re: #482 iossarian

Hell, even if we just define it in terms of “The Wealth of Nations”, we’ll be ahead of where we were before.

One very good point that the article makes is that the share of corporate profits for financial companies rose from about 10% of all corporate profits to about 40%. This represents the ever-increasing abstractness of the financial industry, as can easily be seen in this most recent meltdown. That increase in profits does not represent any sort of increase in actual ‘wealth’ for the nation. It doesn’t represent new knowledge, new science, new technology, new physical assets, but a way of reordering them that gives them a higher value— which is true until the market collapses.

Money is a great thing and a terrible thing all at the same time— the money made from selling a pack of cigarettes is the same as the money made from selling a bunch of apples. The apples, however, are a net good, and the cigarettes are a net loss, in terms of the wealth of the nation. Money is a store not of true value, but of perceived value.