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> Wealth is only produced when people work. This is a little simplistic. Say a farmer can grow 20 bushels of wheat in a year. A farmer with a tractor can grow
by lukev 3y ago
> Wealth is only produced when people work.
This is a little simplistic.
Say a farmer can grow 20 bushels of wheat in a year. A farmer with a tractor can grow 200 bushels.
Does the guy who invented the tractor work as hard as the farmer? Probably not. But they (arguably) created much more wealth.
What about the banker who provided financing for the tractor? Let's assume it's a totally fair financial service, no need to stipulate anything predatory. The banker didn't work very much compared to the farmer at all, just wrote down some ledger entries. Yet without him, farmer is tractorless.
Any full view of the economy has to account for services and invention (and many more things, these are just illustrative examples.)
- bschne 3y ago"Wealth is only produced when people work." does not imply every kind of work creates wealth at the same rate. I think the point was merely that creating money out of thin air without anything corresponding changing in the real world does not cause there to be more of what people actually want there to be more of.
- vkou 3y agoA guy who spends 12 hours a day, 365 days a year, digging a hole and filling it does a lot of work, without producing any wealth. Work is a requirement for producing wealth, but is not a sole and sufficient requirement. Useful work is. There are, however, plenty of ways to produce money without doing any useful work.