On who really creates wealth:
the true creator of wealth is, ultimately, the commonwealth – not only the political community, but the civilization that it shares with other nations. No technical invention or business innovation is a creation of something from nothing. All depend on the intellectual capital that the human race has accumulated since the Paleolithic period. The argument for property rights then becomes a utilitarian one – which set of property rights will spur individuals and groups and whole societies to engage in useful innovation? (Not all innovation is necessarily useful, as we have seen in the case of financial innovation.)
The commonwealth theory defines wealth broadly, as everything that conduces to the well-being of a community. Material production is only one of many activities that enrich a society. Public goods like safety and utilities and infrastructure and parks are part of the wealth that we share in common. So are many private goods that sometimes are best provided by the public, like public education and inexpensive healthcare.
By all means, then, let us celebrate virtuous capital owners and visionary investors as "wealth creators" on Labor Day. And let us celebrate as well as the other creators of private wealth, on the assembly line and in the office cubicle and in the janitorial closet, and the creators of public wealth in the form of roads and subways and parks, and the police officers and soldiers without whom a high level of public and private wealth could neither be created nor preserved. There are criminals and parasites among all classes of society, but most of us are wealth creators, and we deserve to be recognized as such. (Source)
Seems obvious to me. But in America, is there any idea harder to sell?
For the success culture of the American economic right, whose constituents in most cases vastly overestimate their own individual contributions to their own wealth and success, there is either independence or dependence. It's a false dichotomy--inter-dependence is also a possibility--in fact, it's the only healthful possibility.
Self-reliance--yes. We have to stand on our own two feet. Our dignity as humans depends on it. But self-reliance cannot be understood as healthful unless situated in an inter-dependent context. Inter-dependence means that we are all responsible,free agents as individuals, but that also we are all in this business of making a life together. We need one another, and cooperation is as important a value as competition in producing prosperity.
And some times we're in a position to help, and sometimes we're in a position in which we need help, and it shouldn't be extraordinary to give it or shameful to ask for it.