These things don't happen in a vacuum.

It's very easy to point out that one person putting in 1 hour of work is obviously not the same as another person putting in 1 hour of work. The devil is in the details. I already went over this in the OP when describing how location, context, and local infrastructure has an affect on everything.

The fact remains that I can spend my money and work will be done.
Money as stored work is not completely invalidated by a technicality.
There are a lot of different ways to look at it.
There is no universal answer.