Sources of value in the economy

In the midst of one of the worst economic downturns since the Great Depression, thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic, the American stock market, despite fluctuations, remains near historic highs, adding support to the belief that the economy is rigged in favor of a few and built on the backs of the many. When the people are suffering while billionaires become even wealthier, something is clearly wrong from my perspective, and I ask those who face me across the political gulf to explain how three Americans — Jeff Bezos, Warren Buffet, and Bill Gates — holding more wealth than the bottom fifty percent is a working expression of freedom. They might tell me that everyone has the chance to rise to those stratospheric heights, but this belief ignores the power that such concentrated wealth that those three and their economic class possess has the ability to protect itself. The wealthy buy politicians and police forces to guarantee that the system will remain on their side.

Our current system is based primarily on the freedom of privately owned wealth to be used for economic activity. More about this in a minute. The general point here will be that the way value enters and grows in an economy.

Through much of human history, the assumption was that natural resources were the sole legitimate origin of value. A nation was rich if it had extensive fertile fields and gold mines…