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I'd just like to point out that (1) is the same thing as losing wealth since all the wealth is essentially made up anyway. If the majority believe that the econ

• antisthenes 4y ago
  Only if you're measuring it in dollars. Wealth, fundamentally, are durable assets that provide benefit to a standard of living or efficiency (to you individually or to society) Let's say you have a solar installation nominally worth $10k in year X. Due to a temporary rise in labor costs, someone comes along in year X+2 and says, "Golly gee, now your installation would cost $15k to install, so you have gained wealth!" Then, as labor costs normalize again, in year X+4 you do a home appraisal, and your installation comes in at $10k again. Have you lost wealth in this scenario? You still have the same installation that generates roughly the same amount of energy for you and lets you be less dependent on the grid. The reason it's silly to measure large amounts of wealth in dollar values is that it generally doesn't get traded in cash in these amounts, ever. Even when companies are bought for billions, they are usually purchased with exchange of stock, and only partly with cash and financing. What's made up is not wealth, but the dollar valuation of large amounts of wealth. In the real world where people need to eat food every day and run their HVAC on stable electricity, wealth is anything but made up.