Philosopher Tara Smith challenges the bromide that says that money cannot buy happiness. She argues that money’s critics often mis-understand the source and value of money, criticize it on the basis of faulty philosophical assumptions, or focus only on pathologies involving money but stemming from other problems. Smith explains the source of money, its great value as a tool of economic exchange, and, when earned and used well, its considerable physical and psychological rewards. This edition is a reprint of an essay first published in Reason Papers 26 (Summer 2003), pp. 7-20.

Professor Tara Smith received her Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins University and is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Texas, Austin. She is the author of Viable Values, A Study of Life as the Root and Reward of Morality (Rowman & Littlefield, 2000), Ayn Rand s Normative Ethics (Cambridge University Press, 2006), and many essays in academic and other publications.

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