Everything Is Relative. The Value Of A Dollar.
Everything is Relative. The Value of a Dollar.
Read Introduction
A dollar bill is a singular note of currency. It is completely insignificant to some and invaluable to others. It does many different things for many different people. A dollar rescues and it destroys. It terrifies and enrages. It seduces. It frees. It enslaves. It exploits. It secures and enlightens.
Each note in this collection has roughly the same value. Yet each note has vastly different values. Each note tells a story. Together, they remind us that we simultaneously share a reality while each inhabiting our own.
Facsimiles
$1 Day Salary in America
Some of the inmates held at U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention centers run by private corporations work for an income of $1 a day. Placing a call to Mexico from a detention center can cost $1 a minute, a price that keeps detainees from phoning family members. At the Stewart Detention Center in Lumpkin, Georgia, one 4 oz. tube of toothpaste costs $11.02.
Killed Over $1
At a county fair in Maryland, according to prosecutors, a 59-year-old man died after two teenagers asked him for a dollar and then punched him in the head.
S$1 Bribe
Two Chinese forklift truck drivers at a container depot in Singapore were jailed and fined after being accused of taking S$1 bribes ($0.73) from truck drivers, allegedly in exchange for not delaying the collection of containers from their trucks. “Even if the bribe amount is as low as $1, they can be taken to task,” Singapore’s Corrupt Practices Investigation Bureau said.
Arrested Over $1 Bills
A man in Wichita Falls owed $600 in property taxes. When he arrived at the local courthouse to pay, he allegedly provided individual dollar bills folded so tightly that office personnel needed six minutes to unfold each one. The taxpayer refused to leave, police were called, and he was eventually arrested.
Facsimile
Miracle Dollar
A woman and her husband decided to each sign their name on a dollar bill and exchange them to keep as tokens of their love. Soon after, the wife died of cancer. The husband held onto her bill until he accidentally spent it while shopping. He was shocked at his mistake. A few months later, while taking care of his granddaughter, he gave her some money to buy a sandwich at Subway. When his granddaughter came out with the sandwich and $3 in change, he realized one of them was the dollar signed by his wife. He wept.
Facsimile
$1 Sex
According to a 2006 report by the United Nations, 1 in 3 girls between the ages of 12 and 18 are engaged in “casual sex work” in Kenya’s coastal region. In the country, children have sold sex to tourists for 100 Kenyan Shillings (US$1).
$1 Salary for Billionaires
American billionaires including Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, Google’s Sergey Brin and Larry Page, and Oracle’s Larry Ellison have taken $1 base salaries. The strategy allows them to minimize their income tax bills, because the billionaires are often instead rewarded with stock options.
Turning a $1 Bill into a “$20” Bill
There are many methods used to counterfeit money. The counterfeiter of this bill took the corners of a $20 bill (rendering the $20 still valid, since it contains more than 50% of the note, the amount required to still be considered legal tender) and placed it on the corners of a single dollar bill.
On loan from the collection of Harley Spiller
$1 Anti-Immigration Effort
The Mexican airline Volaris recently began offering immigrants airline tickets for $1 each (plus appropriate taxes) to return to the countries from which they came, including Costa Rica, El Salvador and Guatemala. The only requirement is to show a form of ID and board the next available flight south from Tijuana, Ciudad Juárez, Guadalajara or Mexico City.
$1 Rise in Minimum Wage Helps Prevent Suicide
Recent research published in the Journal of Epidemiology & Community Health found that increasing the minimum wage by a single dollar lowered suicide rates by as much as 5.9%.
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This exhibition and many more are in the Mmuseumm 2020 Jumbo Catalog available for purchase at store.mmuseumm.com
Mmuseumm is a non-profit project dedicated to helping people see the world we are living in through physical evidence. Support Mmuseumm by making a tax-deductible donation at Fractured Atlas 501(c)(3)