be associated with. You can mostly like trace every horrible thing that has ever happened in history back to one thing, money. It's disrespectful, and I don't think anyone should have the right to decide if we put God on our money. Also, I realize that this piece didn't take a lot of altering or some crazy Photoshop technique, but I made this for the message. Take it how you may.