Now, listen to part of a talk in an economics class. So, let's talk about money. What is money? Well, typically people think of coins and paper ‘bills’ as money... but that's using a somewhat narrow definition of the term. A broad definition is this: [slowly] money is anything that people can use to make purchases with. Since many things can be used to make purchases, money can have many different forms. Certainly, coins and bills arc one form of money. People exchange goods and services for coins or paper bills, and they use this money... these bills...to obtain other goods and services. For example, you might give a taxi driver five dollars to purchase a ride in his taxi. And he in turn gives the five dollars to a farmer to buy some vegetables. But, as I said, coins and bills aren’t the only form of money under (his broad definition. Some societies make use of a barter system. Basically, in a baiter system people exchange goods and services directly for other goods and services. The taxi driver, for example, might give a ride to a farmer in exchange for some vegetables. Since the vegetables arc used to pay for a service, by our broad definition the vegetables are used in barter as a form of money. Now, as I mentioned, there's also a second... a narrower definition of money. In the United States only coins and bills arc legal tender - meaning that by law, a seller must accept them as payment. The taxi driver must accept coins or bills as payment for a taxi ride. OK? But in the U.S., the taxi driver is not required to accept vegetables in exchange for a ride. So a narrower definition of money might be whatever is legal tender in a society, whatever has to be accepted as payment.
Using points and examples from the talk, explain the two definitions of money presented by the professor.
The professor talks about two definitions of money, a broad one and a narrow one. By the broad definition, money is everything with which we can make purchases. For example, coins and bills can be money, because we can use them to buy goods such as vegetables and pay for services such as taxi. But in a barter system, vegetables can be money too, because farmers can give drivers vegetables in exchange for a drive. By the narrow definition, in a society, the legal tender is money. For instance, in the US, drivers and farmers must accept dollars as payment. People can use dollars to pay for taxi and buy vegetables because dollar is the legal tender in the US. So, dollar in the form of coin and bill is money.
