Imagine there was a way to equitably distribute all the cash in the world among each inhabitant of the planet. In this way, a farmer in Wisconsin would have the same cash as a potter in New Delhi, a goat herder in Namibia, or a dentist in Sydney.

How much money do you think would correspond to each inhabitant? The short answer: everyone could buy a Dacia Sandero.

The modern economic system encompasses many financial and monetary elements that define the term wealth. Therefore, one of the ways to exercise imagination in wealth distribution that would help mitigate global poverty could be to distribute all the cash that exists in the monetary markets around the world.

This "cash" money is known as M2 money supply and is an intermediate monetary aggregate that includes the money in circulation worldwide and certain bank deposits with high liquidity and with a term of up to 2 years, savings accounts, and money market accounts, as well as deposits with availability with a notice of up to three months.

In other words, the M2 money supply is all that money you could have in your pocket relatively immediately.

The concept of M2 money supply differs from global wealth or assets in that it includes assets and real estate or commercial properties which, while they may have significant value, are not easily exchangeable for cash.

According to data collected by CEIC, the M2 money supply worldwide amounts to 123.3 trillion (European) dollars in 2024. In other words, by combining all the cash from all the economies of the world, we would total that amount of money. According to the 'Global Wealth Report 2024' prepared by UBS, global net private wealth in 2024 was estimated at 487.9 trillion dollars in total.

To help us see that information in a more graphical way, VisualCapitalist has created an infographic that takes the M2 money supply data obtained by CEIC and divides it by the world population data recorded by the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs.

Distributing all global cash

As we mentioned, the global M2 money supply recorded by the economic organization CEIC in 2024 is 123.313 trillion dollars (in the Anglo-Saxon system, this would be trillions), while the world population data in 2024 reveals that we currently have 8,161,973,000 inhabitants on this small blue marble we call planet Earth.

The result of equitable distribution is that each inhabitant of the planet would receive 15,108 dollars or, in other words, about 13,944.28 euros at the exchange rate.

According to calculations from VirtualCapitalist, this would equate to the spending generated by the grocery list of an average household for two years, to a second-hand car, or it would also be enough to buy a Dacia Sandero. Without extras, of course.

Spain's accounts add up better

If we repeat the same exercise but restricting the data to Spain, the amount each Spaniard would receive would be somewhat higher. According to CEIC records for Spain in December 2024, the available M2 money supply was 1,647,611.114 million dollars (or 1.648 trillion dollars).

On the other hand, population count data from the INE in January 2025 showed a total of 49,077,984 inhabitants in Spain. This means that if we divide the total money supply among the inhabitants of Spain, each would receive 33,571.29 dollars or about 30,967.97 euros at the exchange rate.