What I don't understand is where this 'wealth' is coming from. Wealth is the result of - Raw materials (natural resources) - Capital (building the factories)

What I don't understand is where this 'wealth' is coming from. Wealth is the result of - Raw materials (natural resources) - Capital (building the factories) - Labor (running the factories) - Technology (figuring out better ways of doing things Obviously, technology is improving all the time. We're figuring out better ways of production, so that more can be created even with fewer of the other inputs. Indeed, while we're stuck with pretty much the original set of raw materials, technology lets us figure out things to do with stuff that we never even realized was a raw material. Capital is always building on itself. That is, given adequate maintenance, you have all the factories that you had last year. Plus you build new ones this year. So capacity is always increasing. Labor is always increasing in two ways. First, the population of the world grows, so we've got more people to do the work. But more importantly, the more people we've got to divide the work amongst, the more each person can specialize. And the more each can specialize, the more efficiently he can work at it. So all these factors work to bring greater wealth to the world.