Friday, January 3, 2014

How Wealth is Created

Feed the babies who don't have enough to eat
Shoe the children with no shoes on their feet
House the people living in the streets
Oh, oh, there's a solution
--Steve Miller Band

In economic terms, wealth measures the value of economic resources that is owned or controlled.

While it can be transferred in many different ways, economic wealth can only be created one way: production. Production combines labor with other scarce factors (materials, land, energy, etc) to generate output that enables people to live and prosper.

When it generates output that people desire, production alleviates axiomatic scarcity that constrains standard of living.

Policies that limit such production limit the creation of wealth.

1 comment:

dgeorge12358 said...

There is a growing sentiment in America that regular saving should be ignored-that the government will take care of people and give them security when they get beyond a certain age or become old and unable to work, but it must be borne in mind that the people who earn and do save, take care of the government! Were it not for the thrifty and the willing workers, the government would be in a bad way.
~George Matthew Adams