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Economy Lessons - Money


From time to time the question of money comes up in conversation. Many people tend to think that money can increase wealth or to help to resolve many issues relating to health, starvation and education.

However, there is an interesting quote from the 17th century: "It would be too ridiculous to go about seriously to prove, that wealth does not consist in money, or in gold and silver; but in what money purchases, and is valuable only for purchasing. Money, no doubt, makes always a part of the national capital; but it has already been shown that it generally makes but a small part, and always the most unprofitable part of it. It is not because wealth consists more essentially in money than in goods, that the merchant finds it generally more easy to buy goods with money, than to buy money with goods; but because money is the known and established instrument of commerce, for which every thing is readily given in exchange, but which is not always with equal readiness to be got in exchange for every thing." - Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations
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