.

Money, the term, brings to mind minted coins and printed bills. Bank checks are not always thought of as money, altho 90 percent or more of all purchases are made with checks. The chief purpose of money is to facilitate the exchange of goods and services and because so much of this is done with checkbook money, "purchasing media" is often used as an inclusive term.

Wealth is a tangible, something having exchange value. It usually does, but need not have use or intrinsic value. A rare cancelled, postage stamp may have a high exchange value and no other value whatever. Material things that satisfy desires; these, without number, constitute wealth.

The figures on national income are derived from the sum total of production, sales and services. In actuality the national income is limited to the total wealth produced. Services satisfy desires but produce no material thing. A loaf of bread can be bitten into. Not so with a hair cut.

To separate wealth from money, imagine all coins, bills and checkbook money to have disappeared over night. Wealth, the million and one tangible things, would still remain, intact, and as good as ever tho difficult to come by until another means of effecting exchanges had been improvised.

; We hear of a recluse whose death reveals that he had thousands of dollars cached away. In life, he lived in poverty. He lacked, almost to completeness, the material things we associate with wealth. The antidote for poverty is wealth; not money. If this were not so our ever so paternalistic government could end poverty in one fell swoop by printing and issuing scads of folding money. The banks could create unlimited demand deposits merely by writing figures in a book. This in both instances, with some restrictions has been and is now being done and we never had it so good.

-. We could have it even better; so good in fact that it would take -- a million tokens, of such purchasing media, to buy a loaf of bread.