Dr. Chris Raffensperger

Professor of History and Chair of the Department
Kenneth E. Wray Chair in the Humanities
Director, Ermarth Institute for the Public Humanities
Medieval Europe, Russia, Ukraine

“Money (that’s what I want)” is a song I enjoy every time it comes on the radio (by which, of course, I mean on Spotify). If you don’t know the song, the premise is laid out quite clearly in the first lyrics, “The best things in life are free; But you can give them to the birds and bees; I need money (that’s what I want).” The song was Motown’s first hit, recorded by Barrett Strong in 1959, but almost immediately was picked up and covered by a variety of other artists including the Beatles, the Flying Lizards (my favorite version), and most recently Charli XCX. The song was a response to the 1920s “The Best Things in Life are Free,” which had a return to popularity in the late 1940s. The lyrics of "The Best Things" focus on those intangibles of life which do not require money. Yet, isn't it an interesting social commentary on a song focusing on the acquisition of money instead of those intangibles is, by far, the more popular?

My suggestion here is that the reason for the immense popularity of “Money (that’s what I want)” for so many artists over the last 80 years is quite simple – people want money. At the same time that the song hit the charts, America saw the rise of the prosperity gospel on television with preachers like Oral Roberts, who had the most watched religious program in the 1960s. The prosperity gospel teaches that God wants you to be rich. Oral Roberts, as one example among many, encouraged people to send him donations. Those donations were “seeds” which would grow and multiply, not for Roberts but for the sender, bringing that wealth back to the sender many times over. Most other Christian denominations have denounced the prosperity gospel for not being in keeping with the Jesus’s message. In other words, “It is easier for a camel to fit through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of God.” (Matthew 19:24)

The ideas behind the prosperity gospel can be seen in popular music, beyond “Money (that’s what I want).” Apropos of our current political situation, Donald Trump, well before he was president, became an icon of money and musical artists used his name as a byword for achieving wealth and success. Jay-Z in 1999 rapped that he was “the ghetto’s answer to Trump,” while Nelly added Bill Gates’s name to Trump’s to indicate how much money he was making. Perhaps most evocative is Yung Joc – “Boys in the hood call me black Donald Trump.”

Discussions of the role of money in society almost always emphasize its evils. And yet, the truth is that people want money. People DO believe that money will bring them what they want in life. And perhaps if we want to have a serious conversation about money in society, we should acknowledge that and leave the idea that the “best things in life are free…to the birds and bees."

Dr. Ross Jackson

Associate Professor of Business & Economics
Program Director, Master of Science in Analytics
Management

Money dominates modernity as it shapes and constrains our culture. An examination of the music industry provides an example of the prominence of money in society. There are thousands of songs with money in the title. The most successful album in history, in terms of weeks on the chart, is Pink Floyd’s "The Dark Side of the Moon" (1973). Their song "Money" is one of the tracks on that album, and it charted as a single. As they said, “Money, it’s a hit.”

It is perhaps revealing that there are over a hundred recorded versions of the song, “Money (That’s What I Want)” (1959) alone. Popular versions of that song include renditions from The Beatles (1963), The Rolling Stones (1964), The Kingsmen (1964), The Supremes (1966), The Flying Lizards (1979), Josie and the Pussycats (2001), Boyz II Men (2007), and more recently from Nick D’Virgilio (2020). Catchy beat aside, the persistent and varied reinterpretation of this song likely has something to do with its lyrical content. Money certainly holds currency in our society, but what is it that money actually does?

Economically, money serves two functions: 1) a store of value, and 2) a medium of exchange. Efficiency is central to business. Money has come to dominate over alternatives like bartering, because it has allowed for more efficient trade and wealth accumulation. When something is found to do these things more efficiently than money, businesses will transition in response to market pressures. Money persists because it performs its economic functions more efficiently than any currently known alternatives. But it is important to appreciate that just because money works well economically, it does not mean it also works well socially or existentially.

I once read on LinkedIn, which seems to be the repository of all culturally relevant, business knowledge, that individuals have three currencies: time, money, and knowledge, and that one can use two of these to get more of the third. Along that line of thinking, one might say that college students use their currencies of time and money to gain knowledge. When I ask students why they want to become educated members of our society, a frequent response is that they want to make money. A lot of money. The fact that I tend to interact with business students perhaps makes this response more frequent than it would be otherwise, but I suspect that this concern is one generally shared among students.

The pursuit of money can become overly seductive as what was initially pursued as a means can quickly become an end. The trick, if there is one, is to understand that money, while useful in some contexts, is only one of the currencies available to us. Hopefully, as one studies at Wittenberg, students acquire not only the knowledge that enables them to earn the money they want and need, but also the wisdom that it is the time spent pursuing what one loves in commerce with those about whom one cares that is the most enriching.