This might seem. like an odd question. When you read that billionaire Bill Gates has a lot you know what that means: He is so rich that he can buy almost anything he wants. In this sense, the term money is used to mean wealth. Economists, however, use the word in a more specific sense: Money is the set of assets in the economy that people regularly use to buy goods and services from other people. The cash in your wallet is money because you can use it to buy a meal at a restaurant or a shirt at a clothing store. By contrast, if you happened to own most of Microsoft Corporation, as Bill Gates does, you would be wealthy, but this asset is not considered a form of money. You could not buy a meal or a shirt with this wealth without first obtaining some cash. According to the economist’s definition, money includes only those few types of wealth that are regularly accepted by sellers in exchange for goods and services.


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