When you talk about wealth, you have to first consider the hierarchy of needs.
Before anything else as a Homo Sap, you need Food, Shelter, Water, Breathable Air and Clothing. These are all material things. The first 4 are absolutely essential, the last could be optional in a climate warm enough year round. However, even in quite warm climates with primitive people they don't usually go around buck naked.
In Industrial society, the first 2 always cost money. Water has in the past been free, but now Water bills if not paid directly are paid with taxation. Air is still generally free, but in quite a few places is now not fit to breath. Clothing always costs money.
Now, here in the FSoA, before you can even start to think about Wealth enough to afford Health Care, you have to have enough to cover all those basics, plus a few more now necessary like transportation and communication. The problem here is that for half the population, they only have enough to cover the basics. If you don't have enough for food or shelter, you're not going to be very healthy.
Now, once above the median income, you start to have enough money for some Health Care, but depending on what your health issues are, it can get quite expensive to try to stay healthy. Insurance itself is quite expensive, so you're now moving up the ladder of costs you have to pay out each month before you can even begin to think about saving some material wealth for security, whether that material wealth is measured in canned foods, dollars or gold coins.
Only after you have covered all these material things and health coverage and some savings can you begin to start to look at other sorts of wealth, like spiritual wealth or environmental wealth. People in India for example are too busy just trying to get enough food to eat each day to be able to do much in the way of enhancing their spiritual wealth or the environmental wealth.
The problem here is that all the essentials of living have been thoroughly monetized. So the general definition of wealth is how much money you make or have piled up in savings. Until we can run a society that is free of money, this will continue to be the general definition of wealth. A lot of money buys you good healthy food to eat, you can afford to shop organic at whole foods. A lot of money buys you health, you can afford 7 heart transplants like David Rockefeller. A lot of money buys you a relatively clean local environment to live in, you can build a beautiful McMansion in the Rocky Mountains overlooking a river full of fish with clean air to breathe. The only form of wealth money does not buy directly would be Spiritual Wealth, but even here having all the other things well covered gives you time to contemplate existential questions. Not to say you can't do this even if you are materially poor, since it doesn't cost any money to dwell on the nature of existence, but usually if you are worried about where your next meal will come from that i more at the forefront of your thinking.
So anyhow, when I use the word "Wealth", because of the nature of a society that is run on money, I'm talking about monetary wealth, not all the other types of wealth which you might define. I think most people use this definition when talking about wealth. If you want to avoid confusion, it would probably be a good idea to create a new term for the other areas.
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Topic: Getting a Handle on Wealth (Read 11058 times)
March 17, 2016, 10:20:10 AM