It ain't what you got, it's the way that you use it.
The wealth of a nation lies not only in its available natural resources, but to a greater extent in what people choose to do with those resources.
Economics is the study of what we do with what we've got. It is properly a social science, first known as "political economics," an expansion of the ancient Greek term for household management, from an estate to an entire city.
The Industrial Revolution helped to bring about capitalism, the use of money to invest in equipment that enabled greater production by fewer workers. But this does not mean that the workers, who become more efficient by using machines, should not share in the benefits of increased productivity.
Early capitalists -- those who invested in the machines -- believed that since they undertook some of the risk, they were "entitled" to all of the rewards. (There's that word again.)
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