There are competing definitions of wealth to choose from. The word \u201cwealth\u201d can evoke images of large stacks of money, costly material possessions or opulently constructed surroundings. In one sense, wealth is an ample supply of money. While misers with a large bank account might qualify under that definition, another definition would be the ownership of significant material possessions. These definitions both imply a nebulous judgment of quantity with the words \u201cample\u201d and \u201csignificant\u201d. Another dimension to include in this definition would be to introduce human valuation to the possessions. Therefore, we might say that wealth is ownership of objects with value, and that value is assigned by people. A final dimension to consider is that wealth is often used to include other factors in the quality of life, such as health, available leisure time, pleasing surroundings, deep understandings, and a rewarding social life. For the purposes of this paper, I will incorporate elements of all of these definitions, and define wealth as the ownership of significant quantities of valued objects or the fiscal wherewithal to acquire such and, other factors contributing to quality of life, such as those defined above.<\/p>\n
To further our understanding, let us consider how wealth comes in to being. There are several products that humans value, most of which are made from natural resources, through human effort over time. The basic natural resources are often produced without human intervention or effort. Natural resources such as stone, mineral deposits, fossil fuels, and soil are created in long, slow processes, not involving human labor. Historically, the same could be said of other resources, such as timber and fish, but more recently, humans are taking on a role in the cultivation of many of these resources. Other products have a longer history of human intervention including crops such as wheat and domesticated species like dogs and cattle. We work with these resources, whether cultivated or gathered to produce other goods such as bread, Tupperware, and computers. More abstract goods can also be produced, including artwork, computer programs, or environmental impact reports. The material goods that go into presenting and distributing these products form only a minor part of the inputs. More significantly, human effort, aided by skill or education, produces these valued goods. This is the dominant form of wealth creation in the modern world and deserves examination. Training of individuals to increase the value of their productive efforts may be one of the most valuable economic investments that can be made. So, in general, wealth is created from natural resources by the application of skilled human effort over time.<\/p>\n
The distribution of wealth can arise through various mechanisms, particularly the natural distribution in which the producer of a good retains the good, trade between parties, charity, taxation, theft and natural growth. Most wealth distribution is accomplished through consensual exchange. Since wealth is created through skilled human effort, the output of that effort is frequently assigned to the person or people who put forth the effort. The owners of goods, or the provider of services can exchange those goods or services directly, in barter, or indirectly, with money, simplifying transactions that would be much more complex in a barter economy. Charity, such as the distribution of goods, and more importantly services, from parents to children, or the efforts of nonprofits create another avenue for the distribution of wealth. Taxation allows the collection of wealth to be applied to the public good, with some conception of fairness in contribution employed. <\/p>\n
Wealth therefore has various components with varying difficulties of accounting. Financial wealth naturally lends itself to quantification. One\u2019s income and bank account balances are already monetized. Similarly, we can quantify material objects by their cost. And here is the first of the measurement difficulties. What we pay for an object may not fully reflect its value to us. I can just as easily take a picture of a friend and a stranger. I would pay the same amount for the two, but the picture of the friend is likely to be more valuable to me. Attempting to monetize an individual\u2019s valuation of more abstruse forms of wealth, such as health, free time, and their social network is far more difficult. <\/p>\n
Wealth measurements are also aggregated to various levels. The GDP is the classic tool for this, looking at the net volume of money exchanged in a country. Values closely related to GDP are often calculated for other groupings, such as industries, regions, cities, etc. The GDP is a strictly monetary measurement, and as such, has many critiques. A prominent one is the GPI, which seeks to include the various, harder to measure elements as a critical supplement to the GDP. It tries to measure the value of free time, of volunteer or domestic labor done without pay. It also takes into account the value of the environmental quality and the consumption of limited resources. <\/p>\n
I say bullshit factor 9 because it’s a touch overblown, but I really do mean what I wrote on this. (there’s more to the paper, if the end seems a bit abrupt)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1481","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cheerfulchaotic.crazycrew.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1481","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cheerfulchaotic.crazycrew.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cheerfulchaotic.crazycrew.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cheerfulchaotic.crazycrew.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cheerfulchaotic.crazycrew.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1481"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/cheerfulchaotic.crazycrew.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1481\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cheerfulchaotic.crazycrew.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1481"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cheerfulchaotic.crazycrew.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1481"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cheerfulchaotic.crazycrew.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1481"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}