Task 15

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MONEY

Money is used for buying or selling goods, for measuring value¹ and for storing wealth². Almost every society now has a money economy based on coins and paper bills of one kind or another. However, this has not always been true. In primitive societies a system of barter was used. Barter was a system of direct exchange of goods. Somebody could exchange a sheep, for example, for anything in the marketplace that they considered to be of equal value. Barter, however, was a very unsatisfactory system, because people's precise needs³ seldom coincided. People needed more practical system of exchange, and various money systems developed based on goods which the members of a society recognized as having value. Cattle, grain, teeth, shells, feathers, skulls, salt, elephant tusks⁴ and tobacco have all been used. Precious⁵ metals gradually took over because, when made into coins, they were portable, durable, recognizable and divisible⁶ into larger and smaller units of value. A coin is a piece of metal, usually, disshaped, which bears lettering⁷, designs or numbers showing its value. Until the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, coins were given monetary worth based on the exact amount⁸ of metal contained in them, but most modern coins are based on face value⁹ — the value that governments choose to give them, irrespective of the actual metal content. Most governments now issue paper money in the form of bills, which are really "promises to pay". Paper money is obviously¹⁰ easier to handle and much more convenient in the modern world. Checks and credit cards are being used increasingly, and it is possible to imagine a world where "money" in the form of coins and paper currency will no longer be used.