Some good thoughts from Alan Watts

This record shows how important is to develop understanding beyond the symbols commonly used in the society.

Just some quotes to make the point clear:

"The confusion of money in any form whatsoever with wealth is one of the major problems from which civilization is suffering"

"Way back in our development, when we first began to use symbols to represent the events of the physical world, we found this such an ingenious device that we became completely fascinated with it"

"The real reason why in our world today, where there is no technical reason whatsoever why there should be any poverty at all ... is people keep asking a question "where's the money gonna come from", not realising that money doesn't come from anywhere and never did, except if you thought it was gold"

"When gold is used for money [as storage of value] it becomes in fact useless ... the moment it is locked up in vaults ... it becomes a false security, something that people cling to, like an idol"

"If you increase the supply of gold, use that to finance all of the world's commerce, prosperity would depend not upon finding new processes for growing food in vast quantities or getting nutrition out of the ocean or getting water from atomic energy. It would depend on discovering a new gold mine"

I would add here, that too much "symbolical" money used as a storage of value is still an issue today, even when the gold standard is fully abandoned. We have billions of money units floating around the financial system looking for a decent return on investment, which is often derived from fluctuations in asset prices and nothing more.

About the Great Depression:

"...one day everybody was doing business and things were going along pretty well, and the next day there were bread lines. It was like someone came to work and they said to him: sorry,  but you can't build today ... we do not have enough inches ... we've used too much of them"

"Money is something of the same order of reality as inches, grams, meters, pounds or lines of latitude and longitude - it is an abstraction"

Actually, the remaining part of the record not devoted to economics is also worth listening to, as this is only a small part of what the author calls "the veil of thoughts".