What Is Money?

Great question... money in the sense of coinage goes back to about 700BC and probably first emerged in the Middle or Near East. Before that there were systems of barter, which sometimes were official and more often just an exchange of goods agreed between two parties. A big disadvantage of barter is that it's hard to determine the value of one thing against another - eg what is a cow worth in terms of other animals/goods? Also, if you get perishable goods you have to use them, you can't just keep them until needed - whereas if you accept a coin as a 'symbol' worth, for example, one cow, you can take it home and use it to buy a cow whenever you need one.

Anything can be used as money providing all agree on its worth - in some places shells are used as currency; in others cattle have a fixed value, against which all other goods are measured. Problems arise when money gets detached from the things it represents. You can easily see this if you think about banknotes; these have a promise written on them, that by handing over a dollar bill or whatever, you agree to pay one pound of 'real' money. This works fine until a country starts just printing more and more notes without reference to the goods, assets etc that they should represent.

Paper in the form of a federal note which is needed by mankind to sustain life.

It's that things that you took when u were young from your parents to get some ice cream...It's that things That you gave in the cinema to pay the pop corns of your girlfriend. Its that things that when you were younger you thought it was easy to make but know you know it's not!!

Money.....is the root of all evil. ;)