What is wealth?
What is really the source, the basis, for economic value? How is wealth created? Why does our society locate the "ownership" of wealth in individuals? Wealth has its source in production. In result, it is the labor of production, or of resource extraction, or of service, that originates the value of wealth. Wealth is the materialization of excess labor, of labor value reserved by society to be invested in tools of production to the end of increasing the productivity of labor. It is socially organized labor that is the basis of economic value. Wealth is created by withholding some product of labor from consumption --consumption for sustenance or pleasure-- by the laborer. That is, by reserving and aggregating that withheld product in some form that can be made available to investment in the tools of production. Toward the end of achieving this investment, society establishes roles (and the corresponding statuses, positions in social organization) that bear the respons