The “limited resource” concept of wealth, with its “fair-share” implications for policy, is the foundation of the argument for Collectivism and the unreasonable fear of “income inequality.” This argument is infused with the rocket-fuel mix of class envy and economic anxiety so it drives policies which can destroy economic mobility and undermine American competitiveness.
Debunking it and replacing it with truth about economic liberty is among the most powerful ways we can undermine the Collectivist agenda.
Let’s start with more accurate definitions:
- MONEY: a representation and store of produced value
- WEALTH: an accumulation of produced value
- POVERTY: and insufficiency of produced value
Economic terms are properly defined around a central, observable fact: In a modern economy, wealth is produced. It’s not a finite resource, like water oil or land.
It’s not a resource at all. Wealth is a result.
New wealth is constantly generated as people produce products and serves that others need, want and value. Capitalism is based on CONSENT: Others must want and value what a person creates or provides if that product or service is to be monetized at all. Collectivist economies are based on force.
Since wealth is the result of economic activity, it’s no more reasonable to worry about “greedy rich people getting it all” than it is to worry that my use of words on this page diminishes the supply of words! Yet this throwback to the primitive age of conquest continues to plague policy discussions of today.
Many have been taught that there is a pre-existent and finite amount of “wealth” in the world for which the whole of mankind is obliged to compete. This “economic pie” apparently fell from the ether, because those who promulgate this distorted idea rarely offer coherent account for wealth’s origination.
A distortion of this magnitude - especially when promulgated by those with a Socialist agenda for America - is not just a harmless mistake because the erroneous conclusion drawn from it poses a very real danger to human liberty.
If wealth is a finite resource, it falls to Government, (ever-benevolent and infallibly just in the narrative of those pushing this agenda), to effect an equitable distribution of the nation’s wealth.
Government then becomes the final arbiter of “fairness” in all economic matters; deciding the value of various forms of labor, the price of goods and services and whether or not a given person has accumulated his “fair share.” This may sound extreme but it is where the “finite resource” idea of wealth leads. In fact, once we cede to government the right to appropriate and re-distribute our earnings “so everyone gets a fair share,” it cannot do otherwise.
Let’s arrest the degenerative course we’re on and put the Federal Government back in it’s Constitutionally assigned role!
Please sign and SHARE the petition at ConventionOfStates.com
