Wait a minute – When time is money
The premise of the movie, and therefor the economy, is that everyone in the movie is genetic modified to only be able to live for ‘free’ for 25 years. On there 25th birthday everyone receives additional 1 years, which then simulant is used as a currency in the economy and is consumed how time normally would be consumed. When you are buying goods, like a cup of coffee, you pay with time. To earn time you would naturally need a job, where you can earn a wage, which also is paid out in minutes, hours, and so on. But now it becomes interesting. In real world economy it is never clear what part of the wage is value adding, or it is never easy to objectively say how much value a given task have added, this is of course, because that in the real world the value of a minute is subjective. Now in In Time, the value of a Minutes would still be subjective, but since you are spending time just by being alive, and paid at the end of the day X amount of hours, it now becomes clear how much value a given work have created, or at least how much that the given work is being valued by the company.
Another example on how perceptive on the economy changes where time is the currency is in regards to hotel rooms. Where you pay, with time, you gain access to the room, and then you are spending time, the currency, for every second that you are using that room. So even if the transaction between consumer and the hotel still is a flat fee for renting the room; the aggregate cost of renting the room varies with how long the costumer uses the room.
But generally is In Time dealing with the subject of the central bank, and inflation. Without giving to much away clearly the bad guys in the movie are the central banks that controls the distribution of the currency in society, an especially how inflation is a tax on money. Regarding the central bank being the bad guy in this movie is made explicit several times in the movie, especially when we are shown that the bad guy in the movie is the owner of a, what seems to be the only bank in the movie, in other words that the bad guy seems to hold a monopoly on the creation of time.
The issue of inflation is portrayed in two ways in the movie, first we see how the central bank continuously increases the expeditions as a reaction to the actions of the movies heroes, and inflation is aseptically clear after the big event in at the end of the movie, where the reward for the capture of the movies heroes are increased form 10 to 100, again as a reaction to the actions of our heroes.
So in the end, if it where not for the movie Atlas Shrugged then I would consider In Time to be an elucidate contester for the libertarian movie of the year.
