I agree with Susan B. Anthony¡¯s opinion, because there are lots of things that people can not do without money in a modern society. Thus, I believe that financial independence is necessary to get freedom and equality. There are two reasons to show why financial independence is necessary; one is that people can almost do everything what they want to do with money except few special things and second is that financial independence gives people chances to be equal to others at any time.

First, in a materialistic society, there are lots of things people who are financially well off can do. They can buy what they want with plentiful money. They can also act freely on the condition that they do not interrupt others, because they have rights to do so and nobody blames them for acting freely. When my uncle who graduated from the Seoul university last year got a pretty good job a few month ago, he announced independence to his parents. After being independent of parents and earning enough money to sustain his life by himself, he started to do what he wanted so long. Now, he lives freely without parent¡¯s interference.

Second, financial independence can allow people to have equal position with others. As society became materialistic and complex, class system occurred and people were usually classified into three groups with their wealth and power: upper class, middle class and lower class. From long times ago, most of people who were not financially independent usually became the wealthy people¡¯s slaves and suffered from inequality and all sorts of hardships. As you can see, financial independence allowed people to have minimum rights to act as others do. Thus, without financial independence, it is impossible to try to get genuine equality.

All things together, financial independence is one of the necessary factors for real freedom and genuine equality in that only people who are well off can have relatively more opportunities to pursuit freedom and equality than people who are not well off.