Money as Society's Great Wheel — The Wealth of Nations

Smith asks what money costs society. Prices split into wages, profit, and rent, but the gold and silver that circulate goods are dead stock while they sit idle. Money is like a highway: it moves corn and cloth but does not grow or weave them. Every coin kept for trade is capital that produces nothing until it changes hands. Society must maintain that wheel, but it should not mistake the wheel for the cargo. Real wealth is the annual produce of land and labour, not the metal that carries it. Plate and jewellery locked in chests are still dead stock until sold or lent. The nation pays to coin, guard, and move money that earns nothing while it waits in tills. Smith's point is quantitative as well as moral: every shilling idle in a chest is a shilling not hiring a weaver.