Making Money vs Making Wealth

How the .0001% Made its Money

This analysis appeared in PriceOnomics:

The individuals of the Forbes 400 List are the wealthiest people in America - the top .0001%. The above chart depicts the source of its members’ wealth. 

 Of course the technically correct statement is how they made their net worth wealth with that wealth expressed in net asset value in terms of dollars.  Of course, some of that net worth, one small component of it, would be currency assets or "big M Money" in the bank in their account.  The cash account personal revolving fund they use to make cash transactions just like we all do.  Maybe somewhat larger for them but certainly no larger than enough to pay the bills and buy the things they want.  Even with all that wealth, they do not want to have anymore than necessary in a Money cash bank account with a balance of US digital currency.

However, the lead line is media method for getting eyeballs.  It is not all about Money, it is all about Net Worth.  The extreme asset value they have over their liabilities. 

Yes, but......to what extent does that net worth trace back to a birth in a real money cash transaction?  And.........net of that source, what is the genesis of the rest of the wealth they claim as a function of accounting and law to hold as their possession? The answer would appear to be only one source: Capital Gains.  Gambling is taxable in both cases.  Illegal means of generating either income or capital gains is taxable the same as legal income.  Ask Al Capone.

 Are the .0001% the sole stakeholder of their wealth (exclusive of pre-tax cash income tax) ?  If there was a "wealth tax" the obvious answer would be no prior to settlement of that tax.  If the government had a monetary  stake in that net asset wealth of the .0001% then it would extract that stakeholding interest in the form of real money coin of the realm.  .^[3][4]

Wikipedia describes "Wealth Tax":

 The United States Constitution prohibits any direct tax on asset holdings (as opposed to income tax or capital gains tax) unless the revenue collected is apportioned among the states on the basis of their population.^[2][3][4] Although a federal wealth tax is prohibited unless the receipts are distributed to the States by their populations, state and local government property tax amount to a wealth tax on real estate, and because capital gains are taxed on nominal instead of inflation adjusted profits, the capital gains tax amounts to a wealth tax on the inflation rate.^[5]

The Finance sector of the .001% has the most wealth.  Wikipedia describes wealth like this: 

The concept of wealth is of significance in all areas of economics, and clearly so for growth economics and development economics yet the meaning of wealth is context-dependent. At the most general level, economists may define wealth as "anything of value" which captures both the subjective nature of the idea and the idea that it is not a fixed or static concept. Various definitions and concepts of wealth have been asserted by various individuals and in different contexts.^[2] Defining wealth can be a normative process with various ethical implications, since often wealth maximization is seen as a goal or is thought to be a normative principle of its own.

It appears that the finance sector generates its capital gains wealth largely on a conceptual resource rather than real resources like labor and material associated with capital investment in those resources.  Finance that generates wealth using a very few laborers and for those few laborers applying their leveraged labor to a highly conceptual thing called Money through and even more conceptual thing called monetized liquid financial instruments with associated value expressed in terms of money but not money but "near money" because it is very near being easily converted to Real Money depending on trust in validity of that fact or deception based on fraud (control fraud as defined by Bill Black). 

So, here is the end of this blog entry where I arrive at Capital (enonomics) and Capitalism and their relationship to Wealth and Money.  And what about the thing that seems to emerge here called Financial Leverage?