Dear Janet,
First, let me congratulate you for the above-mentioned awards you received last year.
Abundance is the appropriate word to describe the Planet Earth, the spaceship provided for our journey towards eternity, the Garden of Eden which grows everything humanity requires in order to live and enjoy their lives and the journey, as it was meant to be. However, the Garden has been turned into the "Valley of Tears". This is the riddle I wish answered by the series of questions I've posted.
You're right, Janet, Material wealth as would be used in the science of economics. Here is what most economic writers have written about wealth:
Bain A commodity is material, worked up after a design to answer to a definite demand or need, and wealth is simply the sum total of commodities.
Bowen The aggregate of all things whether material or immaterial, which contribute to comfort and enjoyment and which are objects of frequent barter or trade.
Clark Usage has employed the word wealth to signify first, the comparative welfare resulting from material possession, and secondly, and by a transfer, the possession themselves. Wealth then is the relative-wealth-constituting elements in man's material environment. It is objective to the user, material, useful and appropriable.
De Laveleye Everything which answers to man's rational wants, a useful service and a useful object are equally wealth. Wealth is what is good and useful - a good climate, well kept roads, seas teeming with fish, are unquestionably wealth to a country, and yet they cannot be bought.
Fawcett Wealth maybe defined to consist of every commodity which has an exchangeable value.
Jevons What is transferable, limited in supply and useful.
Jones Material objects voluntarily appropriated by man.
Laughlin Defines material wealth as something which satisfies a want, cannot be obtained without some sacrifice of exertion, and is transferable; but also speaks of immaterial wealth without defining it.
Leverson The necessaries and comforts of life produced by labor.
Macleod Anything whatever that can be bought, sold or exchanged, or whose value can be measured in money ... Wealth is nothing but exchangeable rights.
Macvane All the useful and agreeable material objects we own or have the right to use and enjoy without asking the consent of any other person. Wealth is of two general kinds - natural wealth and wealth produced by labor.
Malthus Those material objects which are necessary,, useful or agreeable to man.
Mason & Lalor - 1875- anything for which something can be got in exchange.
McCulloch Those articles or products which have exchangeable value and are: either necessary, useful or agreeable to man.
J. S. Mill All useful and agreeable things which possess exchangeable value; or in other words, all useful and agreeable things except those which can be obtained in quantity desired without labor or sacrifice.
Newcomb That for the enjoyment of which people pay money, the skill, business ability or knowledge which enables their possessors to contribute to the enjoyment of others, including the talent of the actor, the ability of the man of business, the knowledge of the lawyer and the skill of the physician, is to be considered wealth when we use the term in its most extended sense.
Rae All that can be found on this subject in his "New Principles of Political Economy" (1883) is that "individuals grow rich by the acquisition of wealth previously existing; nations by the creation of wealth that did not before exist."
Ruskin This brilliant essayist and art-critic can hardly be classed as scholastically accepted political economist. But his "Unto This Last" (1886) consisting of four essays in political economy, and the brilliant flashes of ethical truths which they, like his other works, contain, have led many admirers to regard him as a profound economist. He is anything but complimentary to the "modern soi-disant science" as he calls it, against which he brings the charge that while claiming to be the science of wealth, it cannot tell what is wealth, and goes on to define wealth as "the possessions of useful articles that we can use, or as again stated somewhat later on, the possession of the valuable by the valiant."
J. B. Say Divides wealth into natural and social, and applies the latter term to whatever is susceptible of exchange.
Senior All those things, and those things only which are transferable, are limited in supply and are directly or indirectly productive of pleasure or preventive of pain... Health, strength and knowledge, and other powers of body and mind appear to us to be article of wealth.
Shadwell All articles the possession of which affords pleasure to anybody.
Torrens Articles which possess utility and are produced by some portion of voluntary effort.
Vethake All objects, material as well as immaterial, having utility excepting those not susceptible of being appropriated, and those supplied gratuitously by nature. By wealth of a community or nation is meant all the wealth which is possessed by persons composing it, either in their individual or corporate capacities.
FA. Walker All articles of value and nothing more.
Current thinking and perceptions of what wealth actually means is as muddled and confusing as ever. Wealth is generally considered as commodities, as goods which are derived from resources and are necessary to satisfy wants.
However, most writers of current economic thought would add: "Goods need not be physical or material things; a symphony is a good even though it cannot be measured or weighed. Bread is good, a motor car is good and so are the words of an orator ... The discussion would then eventually end up in an argument about the goods and the bads and the uglies! Thus deprived of any definite subject to study and investigate, the science of political economy diverted from its true scientific path, has degenerated into that complex and dismally confused pseudo science that it is today – “Economics: The study of choice and scarcity. The allocation of scarce resources so that certain human desires maybe satisfied.” This science is Econometrics, not economics, and it requirestatistics and higher math to calculate GNP, GDP, Exports. Imports, etc., etc, and calculates per capita income, expense, etc, with no theory on how to distribute the wealth produced.
Hope you have time to read all this.
Best regards,
JOSE
