Wealth is anything that has value to others.
You can create wealth in a capitalist economy by creating goods or services that others find value in and exchanging those goods or services with other people.
Where I think people are getting hung up, is the exchange itself, especially when the exchange involves money.
In a monetary exchange, one person is exchanging money and the other is receiving a good or a service. In that, there is a zero sum where one person gains money and one person has less money. However, both people received something of value since it was a voluntary exchange.
The origination of the wealth occurred when one of the person's created something that the other saw value in, not when the money was exchanged. That wealth is realized upon the exchange, but it originated when the good or service was first created.
An example, as asked. You find some wood. You take the wood into a market but no one wants it and no one finds it valuable, they all have wood. You take your wood home and you craft your wood into a basket. You take your basket back into the market and someone sees value in it. They want your basket, but you don't want to give it away, you worked hard on it. So the other person goes home to see if they have anything you might be willing to take in exchange. They happen to be a stone mason and they make sharp tools for cutting. They return and offer you a sharp stone tool in exchange for your basket. You agree that this is a fair exchange and make the trade. You have both created wealth by making items of value that people wanted. This is how wealth is created on the most basic level. You have both created, and possess, goods others find valuable. All the other people in the market just have wood sticks and stones, not baskets and stone cutting tools. You do, you are wealthy in comparison, congratulations!
Your creation of baskets from wood does not prevent others from creating baskets. You did not steal your new found wealth. You created it. If they can create and innovative goods, or services, they too can and will generate wealth, and perhaps you can exchange your baskets for their goods and as a result you will both have created more wealth!! Now, instead of just having wood, you have a basket, stone tools, and a blanket. Your wealth keeps growing!
In an advanced capitalist economy, someone may take money (capital) and use that capital to create other goods and services that people find value in and want to exchange for. When that happens, they create wealth. The people who control capital, and do so in ways that create wealth, are called capitalists. I take my $20,000 of capital, trade it for a retail space, some flour, cheese, an over and some utility bills and I create pizza. Others find it valuable and want to exchange their money for my pizza. I've created wealth.
But, maybe no one wants to buy my pizza. There are already other people making pizza and they do it better, and they don't ask for as much in exchange. Oh no! The risk I took with my capital wasn't realized and no one exchanges with me. I end up stuck with the space, flour, cheese and it rots and is no good. I lost wealth. The risk I took investing my capital didn't pan out.
Money is simply a means for exchange that came into play because barter is inefficient. People confuse money for wealth, which makes sense because money has wealth, but the creation of money in and of itself, is not wealth.
Now, think of all of the millions and billions of goods and services people have created over the years. Everything from jewelry to clothing to buildings to food and so on. It's the creation of those goods, and services, that created wealth. Of course, that wealth is completely dependent on the value others see in those things, and the wealth is only truly realized once exchanged, and money is simply the means for the exchange.
You're confusing capital (economics) with capital (finance).
Don't bother with this one. They literally think money pops out of nowhere when you sell something, that you get paid without your customer losing any money.
They're literally a magical thinker, who believes the economy creates money out of thin air.
They're literally a magical thinker, who believes the economy creates money out of thin air.
That's funny. Money is created when banks lend, so yeah, out of thin air.
Edit: wait were you criticizing me or Quietrock lol.
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I had an electrical engineering professor who, at the end of every semester, shows his students an electronic toy that he helped design, a national brand that I've seen in Target. He starts by talking about some clever hacks he used to get around the low memory, but then he invariably gets choked up telling the students about how all the time he put into the project nearly cost him his family. And he implores them to find a work-life balance when they graduate and get jobs.
Must inspire students to want to continue the hard work of pursuing an engineering degree so that they can spend their lives creating cheap garbage...
Are you insulting a comrade?
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Carriers have a right to protest in the public square in front of the media. And so what if striking is illegal? Everything the union has came from a wildcat strike: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._postal_strike_of_1970
Nixon then ordered 24,000 military personnel forces to begin distributing the mail. Operation Graphic Hand had at its peak more than 18,500 military personnel assigned to 17 New York post offices, from regular Army, National Guard, Army Reserve, Air National Guard and Navy, Air Force, and Marine Corps Reserve.[12] This was not necessarily very effective.[4]
Lmao. But now we’re more corporate and will get pushed further toward privatization if we tried this again. Thanks, Dick Nixon.
And Reagan who has scared unions from striking since he fired the air traffic controllers in 1981. Still, there are hundreds of thousands of postal workers who could strike; there were only 13,000 air traffic controllers.
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even earning a decent salary in California of lets say $100k, to buy a decent home near a job hub city where the average home will be priced at $800k or $1 million dollars, you'd have to save your income for at least 8 years to 10 years considering you have zero expenses and that home prices don't keep going up during that time. This is why the dollar does not work, it has been a failed currency already for the past 50 years, it isn't the same dollar that your great grandparents knew because it isn't backed by gold or silver, it is just an inflationary tool used by the federal reserve to confiscate your wealth and nothing will change until we get a huge housing crash or people save their wealth in gold or silver coins like they did for only the past 5000+ years
That doesn't work either. Listen to Yanis Varoufakis about the gold standard.
That's capitalism for you.
Okay controversial but I have done both I grew up in communist Cuba and got to america with absolutely 0 dollars and you think 7.25 is bad? I worked at 5.50 because I was illegal and they could pay me whatever, I moved to Tennessee and found someone who would rent me just a room for 350 a month, and worked my way up and started saving for a whole year, got my papers and started working a decent job. Now I own my own company make 6 figures a year and have a lovely home and 2 cars. Point being that I am willing to do it all over again because I would never in my wildest dreams Want to live in a communist country again and if you hate what I am saying then you just don't want to work harder and you don't want to build anything with your life. I'm not saying it's easy but people born in this country have all the advantages yet still stay poor because of their lack of dedication.
You have survivorship bias.
You have a fundamental misunderstanding of humanity and how it fits within social policy theories. Humans aren't robots without emotions, ego, ambitions. Have you noticed everytime I challenged you to first start the sacrifice you so desperately want others to do you NEVER even once took up on the challenge but rather nitpicked at other arguments I said? THAT'S humanity and THAT'S why communism hardly ever works. Because of people like you.
But I won't advertise the democrat nor republican party link to you, you can Google "problems with communism" and read all about it. Or you can just go sit in the corner, close your ears and go lalalala.
If you so desperately want people to build houses for the homeless, you can go to your nearest homedepot and get to working "comrade".
You're not showing that you know what communism is.
neither are you
I specifically stated that I believe in redistribution. I am not suggesting that people shouldn't have personal property. https://www.workers.org/private-property/
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I made a formal request. I even attached official government documents for employers stipilating the reasonable accommodations as per our country's laws. If you'll look at my other comments though, you'll see that I've explained that while I did technically get granted these requests, my boss is a mega bitch. She just seems to go out of her way to bully me into not being able to utilize the things I've been accommodated.
It sounds like you have a case for discrimination.
Yup I totally do, however I'm doing nothing about it right now besides collecting evidence and saving emails from her so that I can really screw her over. She strikes me as the type of person who was a high school bully and just never grew out of it, so I'm gonna be the person who teaches her what happens to bullies in the adult world.
Good job. Document, document, document! Sounds like your coworkers can back you up.
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