Explaining the scientific difference between wealth and income to David Andolfatto
Wow. The way David Andolfotto uses economic phraseology in his blog is vague, incoherent, inconsistent and fuzzy – at least against the background of the scientific definition of these phrases. He does not seem to know the totally crucial distinction between wealth (a stock) and income (a flow), which probably means (but that’s kind of fuzzy) that he does not understands the ‘multiplier’. What’s the matter?
A proper science needs proper definitions. In macro-economics, these definitions are not tinkered in heaven at universities but carefully crafted by economic statisticians, working at all kind of statistical institutes. The division of labour, you know. But there seems to be a kind of coördination failure because of this division of labour. Many an academic economists (P.K. being a notable exception) has not really mastered these definitions and is therewith somewhat lost in the scientific woods when it comes to using them.
Two of the concepts defined by these macro-statisticians are ‘wealth’ and ‘income’, wealth being the difference between assets and liabilities of, for instance, households and income being the (net) flow of wages, interest, profits and rents to, for instance, households. Wealth is a stock, income is a flow.
wealth.
Let’s quote the macro-economic bible on this, p. 469 (I took a quote which clearly shows the difference between income and wealth, not the actual operational definition):
The distribution of wealth
24.76 Increasing interest is being shown in conducting surveys of household wealth along lines similar to surveys of household income and expenditure. Again the interest is to look at a disaggregation of the households sector to discover the composition of household wealth and its relation to household income.
24.77 In general the distribution of wealth is even more strongly skewed than income. A family where the main earners are in mid career may have a comfortable level of income and occupy their own house but still have a considerable mortgage and may not yet have built up significant pension reserves.
These concepts of wealth and income are consistent with the national accounts and the concept of final demand: an increase of (nominal) final demand will, because of the, in a monetary economy, emerging event of the ‘accounting identities’, lead to increasing (nominal) income which, when the money involved is, afterwards, hoarded or spent on non-produced or already existing assets, may lead to an increase of wealth. David Andolfotto however states:
…the idea that wealth transfers from the rich to poor can create wealth–at least, in depressed economic conditions. This basic idea is a staple of undergraduate level “Keynesian” economics — the so-called “spending multiplier’.
That’s vague, fuzzy and incoherent. He should have stated “the idea that transfers of income or wealth from the rich to the poor can create net additional final expenditure and therewith an associated increase of nominal income and production which, in depressed economic conditions, can also lead to additional employment and real income and production. Households or companies might use their income to pay of debts or buy existing assets (which includes hoarding the money, which will show up in the balance sheet as an increase of wealth“.
Ehm… no, that’s not sexy. But at least it’s less vague, fuzzy and incoherent. And more scientific.
Aside – P.K. really is good at this. Believe me, if he had made a mistake like this the title of this blogpost would have been slightly different. But he never makes mistakes like this. You can chide him for sometimes being somewhat too ‘effective’ and less than subtle with statistical data. But he is good at concepts and definitions. The only real mistake I’ve ever seen him make was when he mistakenly stated that there is no USA ‘core’ GDP-deflator, without energy and food prices. It turned out there was, but I only discovered this, by coincidence, when I checked the USA consumption prices inflation with the GDP-deflator and the domestic purchases deflator, as Krugman stated that consumption prices inflation is a better cyclical and structural metric than the GDP deflator. Our inflation metric of choice of course has to be, for the USA economy, the domestic purchases deflator excluding energy – but that’s a conceptual and not a definitional statistical question (emprically, differences in the USA are less large than in the Eurozone). Yes, these last sentences are, meta, arrogant beyond believe – but did anybody else check this?
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Real-World Economics Review Blog 
Wealth is almost invariably defined inadequately. If wealth is equated with assets, then slaves are wealth. Clearly they are not, because nothing is added to the stock of goods when a man is enslaved. The same objection applies to land: nothing is added to the stock of goods when land is enclosed. Thus neither land nor slaves can be included in the definition of wealth, yet the former normally is, as above, counted as an “asset”.
The following is a coherent and consistent definition of wealth. If adopted, however, it turns the entire discipline of economics on its head.
“All material things produced by labour for the satisfaction of human desires and having exchange value.
This means that wealth must have all of these characteristics:
1) Wealth is material. Human qualities such as skill and mental acumen are not material, hence cannot be classified as wealth.
2) Wealth is produced by labor. Land possesses all the essentials of wealth but one — it is not a product of labor, therefore it is not wealth.
3) Wealth is capable of satisfying human desire.”
From this it follows that money is not wealth; it is a medium of exchange whereby wealth can be acquired. Nor are land titles, shares of stock, bonds or other securities classifiable as wealth. They are but the evidences of ownership. None of these satisfy desire directly; if they are destroyed, the sum total of wealth is not decreased.
Is crap on stilts wealth ?
If the answer is yes , then congratulations – you’re rich !
Crap on stilts may be wealth, but only if someone wants it. Crap and stilts are man made products and that is what could make them wealth – only if they are wanted. As crap is good fertiliser, this is the case, so yes, it probably is.
The crap in its natural state eg guano, is not wealth, however, until someone shifts their arse and starts to shovel the shit, on its way to its final destination as fertiliser. Now if you own the land where the guano is sitting, you are wealthy because you can charge other people for shovelling the shit which is there and thus have a claim on the wealth they have produced through their work.
But as an economist, you must know this, so what is your point precisely?
My point was to intervene before you made what I was sure would be your next point – that our obsession with wealth inequality was misguided , since money , financial assets , etc. , are not “wealth”. This would not provide much comfort to those with little to no wealth , whatever the definition.
Since that was not the thrust of your argument , I apologize for the snarky reply , but I’m glad I did it just the same. Your elaboration on “crap on stilts” was excellent !
Thanks. I developed the theme
http://www.landvaluetax.org/the-lvtc-blog-by-henry-law/crap-on-stilts.html
This is a hugely important topic but IMHO Henry hasn’t quite nailed it. Under the rules of finance capitalism, it is the POTENTIAL of a slave or a plot of land to add to “to the stock of goods” (he needs to add ‘services’) AND for the enslaver or encloser the ability to capture the exchange value of the good or services produced by the slave or the land. That AND is all-important – no exchange value, no value as an asset.
Therein lies the first flaw in Henry’s definition of wealth. It is generally accepted that just because something is free, like air or water, doesn’t mean it doesn’t have value. And trying to distinguish between wealth and value won’t cut it; the latter can be converted into the former by doing things that undermine the status of things like air and water as a ‘free good’, like polluting them, generically, ‘robbing the commons’.
As for Henry’s characteristics of wealth, it might be OK to go as far as saying ‘wealth has a material component’ even if it is only the body of the (wage) slave that produces ‘just services’. But the value of that material component as wealth is most definitely influenced by advances in sciences and technology, generically, the stock of human knowledge. Finance capital calls this ‘intellectual capital’. It rightly values intellectual capital as wealth – or fears it because those advances can destroy more exchange value that they create; just think coal or 8-track tape or even soon CD.
The second characteristic is the one with which I have the most trouble. I would accuse Henry – and maybe Marx himself – of being a closet financial capitalist. The notion that everything of value is ultimately the product of God’s greatest creation may be psychologically comforting. But it more or less completely ignores a period of history called the Industrial Revolution, when machines powered by inanimate energy sources replaced man (i.e. “labor”) as the chief producer of wealth. At best man now just supervises that production.
All that being said, Henry appears much closer to the mark than David Andolfotto or the blogger criticizing him. The big problem with both is they both buy into the concept that the value of everything (i.e. wealth) can be measured in money. Once one makes that leap from the real material world to the world of numbers we begin to look to Wall Street’s financial engineers, with their advanced skills in “symbol manipulation” and systems theory (‘stock and flow’?) for the answer to the question “what is wealth”.
As 2008 should have taught us, the Fed’s increasingly desperate and – if the market trends of the last few days continue – imminently futile attempts to sustain the financial markets notwithstanding, as Henry says: “land titles, shares of stock, bonds or other securities (are not) classifiable as wealth”. The economist who has this right is Dr. Michael Hudson. Hudson has been patiently trying to explain that “The product of Wall Street is debt.” Over the years Wall Street and other financial centers have been fabulously successful at selling their product – so much so that if something isn’t done about the debt overhang they created, civilization faces another Dark Age of debt feudalism.
As Henry observes, money is a medium of exchange, the oil that lubricates our economy machinery. And in economics if not in mechanics the consequences of having too much oil can be just as catastrophic as having not enough, at least for the ‘macroeconomic’ system. It would be far more accurate to call a depression a ‘debt deflation’ – though admittedly it can be pretty depressing to think you are ‘wealthy’ and then discover all you own is “debts that can’t be repaid – and won’t be” (Hudson again)
Wealth is produced when natural products are worked upon by human labour, initially directly with simple hand tools. As time has passed, tools have become more complex and are powered by some form of energy, but the principle is the same. Value is added as natural products are processed and transported until they are in the hands of the final consumer. The value is related to the work that has been put into them. That value is THE LABOUR THAT SOMEONE IS PREPARED TO GIVE IN ORDER TO ACQUIRE THE GOODS, and not, as Marx claimed, the work that has been put into the production of the goods. Value is thus LABOUR SAVED. In practice, the two are related, but Marx’s explanation is wrong and indeed contrary to common sense and daily experience.
The act of enslavement adds nothing whatsoever to the total stock of goods. Whether a man is a slave or a free man working on his own account makes no difference to his ability to produce ie to add value – in fact, the slave has less incentive to produce. What the man is enslaved, the owner is forcibly taking the product of the slave’s labour ie the owner is robbing the slave.
The same applies to land. The act of enclosure in itself adds nothing to the stock of goods and consequently adds nothing to wealth. The same applies to claims of ownership and transfers of land title. Enclosure of land is advantageous as it enables the land to be used for producing wealth on, but it does not convert the land itself into wealth. What enclosure does is to create a rental income stream ie a claim on wealth produced on that land, which will be claimed by the owner under contemporary systems of land tenure.
Now it is likely that transfer of ownership will happen because the new owner will use the land more productively than the old one, but any payment made is merely a release fee roughly equal to the capitalisation of the land’s rental value.
There is implicit here a moral issue. A man’s body belongs to himself, and consequently so does the product of his labour.
“The value is related to the work that has been put into them. That value is THE LABOUR THAT SOMEONE IS PREPARED TO GIVE IN ORDER TO ACQUIRE THE GOODS, and not, as Marx claimed, the work that has been put into the production of the goods. Value is thus LABOUR SAVED.”
Splendid, Henry. Another aspect of the Copernican revolution needed.
” no exchange value, no value as an asset.”
That can’t be right. Let us imagine a situation of famine. The vast majority of the people have nothing and cannot acquire food for they have nothing to exchange. On your analysis the man with a barn full of grain has no wealth. Orly?
In a situation of famine the normal rules of economics do not apply. Nor should they.
Probably opening a can of worms here, but I think Marx’ ideas are not so bad on this. He distinguishes between use value and exchange value in Section1 of Chapter 1 of Volume 1 of Capital. I quote only the last two sentences.
“Finally, nothing can be a value without being an object of utility. If the thing is useless, so is the labour contained in it; the labour does not count as labour, and therefore creates no value.” (Marx, Capital, Volume 1. Vintage Books Edition, 1977. p. 131)
Any ideas about crises that Marx discusses in later volumes of capital make virtually no sense otherwise.
A pure neoclassical production function will usually be written so that no production takes place if there is no labor. Similarly, no production if there is no capital, and truly, if there is no land or physical site where the activity takes place. That is, Q=f(land, labor, capital), where Q=0 if land =0, or Q=0 if labor = 0, or Q=0 if capital = 0.
So it seems to me that there are two necessary conditions for something to count as wealth. First, it is a product of labor. People might want guano for fertilizer, but until somebody performs the work of mining and transporting it for use as fertilizer, it will have no value (count as wealth) sitting on the cave floor. Second, somebody has to want the item, and it does not matter why. People wanted guano for its usefulness as fertilizer once they found how productive it was. Once these two are satisfied, then the item might count as wealth – I say might simply because it may be these two conditions taken together are sufficient, or there is a third lurking implicitly – simple material existence.
Similar reasoning holds for more complex items like motorcycles. They can not count as wealth (or value) if they have not been produced and brought into existence. Just because they are the product of labor does not give them value.
Value (and wealth) are a product of consciousness. if human beings were wiped out tomorrow, all of our creations would have no value, until some alien race discovers the planet and begins to recycle or reuse what was left behind
“Value is thus LABOUR SAVED”? If you already have all you need and don’t need to work for it you are (in real rather than monetary terms) wealthy.
Value is labour saved ie the labour you will give in order to acquire the item in question. Value comes from desire, not need, and human desires are unlimited.
It will probably not come as a surprise that the labour used to produce tradeable guano, a gruelling task at the end of the world, was a kind of slave labour, see “The first green revolution: debt peonage and the making of the nitrogen fertilizer trade” by Edward D. Melillo, http://ahr.oxfordjournals.org/content/117/4/1028.short
The productive process does not and never has produced as much in actual individual purchasing power as it has simultaneously produced even MINIMAL prices let alone actual prices. Therefore the productive process/the economy cannot be in equilibrium as currently set up. Furthermore, incomes are rapidly being lessened/destroyed by technological innovation and a laundry list of other factors particularly in the advanced and financialized western economies. The only way to make the system function and remain a profit making one is to finance consumption with a dividend to individuals and then make sure incomes and prices remain equilibrated with a mathematically derived general discount on prices.
We live in a monetary economy. Money is a wonderful and precise tool. There is no need to get rid of it or quibble over what wealth is…in a monetary economy it is entirely how much free and clear money you have to purchase production.
How does innovation reduce incomes? Surely it should do the opposite? Otherwise, what is the point? If it were the case we would be better off if the last 250 years of innovations had never happened.
How is this extra money to be distributed in your proposed scheme?
By reducing employment. That is how individual incomes are actually created…by employment within some enterprise. the logics of profit and innovation are both efficiency. The first of cost, of which labor is one of many, the second of human effort and now human input. Even if one does not confront the scarcity of individual incomes that routinely occurs in the normal operation of producing something (because labor, that is individual incomes are only a fraction of costs and yet all costs must go into price) innovation and profit will also inevitably result in the necessity of the Social Credit solution which is a direct supplementary income to the individual. The above combination of factors is what Keynesian stimulus intends to remedy, but is unable to do so because it is stimulus that goes through an enterprise first and hence re-initiates the scarcity of individual incomes that is inherent in the productive process itself.
The e = mc squared of economics is:
P = In < Pr Where (P) is the productive process, (In) is total individual incomes and (Pr) is total prices. Hence a continual scarcity of total individual incomes in ratio to prices, hence the productive process/economy is continually in a radical state of monetary and economic instability that can only be remedied by a direct distribution of income to the individual (instead of via an enterprise which only re-initiates the scarcity condition.)
In any situation at all the “normal” rules of economics don’t seem to apply ;)
However we are not talking here about rules, are we? We are talking about definitions. I stand by my point that wealth cannot require an exchange value in order to exist. Just as the idea that a starving person does not give rise to a “demand” for food, depends on the subversion of ordinary language to have even a sniff of plausibility to it.
“I stand by my point that wealth cannot require an exchange value in order to exist.”
What do you mean by this statement?
Starving people normally have no access to the means of production. But the economic process can not usefully be studied by referring to what are fortunately rare sets of circumstances. Famines are emergencies and it is one of the functions of government to intervene and prevent people from starving.
It does not have to be famine: that is just an extreme example. We were talking about the definition of wealth and you said that if there were no exchange value there would be no value as an asset, with the implication it would not represent wealth. A person with plenty of food in a barn is wealthy when other people do not have plenty of food and the person who does have it has no possibility of exchange for that reason. It has intrinsic worth because he can eat it. It is certainly wealth. And it does not depend on its exchange value in any way. So it seems to me, anyway
Starvation is pretty common, though sudden famine is, as you say, relatively rare. Sudden famine might be outwith human control: continuing hunger across the world is a consequence of the economic process, however: and so is the response to sudden famine through “act of god”.
We are continually told that government has no money of its own at all. How then can government be responsible for preventing people starving in a sudden famine. Only by taking the food out of our wealthy person’s barn, presumably. And if they can do that when it is sudden they can do it when it is endemic. It is all part of the “economic process”: which is at bottom politics. There is no room for economics so far as I can see.
If nobody want something, then it is not wealth. Commodity foods in a barn are always wanted, they are the product of human labour and therefore fall into the definition of wealth. How much they are worth on the market is an entirely separate matter and it has no bearing on, for example, the purchasing power of local people. Your hypothetical grain owner in a famine could always sell the product in another market.
Endemic starvation has nothing to do with famines and everything to do with people’s inability to provide for themselves as a consequence of land enclosure. This is the typical situation in many parts of South America and other third-world countries – fenced-off idle land and starving people who cannot use to grow what they need to survive on. There are some very well off people in third-world countries with starving people outside their gates.
The problem is not economic processes as such but with mismanagement of these processes by corrupt or stupid governments, and normally it begins with the system of land tenure.
In a famine a government might be justified in requisitioning food supplies and arguing about payment afterwards.
What if the productive productive process can’t EVER provide enough individual income to make itself stable? Does the business man distribute all of his money to labor? Of course he doesn’t. And money re-circulating doesn’t add to any actual purchasing power because it by necessity creates more in prices than individual incomes ad infinitum.
Why on earth has that seemingly impossible state of affairs arisen?
The value created by labour is distributed in four ways. Part goes to labour, part as actual or imputed rent, part as tax and part as payment for the use of capital. This applies also to the businessman himself. Some of what he receives is the wages for his labour and some is likely to be imputed rental income.
What you seem to be talking about is failure in the initial process of distribution of wealth created by labour.
Yes, I’m saying there is a scarcity of individual incomes in ratio to prices at the initial creation of any product/service and continually throughout its passage from one enterprise to another until retail sale to an individual which is where all costs for any product/service is totaled.
Yes because rent is creamed off and wages are depressed because of full land enclosure. Then there is tax on top. So workers cannot afford to buy what they have produced. Bonkers, when you think about it. If free land is available at the margin, people will not put up with pittance pay – they will go and work for themselves and keep all their produce. Once that let-out has gone, they must accept being ripped off.
I do not deny that rent is a cost and so a factor in total prices, but we’ve been here before. The most underlying reason the economy is unstable is that there is inevitably less in individual purchasing power (wages after taxes) (labor costs) than there is total costs. Why? Because ALL costs must go into price and yet, again……labor costs (individual purchasing power) is inadequate and so cannot liquidate ALL costs/prices. And this scarcity is enforced with any money actually going into the economy and also any money re-circulating back through same.
@ Henry Law.
As I said, we were talking about definitions. First you said there were three components which make something meet the definition of wealth.
““All material things produced by labour for the satisfaction of human desires and having exchange value.”
There is an inherent problem with this even if it is taken as a stipulative definition (and,as ever, it ought to be made clear if that is what it is: economics is rife with this stuff and it is obfuscatory because it allows people to trade on the ambiguity which arises from the use of ordinary words in an extraordinary way). Let me now assume it is a stipulative definition, on the basis of your subsequent posts. What follows? I put it to you that the purpose of a stipulative definition is to support a theoretical argument and that is perhaps what you are doing. If that is so there is nothing wrong with it and our next move is to determine what acceptance of that definition implies.
In this case, as you rightly point out, it means that a great many people who imagine themselves wealthy are not in fact wealthy because the items they hold, and which represent that wealth, are not “material” or are not produced by “labour” or have no “exchange value”.
And here we have a problem, because what is accepted as a representation of wealth is not related to any objective facts in the real world: they are a social construction and at present society at large does act as if the things which you state are not “wealth”, are indeed wealth. So they can give you your definition and call their stock of land or their intellectual property something else: and carry on as before.
You may then say that the aim is to change the social construction in line with your definition. Fair enough. Then what? Since people would now accept that the wealth which they previously thought to exist does not, a lot of wealthy people will now be poor. But as you note, they will still own the land or the companies they hold because you went on to say
” Nor are land titles, shares of stock, bonds or other securities classifiable as wealth. They are but the evidences of ownership.”
It follows that those people who own such assets will now be called “poor” though they will still own the assets, and in particular they will own the land ( I gather that is your main concern”.
Of course since we have now stipulated that those things have no “value” we can confiscate them and those “poor” people have lost nothing. And if we all accept your definition they might too, and so will not resist. But why would we bother? The stuff has no “value” so there is no reason to take it off them.
In your latest post you say
“Commodity foods in a barn are always wanted, they are the product of human labour and therefore fall into the definition of wealth. How much they are worth on the market is an entirely separate matter ”
To me this demonstrates your confusion. How much it is worth on the market is the essence of one part of your stipulative definition – for its market worth IS its exchange value. And so you wriggle and postulate a second market. A familiar move from economists. First there are the simplifying assumptions: then statements are made as to what they imply. When the initial statement is challenged within those simplifying assumptions you add another term rather than give up the theory. In this exchange you have ditched “normal economic processes” entirely, in order to meet my objection. And now you have added the second market. It reminds me of the ZLB debate. At what point do you go back to the drawing board? You don’t. You blame government instead. Twas every thus.
There is another possibility that has passed you by. That not everything that can be sold is wealth. A land title, for example, is just a piece of paper, but the holder of that land title has a CLAIM ON WEALTH ie it enables the holder to collect any rent which may arise on the piece of land to which the title refers. Which is why it has value and can be sold. The land itself is not wealth but a necessary factor in the production of wealth. If both borrowers and lenders had understood this, the current financial crisis would never have happened. Every bank manager should have sign in front of his desk with the words LAND IS NOT WEALTH.
Another demonstration of this is that taking ownership of land and transferring ownership of land in themselves add nothing to the total stock of goods, any more than enslaving another human being adds anything to the stock of goods, though the slave owner might think himself wealthy.
It is important to define wealth so that it excludes slaves, because the institution of slavery is nothing more than a means of robbing the individual of the product of his labour. And the definition of wealth is essentially qualitative. Either something is wealth or it is not. A piece of unused toilet paper is wealth. A £50 note is not. It is not difficult to visualise a situation where this would become painfully apparent.
Where is the confusion?
That possibility has not passed me by: but it does not help your argument. Your stipulative definition of wealth is, again
“All material things produced by labour for the satisfaction of human desires and having exchange value”
A land title is certainly material and it is produced by labour including the paper maker’s labour, the ink maker’s labour and the lawyer’s labour in drawing it up. That labour is expended in order to satisfy the human desire for a title to the land which will be accepted by the polity. It has an exchange value too. It is wealth on your own definition. That is where the confusion lies, IMO.
Physical deeds are no longer necessary to prove title if it is registered with the Land Registry.
Has anyone challenged or endorsed Frederick Soddy writings, namely “The Role Of Money”
(Entire book as a free download… http://archive.org/details/roleofmoney032861mbp
” Money now is the NOTHING (fiat currency or digital imprint) that you (the individual part of the sovereign group) get for SOMETHING before you can get ANYTHING”.
Money is a medium of exchange, a store of value, and a unit of account.
Could one say, Wealth is the SOMETHING you would wish to exchange for ANYTHING.
Even thought, when expressed becomes SOMETHING.
ALL money is wealth, all wealth is not money.
“ALL money is wealth, all wealth is not money.”
Precisely. The capital appreciation just keeps piling up and will continue until all of the high rise corporate/financial headquarters are diamond coated….but there is such a paltry amount of individual purchasing power that no one will be able to buy anything. Then, even economists and their pundits will have to recognize that there is a scarcity of individual incomes in ratio to prices….and always has been. And that the only way to approximate an economic equilibrium of prices and individual incomes…is to GIVE the individual a supplementary income. And then the only way to maintain that equilibrium…is to have a general discount on prices that is mathematically derived.
If the system is inherently stable you can treat it like a God. If it isn’t….you have to create and maintain an equilibrium.
The accumulation of what you call capital is the claim on wealth know as land rental value. This ought, for a raft of reasons, to be collected by government and used as the principal source of public revenue. The de-taxing of wages should itself result in an increase of incomes all round, but some of the revenue raised can be distributed as a citizens’ income.
“ALL money is wealth, all wealth is not money.”
Precisely. The capital appreciation just keeps piling up and will continue until all of the high rise corporate/financial headquarters are diamond coated….but there will be such a paltry amount of individual purchasing power that no one will be able to buy anything. Then, even economists and their pundits will have to recognize that there is a scarcity of individual incomes in ratio to prices….and always has been. And that the only way to approximate an economic equilibrium of prices and individual incomes…is to GIVE the individual a supplementary income. And then the only way to maintain that equilibrium…is to have a general discount on prices that is mathematically derived.
If the system is inherently stable you can treat it like a God. If it isn’t….you have to create and maintain an equilibrium.
Money is a medium of exchange and claim on wealth. It is not in itself. It is a claim on wealth only so long as those in the community in which it circulates are willing to accept money in exchange for real wealth. There are times and place when such willingness fails. Few shops in London, for instance, will accept Euros or Dollars in payment for small items.
Well their currency is the Pound Sterling. Most countries require people to get their country’s currency. But that has nothing to do with their actual willingness to take currency or not. The economies of the world are monetary IN NATURE. Only if you are an utterly blind and hypnotized DSGE theorist or a Banker who would rather divert attention from the empirical monetary facts would you say that money “is a veil over barter.
What you seem to be talking about is the concentration of claims on wealth. And there I share your concern and sense of indignation. But to focus on money is to lose sight of what is happening under the surface, when the monetary issues are a surface manifestation of deeper and multi-layered problems.
Did wonder about that, so I am glad to have it confirmed. I do not think it makes any difference to the essential point, however. A register is a register and it is physical insofar as it is held in a material medium, whether paper or computer