The Wealth of Nations

This post is brought to you by K. Marx, V. Lenin and J. Stalin. And, to a lesser extent, B. Yeltsin, V. Putin and D. Medvedev.

Everyone knows a peso is worthless. Monopoly money could buy you more cervezas. Russian coins are essentially the same, considering the ruble to dollar ratio is 30:1. The poor little kopeck, the equivalent of a penny, is of more use as a tourist’s souvenir than as actual currency. The metal used to make it is probably worth more than the coin itself. Fortunately, 99.9% of all prices do not list kopecks. I have only once needed any kopeck coin, and it was for a 1.5 ruble plastic cover. Stores don’t like dealing with kopecks because they are worthless and clumsy, so all prices are in even ruble numbers and as far as I can tell, there is either no sales tax, or it’s included in the prices.

I see 1, 10 and 50 kopeck coins on the street all the time. I used to pick them up, but I’ve since stopped, because there is no real use for them other than wallet fodder. I once thought that people simply didn’t realize that they had dropped their money on the ground, but today I learned otherwise. I was talking with my Vandy friend Masha outside our metro station when a woman was stuffing something inside of her wallet. As she did, a 50 kopeck coin (the most useful of the kopeck family) fell onto the ground. She watched it fall, looked at it on the ground and kept walking as if nothing had happened.

You know something needs to change when a woman isn’t willing to spend the extra second stooping down to retrieve the equivalent of two quarters of her own money. And judging by her need to use public transportation, I doubt she is a millionaire of the Gates variety who is worth too much to care about any piddly sum that falls to the street.

Until next time,

Katya.