Cameron: A lesson in the language of lucre

Published March 17, 2007 at midnight

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The people in this world who have managed to generate a lot of wealth for themselves are defined as "not me." I do, however, have a plan for getting rich, involving my father's having an enormous amount of money he hasn't told me about. (Whenever I mention this to my dad, he laughs uproariously, which confirms my suspicions - only someone with a lot of assets would find the whole topic so amusing.)

Having a lot of money carries with it a grave responsibility, so to prepare, I picked up a copy of BusinessWeek, which I'm sure is a very informative publication if you bother to read it. I sort of scanned it to learn economic terms, like:

Inflation: This is where everything costs more money. It's bad. The opposite of inflation is deflation, which is where everything costs less. Deflation is also bad. Then there's price stability, where everything costs the same. It's bad, too. Your best bet is to stay in bed.

Money supply: This is what others have and you don't.

Balance of trade: The U. S. imports manufactured goods and raw materials and exports Britney Spears. When we import more than we export, we need to get busy and breed more entertainers.

Interest: When banks lend you money, they take a lot of interest in being paid back. When you deposit money, they don't express much interest.

Capitalism: This is a system where, if you had a lot of money, you could invest it in a company like Enron and lose it all. Or you could start your own business, work for decades without a vacation, finally make a success of it and then die and leave it to your children, who will sell the place to a company that wants to build a Taco Bell. One example of a successful capitalist is Donald Trump, who this year helped a poor beauty contestant because everyone deserves a second chance, especially one who looks like that in a bikini. "Even I make mistakes," Donald Trump was quoted as saying. "Just look at my hair."

Socialism: Socialism is the belief that, for the good of the common people, all wealth should be transferred from the greedy rich to the hard-working generals. Socialism works well in countries like China, where they ignore it.

Monopoly: Monopoly is a game my sister always loses because she'll trade anything to own the railroads. Utility companies are said to "enjoy a monopoly," though how anybody can enjoy a situation where my sister winds up crying, I'll never understand. (My sister also always wants to own the utilities.)

Disposable income: This part of your income vanishes right down the garbage disposer - in other words, all of it.

Depression: The Great Depression was the experience that our grandparents suffered through in which they learned values like hard work and thrift. Fortunately the Great Depression ended, so our generation doesn't have to bother with any of that. No one talks about other depressions, so apparently they weren't all that great - maybe they were just "good" or "mildly depressing."

Information economy: We used to build products that were the envy of the world until Toyota. Now we're moving to an era when everyone will make money by e-mailing one another. Most office workers have already made this transition.

Thomas Carlyle said economics is a "dismal science," probably referring to how I feel after I try to balance my checkbook. (No matter how I recalculate it, there's always less money in the account than I know intuitively should be there.) In my opinion, the economy would be a lot less dismal if it would figure out a way to transfer more wealth my way.

I sure hope my father agrees.

Write to Bruce at bruce@wbrucecameron.com.

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