On a philosophical level, we know energy and matter can only be transformed, not destroyed/created. The ultimate bad outcome for humans is Entropy. So though it appears that America created Wealth it really only transformed other energy/matter in something humans call Wealth. The End Game is tricky.

What is money? Is it an object or process? We know that early humans without central government spontaneously created money from various objects. "Created from"...So money is not the object. Money is stored economic work represented by a proxy object. Each society of people has a maximum it can produce, called Potential Wealth, given the resources, labor, and capital such as buildings, machines, infrastructure, we call Base Capital. Without Money only a very basic subsistence level of Wealth can be achieved since Base Capital never develops past starting level. It takes Money to facilitate the exchange of goods to raise towards the limit of Potential Wealth. Potential Wealth can be increased by increasing Productivity and decreased by not replacing Base Capital that is used up to produce Goods (i.e. Debt). If a central authority prints too much Currency (Currency is based on Money but is one more layer of abstraction that increases chance for abuse), there is the danger that the level will exceed the Potential Wealth and cause Inflation. There are those who manage Sales/Revenue and those who manage Profit.

A Parable: At one time America had a strong economy, all rejoiced, and politicians started to promise, promise, promise (spend, spend, spend). Over time the government spending required much more revenue but the politician didn't want to level with the voters that taxes were going to have to be raised to pay for the government provided services ("Guns and Butter"). Thus backroom deals were made under the "Trade Deal" banner so that a foreign country would partner with the American government agreeing to buy its debt in return for "free trade" that allowed cheaper products to flood the American market (the foreign country collects the dollars on the sales to America then turns around to buy T-Bills thus funding the government spending and gets "jobs"). The first partner was Japan, then Mexico and Canada (NAFTA), then China (Communist!). Over the course of those 4 decades the result was that many American factories shut down and some American companies went overseas to compete on price. All the while the politician yelled and screamed about the evil businessman who was killing the American economy by moving jobs to other countries. Most Americans who were educated in Public Schools where no Critical Thinking or Finance History are taught believed the politician that the evil businessman was responsible. All the while the government continues its promise of more and more spending ("Guns and Butter") until the American economy is destroyed and the correction comes.

Making Money is a micro-event (how selfishness is expressed). Creating Money is a Macro-Event (it is an economic event).

Then Shun The Sun.

To paraphrase Jefferson: "One can tax Capital, Income, or Consumption; but only tax tax one of those. If you tax all three, you will surely kill the economy."

I did not know that moochers could vote.

I think we have been around this barn once before. As you know, the literal statement from I.8. is "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;"

Promoting progress in science and useful arts is all well, fine, and good, but we are still searching for an explicit statement in support of Ayn Rand's claim that "to make money" is (1) uniquely American (which I believe I estalished it is not) and (2) uniquely Americanly means "to create wealth" (which it may).

I often cite "The Way to Wealth" with the link to Swarthmore College here: http://www.swarthmore.edu/SocSci/bdorsey...

I agree that Alexander Hamilton and even medieval writers such as Nicole Oreseme and even Nicholas Copernicus gave good thought to the operation of money in an economy. Hamilton notoriously wanted to "encourage industry." But I think that we are speaking of something very subtle here.

I agree that as it developed through the 19th century, by the 20th, economists came to better understand the creation of wealth. The explosion in science and technology made that apparent. A canal is just a trench with a boat and until the 1830s, the boat was pulled by a horse. Compare that with the electric telegraph and eventually radio. The canal just rearranges the given - granted in a new production. Electrical inventions created things that did not exist before based on knowledge we did not have before.

On paper money comment, he is simply pointing to efficiencies -the difference between consumption and production -I do not read a moral statement there.
1937 modern library, p.373-4
"Someaddition in improvement to those machines and instruments which facilitate and abridge labors."
Long winded way of saying invention.
George Washington was the main driver behind theConstitutional Convention for inclusion of a patent system as key to the health of the new nation. The delegates all went to a demonstration of a newly invented steam powered ship to illustrate how the US could prosper quickly. In fact rights to inventions are the only enumerated right in the Original Constitution demonstrating uniquely that ideas can create wealth.

[Edit - Originally, I wrote: "The poll tax let merchants and others who did not own land pay to vote." It was a fact (or not) that I carried with me since AP History in high school. Browsing now has failed to find support for that. I do point the Hoover Institution article "The Colonial Roots of American Taxation" (here http://www.hoover.org/publications/polic...) which says in part:
"In 1638, the General Court in Massachusetts required all freemen and non-freemen to support both the commonwealth and the church. Direct taxes took two forms: (1) a wealth tax and (2) a poll, or head tax, which in some instances evolved into or included an income tax.
The wealth tax was based on what was known as the country “rate,” which amounted to a property tax. ... A second direct tax was the poll, or head, tax. The Massachusetts law of 1646 served as a model for the New England colonies. Every male 16 years and older, the year of registration for potential military service, was required to pay an annual tax of 1s. ..." So, another one bites the dust....]

I only have an abridged "Wealth of Nations" and could not find the uniquely American concept of "making money qua creating wealth." I think that Smith accepted "wealth" as static and material. Ideas were not wealth to him. In Book II Chapter 2, he goes into detail on paper money in the colonies. His story is the same as Susanne's above. See also his statement that paper money - properly used - promotes industry. He says that when idle people spend paper money on foreign wine, they do nothing to increase production, but when artisans spend paper money on tools, they do. That flatly contradicts the Major Premise of the book. But it does reinforce the altruistic idea that consumption for pleasure is evil while working for others is good. Smith was a professor of moral philosophy; he was not an egoist.


However, in Chapter 4 of Book I on The Origin of Money he is wrong. Now, understand that no one was right. From Aristotle until about 1955, everyone told the same story. In any case, in both citations, Adam Smith was being factual in reporting empirical observations. He was not so poetic as to identify the making of money as the creation of wealth.

Now you have me going crazy here-what about Alexander Hamilton?! The father of US banking system whether one agreed with how he did it or not.
Here's an article coming at it from a different angle. The unique characteristic of the transience of american fortunes.
http://www.philanthropyroundtable.org/to...
John Gordon Steele is also the author of Empire of Wealth which is chock full of uniquely american concepts of wealth creation. I highly recommend this book (just skip past the Roosevelt years-because he fails in that explanation).

As well, Franklin put together a pamphlet The Way To Wealth, filled with his Poor Richard's adages and proverbs including "For Want of A Nail..."
I would agree Jefferson didn't give it much thought....

I've never heard the wanting to pay taxes from the founders. I am aware that property owners were the only ones to vote.
Adam Smith was influential with our founders. How could you forget him?

Of course, the looters would never understand the concept, as for them their form of "making money" is to print more pieces of arbitrary paper, assign a random number to said papers, and coerce people into believing said pieces of paper have -real- value, as if they represented either a tangiable amount of production or tangiable substance, rather than a promise made by those who excel in not honoring promises...

Tangentially, that is why the American founders _wanted_ to pay taxes. Taxes were levied on land on "real" property. As merchants, doctors, lawyers, they typically rented their homes and so did not have any "real" property under law. That mattered because only taxpayers could vote.

Very few times and places honored merchants. You cited the Italian cities of the Renaissance. Florence, Genoa, Venice ... The Treviso Arithmetic manual has been put into the public domain as "Capitalism and Arithmetic" by Swetz and Smith. I have the book version.

But I do not know of any 18th or 19th century sources - not Benjamin Franklin or William Graham Sumner - who perceived "making money" as "creating wealth." I think that it was only in the 20th century that money came to be understood as distinct from wealth - that wealth generates money. Money is a store of wealth.

It gets back to the issue of land as "real" property under law, while machines and ideas were not.

Don't know how you got dinged. I voted you back to 1. I agree 100% with Ayn Rand's _sentiment_, but just noted that the fact of etymology was lacking.

Murray the K? He was before your time. I never heard him live: I was outside his market.

This was the outro to the movie "Something Ventured" about Silicon Valley that I reviewed under Business about four months back:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W25_jgiY5...

didn't you miss the K?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jkkcs5JMi...

You know... I watched an Italian production biography of Cosimo Medici and they were coming back from England to Florence and met a Florentine in France. He said that they will not recognize the town with art everywhere... And he said that in the old days, they used to trade goods, but now everything is money. So, they must have had some new phrases to go with that. Interesting... Quattrocento...

Some of the best things in life are free
But you can give them to the birds and bees!
Money can't buy everything, it's true
But what it can't buy I can't use.

money see, money do

Takes money to make money...

It makes me wonder what sort of similar phrases might have been in play during the Italian City States period of 1400-1600.