There's more to wealth than money. I don't even mean that as some sort of hippy "all you need is love" sort of thing, I mean it's true in real life. A person who has multiple options to make $30,000/yr is better off that a person who has only one, who is still better off than someone who is getting $30,000/yr from the government, and is thus completely subject to their whims and bureaucracy. There's also significant differences between these when scaled to the societal level, between a robust society, a fragile society, and a society where the government is now master of the people rather than the other way around. For the fragile case, for instance, consider the automotive industry in Michigan, where a lot of people saw their one good option drop to zero.
Money is only one component of wealth. Unless you have the "fuck you" money (in local parlance), it's not enough on its own to be "wealthy". I think even trained economists can forget this sometimes.
It is also fact that the more money you have, the more options to increase your wealth are actually offered to you. Means there is no "equal footing" to begin with. And when it comes to covering your basic human needs there is an upper limit to that, even if you go the luxury route.
Eh, between the two, I'd reckon it'd be foolish not to go with the wealth. I can always get a job, or use the breathing room provided by wealth to gain skills for a job. The inverse is not nearly as reliable.
This is a mixup of money and wealth. Money is not wealth, and in the same vein, the point of the game if you'd like to call it that, is not to make money, but to become wealthy. These are two very different things.
Wealth is possession of real assets, natural resources, real estate, valuable companies, in classical econ terms, any scarce resource. Money is not a scarce resource, for nearly marginal cost we could create a near infinite amount of it (and in the digital age of banking we often do create large amounts of it with no direct cost). You can't create more oil, land, houses etc without incurring considerable costs, whether it be in the form of effort, time or etc and that's what makes those resources scarce. Money is scarce if you look at it on a personal level, you can't just create more money for yourself, but that doesn't make it scarce on a global level.
What might create some confusion is that wealth is often measured in money, but that doesn't make it the same thing. Wealth is real resources and money is the means we use to decide who gets how much of those real resources.
Wealth doesn't matter in itself as much as the distribution of total wealth (and relative wealth). Humans are social animals, they don't just want something to munch and some cover over their head (not to mention that millions don't even have those), they want to do at least as good as what's perceived as average for their society.
There is more than one definition of "wealth" and "poverty". You could be a senior Silicon Valley engineer making 200k a year and that would make you wealthy compared to some homeless person in Detroit, but you'd still be poor compared to a hedge fund manager in NYC making 500 million.
This way of looking at things assumes that wealth is a finite resource, and that by some people having a lot it is depriving others.
Wealth doesn't work like that, though. It's not a zero sum game.
Wealth is infinite, and can be created from nothing by providing a good or service that people need.
I had a friend who was a multimillionaire, got there by building stone walls.
Another friend who's an immigrant, worth over ten million, got there by making custom iron and steel windows and doors.
I have a friend who's worth over a million, got there by working hard and saving his whole life.
Another friend who's worth over thirty million, got there by making web sites for auto dealerships.
Another one who's worth a bit over a million, got there by risking his life savings on opening up a winery.
A former neighbor had a multi-million dollar home. Also an immigrant. Got there by cleaning restaurant grease traps.
I could go on.
Wealth can be created from nothing. From something as simple as an idea.
The only qualifying factor is that you have to make something that other people want. It can be anything, a wall, a song, a good bottle of wine, an iron door, a NFT (ugh), ...anything.
There's no limit to wealth.
Our poorest today live like kings compared to those in poverty 100 years ago.
Because we've created massive, overwhelming wealth in this country.
And there's no end in sight. All we need is the willingness to do it.
To spend our time building up rather than tearing down.
Looking at someone's wealth and saying "that's not fair, we should destroy that and give it to others" is a juvenile solution that destroys societies.
I understand the temptation though. It's harder to create than to destroy.
It takes more intellectual rigor. It takes a leap into self ownership and responsibility.
That's hard to do when we've been taught from a young age that our situation is someone else's fault.
Class warfare is a tool that's used by conmen to gain short term power.
Money is only one component of wealth. Unless you have the "fuck you" money (in local parlance), it's not enough on its own to be "wealthy". I think even trained economists can forget this sometimes.
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