There are only 4 wealth CREATORS.
1. Mining (including oil extraction)
2. Manufacturing
3. Agriculture
4. Applied research & intellectual products
Every other activity consumes wealth.
Lawyers, accountants, doctors do not exist
in countries with no wealth.
Out of those 4 primary wealth creators,
manufacturing is the largest component.
That is why China is soon to be world’s largest economy.
Because They are are not known to be big in other 3 areas.
“There are only 4 wealth CREATORS.
1. Mining (including oil extraction)
2. Manufacturing
3. Agriculture
4. Applied research & intellectual products”
100% correct!
And of the 4, one supports and expands the middle class far more than the others.
A service based economy doesn’t create wealth, it just recycles what is already there.
I would say that any activity that adds value to an existing object generates wealth. If you take a tree, cut it down, debark it, saw it into timber, and kiln-dry it, it is worth more than it was as a tree. Or at least it’s more utile.
Similarly, if you take a shipment of sheet metal and stamp it into fenders that you then paint and buff, it is worth more than it was as sheet steel.
That is Karl Marx’s Labor Theory of Capital. Which he despised, by the way.
Mankind has had doctors & priests for thousands of years.
You are correct. Everything else that happens as “business”: service jobs, food industry, sales and so many others only swap existing wealth around.
We DO have a government that manufactures money to inflate stocks and to release in trickles to the economy through spending and food stamps. That will only go so far, tho.
The commenters at the article make more sense than the author.
Besides regulations that drove manufacturing out of the country, one other common trait of the careers mentioned above is the use of unions to provide artificial wage levels after the working conditions stuff was cleaned up and unions kind of lost their value to society.
I wouldn't argue your points above about wealth creation, but somebody has to draw up the contracts for selling the products that are mined, manufactured, or grown. Someone has to account for how much was mined, manufactured, or grown. These roles don't directly create wealth, but they play a vital role in creating wealth.
Some histories I've read indicate that the Egyptians were able to rise as a civilization because they could record who owned how much grain from the rich harvests of the Nile.
And without doctors, the miners, manufacturers, and farmers would die or at least be much less productive.
The understanding here is that we're not talking market price or dollar value, but rather this is what you feel.
Don't get me wrong, I know that feelings are important and I'd never want to hurt yours and have us fighting here. What I'm saying is that we don't go to the bank and say that we really feel that we got more money there than the balance shown in their records, or we don't just tell our boss that we feeel he needs to give us a raise. If a salesman were to tell us that he feels we got to buy a product we don't want then we get rid of him.
Besides, I feel that we need to get back to talking hard economics and set aside our weath-creationism for say, a religion thread.
That is why China is soon to be world’s largest economy. Because They are are not known to be big in other 3 areas.
Known by whom for what? America's got a % of it's workforce in agriculture while with China it's more like 50%. The U.S. produces a lot more food than the Chinese, in fact in a decade our farm exports to China have soared ten-fold to almost $20 B. Yeah, I understand you don't feel that way and that's your choice.
When you say “Applied research & intellectual products” are you considering this from a University spin-off of pure research point of view, or a result of in-house development within industry to maintain a competitive edge?
I’ve always considered this as falling under “Manufacturing”, the pursuit of advances in making some useful thing; whether, supported by in-house research, or farmed out as a partnership with advanced educational institution conducting pure research.
Yep.
Whether its a nation or your local community, there has to be an influx of money from the outside for prosperity and wealth accumulation. If you don’t happen to live where you can export natural resources like trees, coal, or corn, manufacturing something that exceeds the local demand is the best way to develop a thriving economy.