Applying Arguments about Economics and Place - Essay Example

It gives a detailed explanation of why the poorer people in the United States of America seem to acquire and store more invaluable stuff as compared to the fairly financially stable people. According to Paul Graham’s article, one of the articles in unit two, the contemporary American market is full of cheap stuff as compared to the traditional America (Paul 1). People used to undervalue stuff and only accumulated only a portion of what they bought and considered absolutely valuable to them. In the contemporary America, however, people seem to overvalue stuff despite the fact that they are cheaper as compared to the traditional stuff.

Paul tries to give an explanation to why poorer people are more likely to value stuff with lesser value as compared to the fairly rich people. He explains that he would pick things left by friends when they moved to new homes because he was poor, and useless stuff seemed useful to him. This is an implication that poor feel that they will perhaps make use of stuff in the future despite the fact that the same stuff might be useless to them at that particular moment (Paul 1). That is a confirmation of the uncertain future that the poor face.

Paul further explains that stuff in an illiquid asset and this might only change when one finds immediate use for it. In addition to that, stuff becomes a liquid asset only when one sells the stuff immediately he or she acquires it at a higher price compared to the buying prices. Therefore, stuff that is accumulated over a period of time becomes uneconomical. As a matter of fact, the stuff becomes expensive to keep because it occupies space thereby demanding for storage space. For this reason, Paul explains that it is worth noting that once one does not have immediate use for whatever he or she is trying to acquire, he or she probably never will have use for that object (Paul 1).

The increase of stuff in the markets, both used and new, is attributed to the increased