As a political stunt 100.000 SEK (~$13.100) was burned on a stage today.
The person burning it was the lead representative for the swedish feminist party. The reason (other than publicity) was to show how much money women in Sweden are losing* every minute. This has sparked huge attention nationally but also come to international attention.
There’s a lot of moral outrage… is it warranted?
There is controversy surrounding the number. The average man earns about $600 more per month so they should have burned a lot more money if you just go by that. Not sure if they got it wrong or if they might have just calculated from the difference that is discrimination (where men and women doing the same job are paid differently)
Governments destroy people’s very lives for what they considered is for the public good, seems only right that the people should be able to destroy government assets for what they decide is for the public good.
They spent SEK 100,000 on a gesture to call public attention to something they regard as a social issue needing public attention.
In fact they spent rather more. If the money was burnt on a stage, presumably the stage was in a hall or theatre somewhere, and they had to hire the hall or theatre. Perhaps there were staff costs or transport costs as well, and various other overheads.
Consuming money by burning banknotes to make a political point is no different from consuming money buy buying goods and services which will be wholly used to make the same political point. If you think the political point isn’t worth making then you’ll view the whole exercise as a waste, but that is true whether the exercise involves burning banknotes or not.
So does framing the first dollar a company makes. Or making a necklace from a quarter, or leaving a penny on a railroad track to be run over by a train, or using a $100 bill to light a cigar. It’s the owner’s money, they have every right to do whatever they want with it.
But whatever goods or services you could have bought with it still exist. You haven’t destroyed anything of intrinsic value.
What you have done, I suppose is fractionally increase the value of each Swedish Krone still in existence, since there is now a slightly smaller pool of Kroner chasing the same volume of goods and services; you have transferred wealth from yourself to the Kroner-holding community at large. Looks altruistic to me!
I’m fairly sure that money is actually owned by the gov’t. Modern coins and notes are a representation of value that is guaranteed (kind-of) by whoever is in charge of the national economy.
So burning banknotes is destroying someone else’s property: you own the value of the note, you don’t own the physical note itself. Destroying (and defacing) money is illegal in most countries, I believe.
Actually, I don’t think that money is his. Or yours. I thought that the bills and coins themselves were owned by the Federal Reserve (or the Treasury), at all times, and are just in circulation for the use of the public.
I know that it’s illegal to deface or destroy US currency.
I’m not aware that notes and coins are technically owned by the sovereign, but I suppose that may vary from country to country.
But, even if they are, the intrinsic value of the paper and ink in a banknote is trivial. If people object to the destruction of a banknote, I doubt that it is the value of the paper which concerns them.
Most countries today (and I would suppose Sweden is one) employ "Fiat Money". The actual notes, themselves, have no intrinsic value, and are worth whatever the issuing agency (Federal Reserve, Government Mint, etc.) says they are.
It may be possible, if the demonstrators could “prove” that the bills had been destroyed, they could receive the replacement bills and not be out any actual money.
In any case, the total of all currency in circulation is a small fraction of the total “money” (M1, M2 and M3) in an economy. The bills destroyed in the demonstration are a small fraction of the currency in circulation, so I fail to see the source of the moral outrage.
Is it ethical to be a coin collector? When state quarters were being issued, a coworker of mine was saving one of each state. It never would have occurred to me that she was being unethical in removing $12.50 from circulation.
That’s a fairly common misreading; when I was a good deal younger one of the draws for a couple of people I knew to drilling a hole in the middle of a quarter and wearing it as a necklace was their mistaken belief that it was rebellious since they thought it was a federal crime. Defacing or destroying US currency is perfectly legal. What is illegal is then trying to pass said currency on as legal tender. 18 USC 331 requires fraudulent intent,
Incidentally, currency is but a small fraction of the money supply anyway. And I openly challenge the notion that Federal Reserve Notes are owned by the government.
As for the recycling point, burning currency means that you can no longer exchange it for a checking deposit, and the bank in turn won’t return the bill to the Fed for credit on their account. Lost and destroyed notes are an aspect of Seigniorage which is a source of profit for the government and taxpayer.
Of course burning currency is unseemly, which is probably the source of the controversy.
