What Is Wealth To Me?
Wealth is defined as “a form of possession”. We could also say that it’s a measure of the capacity to acquire things. It can also be defined as the opposite of poverty. It is something that we can call “the means of creating and maintaining wealth”.
Wealth is simply the accumulation of material possessions or physical capital that can be converted into some kind of usable form which can then be employed for economic transactions. This includes the operative meaning held in the original root word weal, that is from Indo-European root where the word now has become critical. In fact it’s the Indo-European root which became critical in Latin derivatives where “wes” became critical and “caput” became capital. The modern day Latin word for wealth, “caput”, literally means “hard money”.
Modern people would describe Wealth as something that is not based on material possessions, but on accumulated wealth. And since modern societies have become more complex, there are many ways by which wealth can be measured. By historical means, these various means of measuring wealth can include the accumulation and maintenance of fortunes through family estates and more traditional wealth through accumulations of money held by the community. However, since modern societies have become much more complex, wealth has become increasingly difficult to measure and this has led to two important alternative approaches to wealth measurement. They are Financial Wealth and Luxury Wealth.
Financial Wealth is defined as the ability to accumulate money or assets (including real estate) as a result of the ability to make good repayment of debts, provided that the person (or group) has the necessary capital in the form of savings or other liquid assets. This can take the form of bank accounts with interest or in stocks and bonds. The ability to accumulate wealth does not need to be directly proportionate to actual tangible assets because any existing cash reserves can be invested to produce a return. The concept of financial wealth is therefore an abstract one, and refers to the ability to accumulate material possessions.
Luxury Wealth is wealth that is not necessarily rooted in concrete assets. It can, however, be measured in terms of the possession of exceptional goods that are not available to every person. These are usually defined in terms of rarity and desirability. For example, the possession of a rare piece of art, unique clothing, or an exotic holiday is a luxury. More recently, the idea of luxury has been extended to the idea of owning items that are rare and of high quality, often requiring a great deal of time or resources to obtain.
So what is Wealth really? It is both a noun and a verb, representing the ability to acquire something and the willingness to do so. It is a simple concept and one that we can all understand if we are honest enough to ask ourselves the question, and if we truly have the ability. When we define wealth as having no scarcity and see that each person can attain anything he wants if he only puts forth the effort, it becomes clear that there is no reason why everyone should struggle to be poor.
