From the comments to the previous post:
Graeme: I knew this from A level economics in the 1980s. Money is a medium of exchange (1), a unit of account (2) and a store of value (3). Depending on the transaction, one of these things is more important than the others. But the other functions still exist.
(1) and (2) are clearly true. That would apply to things with intrinsic value as well, gold in historic times or cigarettes in prison. "Money" has no intrinsic value (numbers on your bank statement or bank notes or shopping vouchers) but is still (3) a store of value, because it is a claim on something else. The fact that you can swap these for goods and services gives them value. If a shop sells vouchers, it has cash in the bank and an equal and opposite liability to provide goods in future. It does not make a profit by selling the vouchers (unless they lapse, in which case it's a win for the shop and a loss to whoever let them lapse) and the existence of those vouchers does not change the total amounts of goods available to consume now or in future.
Ralph Musgrave: But government/central bank created money (with which the above article started is very different). That is, what exactly does the BoE owe you in respect of your £10 notes? Nothing much!
The BoE is part of the government. When it's time to pay your tax, you could pay it in bank notes which the self-same government printed in the first place. Once you've paid your tax, they could throw all those bank notes on a bonfire. Basic Modern Monetary Theory. The same logic applies to numbers on bank statements, they appear out of nowhere (printing) and disappear into nothing (incinerating).
What's in it for the government and what gives those bank notes value?
You can see them as permission slips to earn money. If you want to earn £100,000 real money in the private economy, you need to acquire £40,000's worth of those permits by the end of the year to hand back as income tax. Even if you invoice only in foreign currencies and earn €110,000 or $120,000 or whatever, you will still need to get your hands on £40,000's worth of permits.
The government puts the permits into circulation by printing them (out of nowhere) and using them to pay public sector salaries, old age pensions, welfare etc (and increasingly, giving money to their mates for nothing in return). Businesses and workers have to get hold of those permits to pay their tax and they do this by providing a certain fraction of their output to public sector workers, pensioners etc in exchange for the permits. Those salaries and pensions transfer output from private businesses to public sector workers and pensioners, which is the whole idea.
If you yourself have more permits than you need to pay tax, you give them to a business which needs them to pay their tax at the end of the year. The logic applies just as well to rationing vouchers. A non-smoker who wants to bake a cake swaps his tobacco vouchers with a smoker who doesn't need his full quota of eggs or flour. Or the non-smoker can sell them to a smoker and use the cash to buy something else that isn't rationed. The rationing vouchers have no intrinsic value and cost very little to create, but they still have value. Once used, they go on a bonfire.
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