Will there ever be enough money?

The national debt just reached 40 trillion dollars. No wonder they are pushing AI. It's seen as a possible "cash cow." There is an overwhelming need for money.

Money is just a number. Not a real product or resource. We can just create more money with entries into a computer, but that leads to inflation. Yes, we've been creating money for many decades. It's called "quantitative easing." It's created inflation, but it seems like most of the inflation settles into asset values, for instance home values. Home values have skyrocketed, in most locations, since my college days.

Other things have gone up also, stocks, healthcare costs and so forth, but things go up at different rates. Some things go up faster than other things. I remember Xerox copies costing around 5 cents a copy back in my college days. They are about the same cost today.

Technology has given us many bargains not even dreamed of in my college days. Lots of wealth is not necessarily measured in money. What can a smartphone do versus it's modest cost?

We have lots of products and services that we didn't have years ago, but do we feel that we are wealthier? It seems like there is a growing split between the those who own assets and the rest of the economy of goods and services. Owning lots of assets, like the billionaires have, makes one very wealthy. It's hard for the rest of us to keep up even with all the new things we have that didn't exsist during my college days.

The first rungs on the ladder are hard to reach and the path forward to higher rungs is spotty. Many fall off into homelessness and then need more government spending to stay afloat yet they often do have smartphones that NASA engineers never dreamed of having years ago.

A smartphone does not necessarily create the sense of home. It's still not "enough." It seems like there is never enough. It's not counted that much in dollars. A smartphone can be sold for less money than one month's rent.

I think people take money too seriously. It's a tool, but it isn't a god. Everything can't be fixed with just tax cuts and / or revving up the economy to super prosperity. The massive data center buildout isn't likely to create a pot of gold either. AI can be a useful tool, like any technology from the automobile to the electric lightbulb.

Maybe they can just print up enough money to subsidize the masses so we can all keep up with the billionaires. So we can pay the rent. We all move forward on a never ending treadmill, but I still think the main focus should be quality of life. That isn't as easy to assign a number to, but there are some indexes that come close. Indexes like health and happiness indexes.

Some European countries seem to do that better.