a distinction between earning money and earning a living

We find ourselves living in a market place. We are expected to earn and purchase the necessities of our lives. Food costs money, clothes cost money, housing costs money; even knowledge and freedom come with a price tag. Am I suggesting that these things should be free, that is to say, their price set to zero? No, I am suggesting that they should not be included within the realm of things that prices can even begin to be applied to. Some people are suggesting that we should add a price tag to air! ‘Would you like some bottled air with your bottled water sir?’ No thank you, I should prefer to suffocate than live in such asphyxiating conditions.

Of course, we need to earn a living, for ‘food does not grow on trees, and fresh water is not just falling from the sky.’ Even so, I insist that each and every one of us must earn a living. The fruits of the trees do not pick themselves; the rain does not put itself into your cup. If you pick the fruit and collect the water, then you are earning a living, and it is noteworthy that in earning such a living you need not be earning money.

Such a distinction allows us to accommodate Thoreau’s claim that “The ways by which you may get money almost without exception lead downwards… You are paid for being something less than a man.” with his remark that “there is little or nothing to be remembered written on the subject of getting a living; how to make getting a living not merely honest and honourable, but altogether inviting and glorious; for if getting a living is not so, then living is not.”