"Money" -What is money, how is it changing, and what do you think it will be in the future?

Essay by neffedoJunior High, 7th gradeA+, May 2004

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Whenever someone uses money, it seldom enters their mind that money is something other than what they use to trade for things they need or want, including services. To be honest, money is actually useless within itself. However, people believe that money has value. It's all in a promise. In earlier times people used to barter, or trade one item for another, but they needed something durable, something that would last a long time. It also needed to be divisible, that is it would have to be easily broken in to smaller parts. Eventually the started using gold and coins as money. Native Americans used wampum beads as their money. Now we used bills, coins, check, and credit cards as money.

To being with, how exactly does money work? Money works because people make a promise that when they give money away, the person receiving it can trade the money in for something of equal value.

This started out because they believed it to be valuable. Money should be portable so you can carry it around with you. The gold was, and some were in coins, but people got tired of carrying around all their gold and coins. Therefore the decided to give their gold to a goldsmith, who would store it safely. In return, the goldsmith gave the person a receipt, which meant that that he had their money and he was storing it, and how much money was being stored. As the goldsmith kept getting money, he figured no one would withdraw all his or her money at once. So he started giving people loans, which contained interest, a special rent or fee a person pays for money he has borrowed. Meanwhile, the people who received the receipts started using them in place of gold. They would give...