alt Hacker NewsMoney is the thing you use to buy things. Wealth is having those things. Only in an ideal world are the two the same. The world is not ideal.
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analog31 • last Friday at 10:24 PM
That may be true, but a modern money system could get you pretty close to that ideal, where the main difference is the friction of transactions.
It's close to ideal for a loaf of bread, or a bag of nails. I can hop on my bike and turn my money into either of those things in a few minutes. Turning money into a house is further from that ideal of course.
But why couldn't they, e.g. buy other people's thing in exchange for their gold? IOW, why is the relevant fact that _Spain_ didn't have much more wealth despite having more gold? Other people in other countries valued (and still value) gold too.