On May 28, 4:50�pm, "HeyBub" wrote:
harry wrote:

Wealth can only be created by work. Ie, manufacturing, construction,
mining etc. � The idea that wealth is created by a few electronic
keystrokes is stupid.
A bit of paper cannot be made to be worth more. If it is, the money it
is valued in just becomes worth less.
Wealth is not created in banks. �it's created by the "blue collar"
workers. � The sooner we get ay from this idea that wealth can somehow
be conjured up out of nothing, the sooner we will have a stable
economy.

So says a Marxist.

If I have a piece of paper, say a stock certificate, for which I paid a
modest sum and I can now trade that bit of paper for a villa on the Riveria,
one has to conclude that wealth was created somewhere. If I buy an oil
futures contract for $80/bbl and sell it six months hence for $100/bbl, I've
done no labor and made a tidy profit by the push of a button. Suppose I
purchase a bit of land for $1,000 and sell it in five years for $100,000.
What labor was involved (other than filling out the tax forms each year)?

There's the story of a warehouse full of tinned sardines that were sold for
five-cents a tin. The chap who bought them for five cents, sold them to
someone else for ten, then the guy who bought them for ten cents sold them
for twice that. The final buyer went to the warehouse and opened a can. He
then rushed back to the seller and said: "Those sardines you sold me for
twenty cents are rancid! They're not fit to eat!"

To which the final seller replied: "Oh, those sardines are not for eating -
they are for buying and selling."

Much of the world has left the "industrial" age where wealth was created by
"blue collar" workers (admittedly, some areas haven't left the "agrarian"
age). We are now in the "information" age where wealth is created by ideas.

It used to be true that an enterprise needed three things to be successful:
Labor, capital, and raw materials. Now only capital is required, and often
not much of that.

So, you sell your bit of paper for 100 times as much? Then the money
you recieve for it is essentially worth 100 times less. It's only
worth more if someone somewhere has worked, created value. That['s
one reason why we have had our recent disaster. This something for
nothing mentality. We're just going to have to get back to the
industrial age where work counts. The gov. in the UK has accepted
this and intends to support manufacturing and design.