There are 2 things that skew the labor supply demand equation and those are government regulation, and immigration. First, the captains of industry spend millions of dollars every year writing and lobbying our government to enact laws and regulations that make it virtually impossible for small companies to compete with them. This has the effect of stifling people who would otherwise have the option to start their own small business. In fact this strategy has been so successful; that more than 90% of small business start ups fail within the first year. Second, these same captains of industry lobby government to not enforce existing immigration laws in order to encourage illegal immigration. This has the effect of increasing the labor force which lowers demand for workers and thus lowers pay increasing profits. In a free market economy, the market efficiently prices labor, but we do not have a free market economy. We have an economy which industry and government collude to undermine the best interests of the American workers. The standard of living for American workers has been declining since the 70's and so long as our government is for sale to the highest bidder, I do not see that changing in the future.
I understand perfectly well. You can't test IQ with any single question since it's a complex measure of several things. This is not an IQ test be any definition. I guess you could call it a test of intelligence if you like, but even that would be open to some question and interpretation. You actual answer is flawed on a linguistic point though. Labour does indeed have value as you describe but that doesn't mean labour is wealth. The word wealth doesn't mean "something with value", it means "an an abundance of any valuable resource". If describes an amount of something rather than the nature of it and isn't limited to any one resource, even if it comes about as a consequence of another. I'd also question your suggestion of labour as the definitive baseline measure of that value which merely feeds all other measures. Labour can have a value measured in goods and services or money (which can be used to obtain goods and services) and there can be exchanges of value which don't directly involve any labour.
I do mainly agree with you -- and I would add that in addition to large corporations manipulating the overall economy through sponsored laws, policies, and a wholly-corrupted, unfair U. S. Tax Code enacted by their client-government, our economy has been distorted out of anything resembling a "free-market" model because of stifling, usurping interference from the Federal Reserve System central bank. I may have 'won my war' and retired comfortably, but I had to work my way through college to earn a Bach. of Science degree, with honors, then fight my way through the Stagflation period of the 1970's, skyrocketing inflation, and the off-shoring of every job imaginable after the fall of the Soviet Union. I used my wits (such as they were), and I was patient. I was also often fortunate to be in exactly the right place at the right time with the right qualifications and desired experience. A little like threading a needle.... Needless to say, I wouldn't want to be a twenty-something today with a "associate" degree in 'basket-weaving', and no experience beyond playing around with a smart phone and Facebook.... Those are the ones who are rapidly filling the new ranks of the American underclass that will soon resemble the "Proles" that Orwell wrote about in his masterpiece, "1984"....
Labor is wealth. All other monetary instruments simply represent labor. Labor creates wealth, therefore labor is wealth. This is something that is elementary to wealthy people..... For some reason the working class struggles to understand it.... I guess that is why they are the working class.
Thank you, but there are a number of people who post in the Forum who know a LOT more about purely economic matters than me, but I have always tried to be very observant of what really goes on, while ignoring the dished-out propaganda, and being willing to react quickly and decisively when it seemed best to do so.... Most people could probably make many better decisions and improve their lives accordingly, but they don't act... they don't actually get up off their butts and DO something.... It seems that some kind of perverse 'inertia' has had a crippling effect on Americans, and it started about thirty years ago. I'm an old guy who has watched all of this come about -- and the future does not (NOT) look good for us, unfortunately, IMHO.
X creates Y doesn't automatically mean X is Y. Even if labour were the only way to create wealth (which is isn't), it wouldn't intrinsically be wealth. You're just playing with semantics to try to make your ideas sound better. That doesn't mean the underlying ideas are wrong, just that this isn't the right way to explain and support them.
I chose income because with income there is growth potential, even if you have money invested, it is still income because it has residuals from the investment(s).
Supply and demand shifts adjusting the relative value of held assets. If it rains, the value of my umbrellas go up. If my competitors warehouse burns down, the value of my stock goes up. If this seasons fashion trend is pastel silks, the value my stock of silk material and pastel dyes goes up.
jdog, you are 100% CORRECT. Out of all of the choices I chose income, because without income you will not have labour, but you are still correct. At first I attempted to choose more than one, but as the OP/ poll was formulated, you can only choose one.
Don't worry about your opinion then, it's not on the test. You don't have to be a genius to attend a Mensa meeting, near genius will do. The people attending the Mensa meeting all know the answer to this one question IQ test and only some who can't attend the Mensa meeting know the answer. You'd think someone with average intelligence should know what wealth is, but that doesn't seem to be the case. It makes me wonder how someone managed to scramble their eggs that much to get that dumb. I think it has to require effort to not learn such basic things in life, something has surely reduced the brain's ability to think.
partisan bias bs aside, this article is a good read, here's an excerpt... https://som.yale.edu/news/2009/11/why-high-iq-doesnt-mean-youre-smart
