Why would people decide to go from “money” with actual wealth to something that ultimately is worth nothing to the owner? People back then, at the time paper money was being made, wondered the same thing. The people who used metals as currency thought the idea of paper money was a joke. “After Marco Polo visited China in the late 13th century, he returned to Europe with tales of a society that used paper money. People found the ideas so ridiculous that they thought he was exaggerating” (Merritt). The Chinese started making a money on their own, but this money wasn’t out of metals. This new money that would change the world was paper (Hamza). It was first used around the 800’s by the Tang Dynasty, but the Song Dynasty expanded the use of paper money throughout all of China (Lee). There are, however, advantages and disadvantages to those who decided to switch to paper money.. …show more content…
People who changed from money with wealth to money with no wealth was because of the lack of metals or materials. You can’t just use any metal as currency or money because that metal could possibly react to other things around the metal. Only a few metals don’t react to pretty much anything, and those metals are scarce. Rowlatts sums it up pretty well stating, “The reason gold is so precious is precisely that it is chemically uninteresting” (Rowlatt). This statement can be applied to all metals like gold. The United States. switched to paper money on February 3, 1960 in Massachusetts because of war, and how easy it was making paper money