Money Vs. Income = Hilarity

Again, from my Money & Banking textbook, another quote, this one about how people confuse money (what people say) with income (what economists would call it)...

People also use the word money to describe what economists call income, as in the sentence "Sheila would be a wonderful catch; she has a good job and earns a lot of money."

Does anyone even speak like that anymore? "A wonderful catch"? Seriously?

Word Of Advice From A Textbook

For fun, a word of advice from my Money & Banking book...

If, for example, someone comes up to you and says, "Your money or your life," you should quickly hand over all your currency rather than ask, "What exactly do you mean by 'money'?"

Just in case that was the first thing that crossed your mind at the time... now you know better. I think I might enjoy reading this book...

Free Textbooks Online... Good Idea, Won't Happen

So, I picked up The Chrony today to do the crossword puzzle. And there, on the front page sat the story.

Student association urges U to put more textbooks online

USA, composed of all student body officers from every Utah college, has tentatively proposed to have Utah colleges and universities make more use of money-saving methods. These could range from open-source textbooks, which are electronic textbooks that volunteering scholars co-author for free, to custom publishing arrangements or an electronic or print publisher-authorized compilation of excerpts from several existing texts so textbooks are free or affordable, said Andrew Jensen, director of USA.

Interesting idea. But it won't happen.


The people making the most money off of new textbooks are the authors (often professors on their own) and publishers. They are the people pushing "3-hole punch" versions and "1-time-use online-codes" and "custom editions" and all that jazz. All to make as much money as possible. Why would they give all that up? I mean, they could make things easier simply by just cutting all the crap and the constantly "updated" editions (total BS there) and let the used books get sold/bought. But no. They need all the money they can get, so they charge insane amounts ($200+ for some books) for new editions that haven't seen much change (maybe a new cover and chapter reorganization) since the last edition. "Custom editions" tend to be a bit cheaper than the actual book, but then occasionally you have to buy 2 versions (as for Chem 1210 and Chem 1220) or can't sell it back because it's custom with a code or custom with tear out pages or whatever.


Sure, you can put other books on the net for free... but why would professors that get money or benefits from sales of other books agree to use those in the first place? The reason the current textbooks get used are because they're good/the best. Would professors that truly use the books give up the quality for price? And would professors that don't use the books but get "instructor's editions" from the publisher for free if they make the book required give that up?