Who Needs Money?
Part 1: What Is Money? Money is everywhere. You can look just about anywhere and see an example of money. What is it? Many people would answer this question by saying, "Dollars and cents" or "francs" or "rupees" or "pennies and pounds." The truth is, money doesn't have to be paper money. It doesn't have to be coins. Money can be anything you want it to be. Almost. The real definition of money is this: anything that enough people will accept as payment for something. If you can convince enough people to accept Pokemon cards as money, then Pokemon cards are money.
This is called barter. Barter is exchanging something other than money for something else. Here's another example: You have a bunch of Pokemon cards, and your friend has a bunch of baseball cards. You want to start a baseball card collection, and your friend wants to start a Pokemon card collection. Each of you has some duplicates, or more than one of a certain card. You give these duplicates to your friend and get his or her duplicates in return.
Now, your family probably pays a lot of bills: rent (or house payment), electric bill, phone bill, maybe a car payment, credit card bills, etc. Can your family pay these bill using Pokemon cards or baseball cards? Probably not. Most of the companies that send your family these bills want money (real money, like cash). If you're in America, they want dollars and cents. Next page > Who Needs It? > Page 1, 2 |
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Does
this sound silly? It isn't really. What we're really talking
about here is a strict definition of money. Nowadays, people
think of money as paper and coins. But people use other
things to pay other people. You might have a lot of
something that other people want, like Pokemon cards. If
your friends want those Pokemon cards that you have, then
you can use those cards as money to pay for things that you
get from your friends.
The
two of you have just exchanged something, but it wasn't
money. You could have paid money for what you got, but you
didn't. You could have insisted that your friend pay money
for what you gave him or her, but you didn't. You just
traded. And whether you realized it or not, you were taking
part in a barter. This is the way people used to pay
each other, long before paper and coin money were
invented.
Social Studies for Kids
copyright 2002–2024
David White