Wealth Isn't Money |
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A fundamental conservative con is that wealth is the same as money. It isn't. Money is an abstraction. It just represents wealth. In itself, it is just a piece of paper, or an entry on a bank ledger. Some people have a whole bunch of that paper; some don't have any to speak of.
Real wealth, on the other hand, consists of products and services. It’s homes, land, buildings, manufacturing equipment, electric drills, toasters, candy, and so on. It is the time you are able to spend to travel, take vacations, get a hairdo, get a massage. Play golf or tennis. The producers of wealth are People who physically handle those products and provide those services. When workers produce wealth and give it to those who have produced nothing, in exchange for paper, the exchange is economically unsound. Only one person in the exchange produced a product or service; the other is a freeloader, a pure consumer of what other people created. In effect, by talking a product off the market, the freeloader has reduced the amount of wealth that is available to others who work. It gets worse. Some of our most avaricious consumers have money, and are able to exchange it for wealth, because of their own predatory or immoral activities. They are worse than freeloaders; they have gained money by injuring thee system that creates products and services. Examples are unlimited. Just think of some of the people you’ve seen exposed on “60 minutes,” “20/20” “Primetime,” and other documentaries. These immoral predators can include social stalwarts such as doctors, lawyers, investment bankers, businessmen, academicians, politicians, and on and on. In typical financial dealings, including the investment process, all we ever know is that, somehow, people with bargaining power have accumulated the paper we call money.
The Limbaughs of the world try to convince people that money is wealth because they are so good at accumulating money, without contributing useful products or services in exchange. In mutual support groups of like-minded rich conservatives, they even talk themselves into believing that just having money, no matter how they came by it, and spend it, no matter how or for what, contributes to the total wealth in society. A typical Limbaugh strategy is to convince dittoheads that the fabulously rich should keep more of their money instead of paying taxes. Supposedly, this would benefit the economy, and still more people would become wealthy, or, at least, wealthier. He may be right about tax breaks helping the economy, but he wants to give them to the wrong people. He wants to give them to a few of the biggest accumulators of money instead of the producers of wealth.
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