When has a party had a worse set of presidential primary candidates than Rep 2012?

[werepossum]

I just want to understand your mentality when it comes to this issue. Are you aware that there is a somewhat fixed amount of wealth in the world? Or do you think there is an unlimited supply of wealth?

This is indeed the basic dichotomy between left and right, or at least one of the biggest. The left believes that wealth is fixed, so government should continuously redistribute it; this for liberals is fairness. The right believes that wealth is created and that, after one's share of our government overhead is paid, one has a right to keep the remainder and dispose of it as one wishes. This for conservatives is fairness.

When one grows food, one is creating wealth, taking raw materials and labor and creating something of greater value from them. When one manufactures goods, one is taking raw materials and labor and creating something of greater value from them. When one fishes, one invests time and capital and harvests wealth not previously accessible. All these things are creating wealth, else there would be no point. Thus the total amount of wealth is potentially unlimited, though there are constraints on how quickly the total amount of wealth can grow. Technology though reduces these constraints; a field that a century ago could feed five now feeds one hundred fifty, and the plowshare that once represented a significant investment of a blacksmith's time and resources (to pay for mining, refining, and transporting the iron) and represented a good portion of a farmer's net wealth is now stamped out in seconds, so that a farmer may own many, pull them with a tractor representing the work potential of a whole herd of draft horses, and accords them of relatively little value. Wealth is not only NOT fixed, it isn't even absolute. Water is valuable in a desert, less so along a river shore.

Even a cursory examination of, say, fourteenth century Earth and twenty-first century Earth to realize that the concept of a fixed (or nearly so) amount of wealth is a ludicrous concept. The poorest Americans today are much wealthier than all but the very richest people in fourteenth century Earth - they eat more, they have more varied diets, they travel more, they have more possessions, they have an incredibly increased available energy budget. Indeed, only the richest person of yesteryear could afford the transportation and artificial lighting enjoyed by even our poorest Americans. Even the health problems of our poor - obesity, Type II diabetes, gout - are common problems of yesteryear's very wealthy. We consume much more wealth today, but wealth production - as is easily measured in things that are not consumed or are consumed very slowly, such as clothing and buildings and automobiles - still exceeds wealth consumption. Just the barest amount of thought makes it blindingly obvious that there is NOT a fixed amount of wealth in the world.