The increasing stock of products is wealth. Productivity yields wealth in the roundaboutness of invested capital and acquired rent. As so, wealth marks the provisional limits of productivity in the optimal structure of the constant marginal product; for the increase of products is always realised to a certain extent, never indefinitely. Such determination of the stock of products defines the size of any given entrepreneurship and consequently brings it out of the process of productive consumption to the realm of exchange on a market. In this way, further non-productive increase in the stock of economic goods is secured; so wealth can be more broadly defined as a stock of goods potentially greater than itself.
Historical Backdrop
• ARISTOTLE Politics: art of wealth-getting.
• THOMAS MUN England’s Treasure by Foreign Trade: revenue.
• JAMES MILL Commerce Defended: value in exchange.
• AUGUSTIN COURNOT Researches into the Mathematical Principles of Wealth: value in exchange.
• JOHN STUART MILL The Principles of Political Economy: wealth.
• JOHN BATES CLARK The Philosophy of Wealth: rational wealth.
• EDWIN CANNAN Wealth: A Brief Explanation of the Causes of Economic Welfare: wealth.
• AMARTYA SEN Resources, Values and Development: economic development.