Earlier quoted context omitted.
When people use imagery to illustrate wealth, for example in a video or say the Wikipedia article for wealth ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wealth ), we see things like gold. Google images for wealth displays jewelry. Expensive cars. Expensive boats. Expensive mansions. Resources would be food, clean water, shelter, land, gasoline, things which purpose fulfill a specific need. I would say that the first thing, wealt…
Well I suggest reading carefully that first paragraph from Wikipedia. It does agree with me but I'll give you that it says it can be context dependent and you are talking about what it is considered "to be wealthy". In that context, I think if you considered the average person a hundred years ago to a average person today, the person today would be considered wealthy (to the person from a hundred years ago). But to q…
All resources can represent wealth, status and power, but only if others are excluded from it. For example clean water is not consider wealth in a west-centric point of view where water is free, but in the desert clean water can very much represent wealth. A person who can waste clean water in the desert to plant a garden is wealthy and gains status, while the same person growing the same garden with the same amount of water gain no such status if it next to a fresh water lake in say Sweden.
In the absent of a zero sum game wealth does not exist. This does not mean that resources do not provide benefits. They do. Our ancestors a thousand years had less resources and thus suffered more from the effect of that. If we had a time machine and we traveled back in time we would be more wealthy because we would have resources that they do not.
A easy way to deal with the terminology is to outsource our definition. Wealth is that which a wealth tax taxes. Good medicine provided by the state, for all its extremely high value to society and individual people, is not something that can be taxed through a wealth tax. The very concept would not make any sense. The only thing a wealth tax can tax is wealth. Ipso facto, good medicine provided by a well fare state is not wealth. It great, it is good, it is useful, it is valuable, but wealth it is not.