Our society was great when it lived by this truth: One who uses his or her hands to build a useful product or provide a useful service is producing wealth.
If I buy low and sell high, I am not producing wealth. I am accumulating cash, which is not wealth, but merely a symbol of wealth.
True wealth is useful. If I have a phone that provides me the ability to communicate over great distances, I possess wealth. With it, I can talk with my brother in Southern California.
A one dollar bill will not help me communicate with my brother. If I accumulate enough dollar bills, I can purchase a phone and communicate with him. A million dollars will not perform the technological miracles necessary to do so. I can hold a million dollar bill (if such a thing exists) all day to my ear, and I will not be connected with my brother.
A Swiss bank account is just as useless.
I must surrender a number of dollars in order to obtain a phone. Then I can talk with my brother.
The phone is an object of real wealth. The money necessary to obtain it is merely symbolic of wealth.
To clarify, if I am able to use my hands to produce something useful, I am indeed a wealthy man. I can assemble and use that item, or I can sell it, or I can direct my skills and work for someone who produces items of many sorts, and in that way, accumulate dollars and buy a phone. I am truly wealthy, because I can produce wealth and surrender symbols of my own work, to obtain objects of wealth.
If, on the other hand, I am not truly wealthy, but merely "cash rich," I can purchase a hundred shares of stock today at ten dollars and sell them tomorrow for fifteen dollars, accumulating enough dollar bills to buy a dandy phone. But I don't have to do anything, other than say, "Buy!" and "Sell!"
One who does so is not producing wealth, but draining it.
If I make my living by draining wealth through a financial institution designed for such purposes, I am not a wealthy man. I do nothing to add to my community. I contribute some of my cash to my favorite charities, but they are not getting new wealth. They are merely receiving something I've drained from some other part of the establishment. I am only redistributing wealth (and I am one of the world's greatest hypocrites when I complain about governments that do the same). I may not even have wealth-producing skills. I might not be able to do anything useful; in fact, I might think it beneath my dignity to "serve" others by providing them a useful thing or service. But I don't need to produce wealth, because I possess knowledge and have access to opportunities to legally drain dollars, the symbols of wealth, from the system.
We grant respect to those who know how to drain wealth. Some who do incredible amounts of work and get paid very little are the greatest heroes of our so-called "free" enterprise system. But they are often derided. Others, who do nothing for themselves, but hire people to hire other people to keep an eye on those who buy and sell for them, and hire still others to keep an eye on those who keep an eye on them, in order to make sure they all continue to drain wealth from the system, are the worst villains. Their brand of wealth distribution causes many injustices and many inequities.
When the "free" market runs wild, it produces little and destroys much. Both political parties know and understand all these facts. Neither one is standing up to the realities. Until we tame this wild thing, it will continue to erode this once great society.
