Global: Since adolescence, people have been taught to believe that money is scarce and inherently valuable. And while this teaching does have its backing in reality, there is a deeper underlying current worth questioning.

Humans work on what can be called objective relativity — a weighing scale that constantly shifts between suffering and happiness. Once money was institutionalised, it became the mechanism to tip that scale from suffering to happiness organically. The only barrier? The presence of money itself. With money, your needs and wants — food, water, shelter, transport, consumer goods — can be secured with ease. But here lies the irony: to obtain money and thus work less, you must in fact work more, because what money can buy is not controlled by the individual but by central banks.

The Illusion of Value

Historically, exchange was straightforward: three loaves of bread might get you a fish. That was value tied to real goods. Today, this relationship is distorted. The same fish that once cost 50 cents may now cost $3. Why? Inflation — the increase in money supply without a proportional rise in production.

Economists describe it simply: when more money chases the same amount of goods, prices rise. But there’s more — the illusion of scarcity. Central banks tighten or loosen the amount of money, creating artificial scarcity or abundance. This illusion influences behaviour in many societies, forcing people to work harder not just for more goods, but for money that stretches less than it did yesterday.

How Money Creates Poverty

The heart of the problem lies in how work is valued. One hour of labour is not equal across professions. A janitor may earn $7 for an hour of work, while a neurosurgeon earns $300, and a business owner earns even more by leveraging capital and trade and labour. Economists call this the marginal productivity of labour — society values the neurosurgeon more because their skill is rare, their output more "productive."

But here’s the flaw: when productivity gains — the ability to produce more with less effort — rise in one sector, they don’t automatically translate to higher wages for all. Over decades, productivity has soared globally, but wages for most workers have paled in comparison to the injection of capital. The surplus value typically goes upward, accumulating as profit for owners rather than workers. This is why many critics of callous capitalism allude to what Marx meant in his labour theory of value — the wealth created by labour is siphoned to those who control capital.

So when money supply expands, inflation erodes the savings of the majority. The neurosurgeon or business owner can shield themselves by adjusting fees or prices, but the janitor cannot. This is how poverty persists even in rich societies— not because money is absent, but because its valuation of human time is uneven.

The inequality here isn’t just anecdotal. Economists measure it through the Gini coefficient, a scale of inequality from 0 (perfect equality) to 1 (extreme inequality). Many developed nations have Gini scores above 0.4 — meaning wealth is clustered at the top. The illusion of scarcity keeps this system alive. If people believe money is finite, they accept their place in the hierarchy, not realising that capital is infinite as long as human labour and innovation continue to generate it — we now have to consider sustainable production and consumption as well.

The Role of Welfare and Redistribution

Some societies have recognised this structural flaw. Social democracies, through progressive taxation and welfare redistribution, attempt to correct the imbalance. Top earners contribute more, supporting public services and safety nets. This does not eliminate inequality, but it narrows the discrepancy in how different forms of work are valued.

This shift is crucial. By reducing the burden of survival — healthcare, education, housing — people can seek work not solely based on wages, but based on efficiency, productivity, and passion. In economic terms, this reduces opportunity cost — individuals are free to choose careers and pursuits that maximise not just income, but wellbeing and innovation.

The Larger Lesson

Money itself is not scarce. What is scarce is trust, fairness, and equality of opportunity. Poverty is not a natural state but an well-engineered one, created by the way societies choose to value work and distribute capital.

And so the illusion persists: people are told to fight over a "limited" pool of money, when in reality money is infinite — endlessly created, shifted, and destroyed. What matters is not the number printed on bills, but whether societies can resist the blissful illusion long enough to design systems where human dignity is not priced differently by the hour.