Our purpose in defining this term is to distinguish its use in political economy as opposed to the general appreciation of the term. We know that your good looks and charm are a personal asset to you in the normal parlance of the word. But you cannot sell these characteristics to someone else and walk away with a profit in your pocket. Personal characteristics are not assets in the economic sense of the term because they cannot be disposed of for monetary gain, they can they be employed absent the owner. If you invest a large amount of your labor in acquiring an education then that becomes a personal trait, and in the normal parlance you would call it a personal asset. But it is inalienable. You can't sell it or give it away and some other person cannot buy it and use it without your continued presence. The acid test of whether something is an asset is whether it can be sold or traded to another person for monetary gain in such a way as to not involve any labor on the part of the seller

Assets are those items for which an ownership claim will entitle the claimant to a monetary gain arising from the disposition or use of the item in question. Examples of assets are money, gold, land, stocks, bonds, a home, a car, a watch, or a business, or anything else (separate from our own inate or learned abilities and bodies) that has value in trade. You can sell your hot dog stand and realize a gain because of where it is and because that hot dog stand is associated with good hot dogs by a clientele that frequents the hot dog stand. After the sale you can walk away with this gain in your pocket. You can also hire someone else to operate the hot dog stand and even to manage it and pay that person a wage and take the difference in what you pay him and what you would have paid yourself as a profit on a continuing basis. You will receive an income stream without expending any further labor. In either case the hot dog stand and the ownership of the name and place of the stand are assets. Please note that it does not matter who owns the hot dog stand nor whether the owner is active or comatose. The amount paid to the owner will be the same regardless of what he does in his capacity as owner and therefore the hot dog stand has value without the labor of the owner. And the value of any asset is the anticipated benefit in the use or disposition of the asset.