How do you feel about the phrase "Money doesn't grow on trees"?

Question

Do you think it makes sense? Please comment.

Answer 1

Well actually (paper) money is actually mostly made of cotton, not paper (although I think there still is paper in it).  However assuming it was 100% paper, paper comes from the trunk of trees, hence it IS the tree, not growing on it :)  Just another way to look at it I guess.

Answer 2

Well money (at least bills) is made of paper, which actually DOES come from trees, so...

Answer 3

If you look at it from the standpoint that money is currency, and currency can be anything, a funny shaped rock for instance, and ignore the fact that our bills are made from paper, then yes, it does make sense.

What the phrase really means is that resources/money should not be wasted, because you cannot just pluck dollar bills off a tree, and still have them at the same value if everyone else is doing the same. If everyone plucked a dollar bill off a tree, soon everyone would have a dollar for free, and the dollar would not be worth anything. (Or if they picked a euro off a tree. Or yen. Or speckled pigs worth lots of money in fairy land.)

Even taking the fact in mind that the currency we use is made from trees, it takes time and effort to hack those trees down. Once you hack a tree down, it really doesn't grow anymore, does it? To an extent, the meaning is 'money is not free' but, to a degree, this statement is wrong.

We do get a degree of free things in life that we can later use to make money, like apples growing on trees, but then we must consider all the effort taken just to give us these things. Even just being born into the world and having a 'free life' takes a lot of energy and effort on our parent's part. Greatly the sense of this statement depends on your veiwpoint on the world, but it does make some sense to the extent that you can't walk down the highway and make a million bucks just plucking trees (Unless you get lucky and some weirdo dropped a million dollars into those trees first, of course).

Answer 4

Well, as paper is made from trees and some money is made from paper.... Money does not grow on trees but some of the necessary ingredients for making money might do.