Relation To Debt
A debt is a deferred payment; a standard of deferred payment is what they are denominated in. Since the value of money – be it dollars, gold, or others – may fluctuate over time via inflation and deflation, the value of deferred payments (the real level of debt) likewise fluctuates. A device is termed "legal tender" if it may serve to discharge (pay off) debts; thus, while US dollars are not backed by gold or any other commodity, they draw value from being legal tender – being usable to pay off debts.
Read more about this topic: Standard Of Deferred Payment
Famous quotes containing the words relation to, relation and/or debt:
“A theory of the middle class: that it is not to be determined by its financial situation but rather by its relation to government. That is, one could shade down from an actual ruling or governing class to a class hopelessly out of relation to government, thinking of gov’t as beyond its control, of itself as wholly controlled by gov’t. Somewhere in between and in gradations is the group that has the sense that gov’t exists for it, and shapes its consciousness accordingly.”
—Lionel Trilling (1905–1975)
“There is a relation between the hours of our life and the centuries of time. As the air I breathe is drawn from the great repositories of nature, as the light on my book is yielded by a star a hundred millions of miles distant, as the poise of my body depends on the equilibrium of centrifugal and centripetal forces, so the hours should be instructed by the ages and the ages explained by the hours.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“The debt was the most sacred obligation incurred during the war. It was by no means the largest in amount. We do not haggle with those who lent us money. We should not with those who gave health and blood and life. If doors are opened to fraud, contrive to close them. But don’t deny the obligation, or scold at its performance.”
—Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)