Wealth, as seen by the Reality Goggles

The measure as written

The rule of RESPONSIBILITIES FOR THE WEALTH:

"An individual must consider wealth as a compressed form of the net work done by other individuals, which must be returned to the society one way or the other to maintain a balance in the society."

Under the heading "Wealth, as seen by the Reality Goggles", wealth is defined and the measure given:

Wealth, as seen by the Reality Goggles, is a compressed form of the net work done by other individuals (we are omitting the person possessing the wealth because he is the one to be discussed). (In practice, the net work compressed in a piece of wealth can be estimated by tracing the hours of work that went into it at every stage, i.e. from its raw material to its final form, along with the expertise that each of these hours required.)

and names what wealth consists of:

Wealth consists of money, real estate, food reserves, livestock, crops etc. (with money being one of the most highly compressed and mobile forms).

and, for real estate, the work compressed in a building:

The work done to produce building material as well as the labour assigned for construction collectively constitute the net work done (here the whole work done by the individuals to produce building material as well as construction is compressed in the form of a building).

This sub-section measures the work compressed in grain, among the crops of this list: the hours of work that went into a tonne at every stage, and the expertise each of these hours required. It also measures the work compressed in a building: the hours of the building work and of its materials in one square metre of floor of the same plain house, in each society. And it measures how much of the price of real estate is the price of the land, which holds only the work of security and organization. Money is measured on its own, in the next sub-section.

What it measures, in plain words

Seen through the Reality Goggles, a thing is wealth because of the work it holds: it is "a compressed form of the net work done by other individuals". The measure opens up this compression. It counts the hours of work that went into a piece of wealth "from its raw material to its final form", and the expertise each of these hours needed. The hours are counted for the thing itself. For whoever holds it without having worked on it, all of them are the work of others, as it was said: "we are omitting the person possessing the wealth".

What is measured.

· Grain, among the crops named: one tonne of wheat and one tonne of rice, as harvested. For crops, the work inside them is named: "security + organization of land of cultivation, seed arrangement, water provision, care etc." The measure follows the tonne back through every stage worldwide and counts the work of growing it: the work in the field, and the work behind the seed, the fertilizer, the water, the machines and the fuel used to grow it. The security and organization of the land belong to the land itself (below). Storing the grain as a food reserve comes after the harvest and is not counted.

· The farm stage in each society, read from that society's own official survey of what it costs to grow the grain. The cost of the human work on the farm is read in hours of that society's simplest work, as in the necessity basket. Where the farm work is paid at the simplest pay, these are the very hours worked; where it is paid more, they come to more hours, so the expertise of the farm work is counted inside them rather than shown beside them. No money is carried from one society to another.

· Buildings. As was said, the work done to produce the building material and the labour of construction are together the net work compressed in a building. The measure takes one square metre of floor of the same plain brick house in every society, the house of the necessity basket: the work of building it, read from official building norms, and its materials, priced in each society and read in hours of that society's simplest work, as for the farm stage. No money is carried from one society to another.

· Land. As was said, land holds only "the struggle (work) by the individuals to maintain security and organizational tasks for that particular area". The hours of that work are not counted here. What is measured is how much of the price of real estate is paid for the land itself, as a share of the whole price: the part of the price that is not work compressed in a building.

Money, "one of the most highly compressed and mobile forms", is measured on its own in the next sub-section.

Read in hours of work. The grain is read in hours of human work, counting everyone who worked on it at any stage, and its hours are split by the expertise they needed: low, medium and high. No weights were given for expertise, so the hours are not added up into "skilled hours"; the shares are shown beside them. The farm stage and the building materials are read in hours of the simplest work, the building work in the hours that the building norms give, and the land as a share of a price.

How to read the result. Say a tonne of wheat holds 100 hours. That means people worked 100 hours in all to bring that tonne about, counting every stage behind it, from the seed, fertilizer and machines to the work in the field. A skill share of 60% medium means that most of those hours needed medium expertise. Four points keep the reading true to what was written:

· The hours are counted for the thing itself; for a holder who did not work on it, they are all the "net work done by other individuals".

· The hours count the work done, not the price paid. The same tonne can hold many hours in the field where the work is done by hand, and few where machines do it; the hours that made the machines and the fuel are then counted in the stages behind the field.

· A large land share means that much of what is called real-estate wealth is the price of land. Land holds only the work of security and organization, not the work compressed in a building.

· The hours behind a thing may have been worked in any society. Whether a society draws on the work of others is not read from where those hours were worked, but from the balance of the hours it gives to others and receives from them (Pads drained between societies).

How we measured it

The measures.

· Hours in a tonne of grain, at every stage: the world tables of EXIOBASE 3.8.2 for 2011. For every product of 44 countries and 5 regions covering the rest of the world, they hold two things: the hours of work the product takes (split into low-, medium- and high-skill hours) and what it draws from every other product. Following each product back, stage by stage, through everything it draws on gives all the hours behind it. The hours behind the world's whole harvest of wheat, and of paddy rice, are then divided by that harvest in tonnes, from the same tables' accounts of what is taken from nature: 699 million tonnes of wheat, 723 million of paddy rice. The tables count products in money, but the hours and the tonnes belong to the same harvest, so the money cancels out and no price enters.

· The farm stage in a society: the cost of the human work on a hectare, and the tonnes the hectare yields, from the society's own official survey of the cost of growing grain.

o   India: the Commission for Agricultural Costs and Prices, Price Policy reports for the rabi crops of the marketing season 2027-28 and the kharif crops of 2026-27 (cost of cultivation by state, 2024-25). The states are weighted by their shares of the harvest: for wheat, 12 states with 97% of the harvest; for paddy, 18 states with 97%.

o   The United States: the Economic Research Service of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, commodity costs and returns for 2025 (hired work and the unpaid work of the farm family, per planted acre).

The cost is divided by the hourly pay of the simplest occupations in the same society and year (International Labour Organization, as in the necessity basket), and then by the tonnes per hectare. Only human work is counted; the hire of animals and machines is left out. China, Brazil, Russia, Egypt and Nigeria are not covered.

· Buildings: one square metre of floor of the house of the necessity basket, the single-family brick house in the middle of the world's houses (RASMI database). Its building work, 25.8 hours for each square metre of floor, the same in every society, is read from the official Brazilian building norms (SINAPI). Its materials are priced from each society's own published price lists and divided by the hourly pay of its simplest occupations in the year of its necessity basket. Nigeria is not covered.

· Land: the value of all land as a share of the value of land, dwellings and other buildings and structures together. This comes from national balance sheets (OECD, Table 9B, balance sheets for non-financial assets: the whole economy, the latest year each economy gives, 2020 to 2025). Sixteen economies publish it. None of the seven is among them, so the result is given as a world count. Alongside it: the part that land prices played in the rise of house prices in 14 advanced economies (Knoll, Schularick and Steger 2017).

· Land beside the drawing of work: for the same 16 economies, the land share is set beside the NEP work each draws from others, net, for each capable adult in a week (the balance of "Pads drained between societies", 2020), and read by how far the two orders agree. It is read again with crowding held equal (people per square kilometre of land, World Bank, 2020) and with wealth held equal, wealth read in hours, not money: the hours of work in all that a person uses in a year (2020, as in "The saving when the gifts of nature are free").

Read in hours.

· Grain: the hours of everyone who worked on one tonne at any stage, with the low-, medium- and high-skill shares of those hours.

· The farm stage: the human work on the farm for one tonne, read in hours of the society's simplest work.

· Buildings: the hours of the building work, and the hours of the simplest work that the materials take, for one square metre of floor.

· Land: a share.

Measured years only. The world tables are read for 2011, the last year EXIOBASE builds from measured records; its later years are its own estimates and are not used. The farm stage is read for India's crop year 2024-25 with its pay of 2024, and for the United States in 2025. The buildings are read in the year of each society's necessity basket: Russia 2021, China 2022, Egypt 2024, and Brazil, India and the United States 2025. Each land share is that economy's latest year.

Check. Followed to the end, the hours behind everything bought for final use in the world in 2011 add up to all the hours worked in the world that year, 6,537.7 billion, as they must.

What the seven societies show

Grain, through every stage (world, 2011):

The farm stage, in hours of each society's simplest work in one tonne:

Buildings, in hours of work in one square metre of floor of the same house:

A tonne of grain holds a great deal of other people's work: about 156 hours for wheat and 193 for paddy rice, counting every stage worldwide. Most of it is the work of the field itself, about three-quarters of the hours in wheat and three-fifths in rice; the rest is the work behind the seed, the fertilizer, the machines and the fuel. Nearly all of it needs low or medium expertise; high expertise is 3% of the hours in wheat and 2% in rice.

At the farm stage, the same tonne holds very different hours. In India, the human work on the farm in a tonne of wheat comes to 81.8 hours of the simplest work, and in a tonne of paddy to 139.4. In the United States it comes to 0.56 and 0.83, about 150 times fewer. The grain is the same; the difference lies in how the work is done. In India much of it is done by hand; in the United States nearly all of it is done by machines, and the hours that made those machines stand in the stages behind the field.

A building holds the work of making its materials and the work of building it. One square metre of floor of the same house holds 25.8 hours of building work in every society, by the same norms. Its materials take from 5.6 hours of the simplest work in the United States to 117.5 in India, about twenty times as many, so the whole square metre holds from 31.5 hours to 143.4. The 3.5 square metres of covered space that the necessity basket gives each person thus hold about 110 hours of work in the United States and about 500 in India.

Land holds only the work of security and organization, yet its price is a large part of the price of real estate. In the 16 economies whose national balance sheets give it, land is between 7% and 62% of the value of real estate, and in 13 of them between a quarter and nearly two-thirds. Rising land prices explain about 80% of the rise of house prices in 14 advanced economies since the Second World War (Knoll, Schularick and Steger 2017). That part of the price is not work compressed in a building.

Where the hours behind a thing were worked does not show whether a society draws on the work of others; that is read from the balance of the hours it gives to others and receives from them. In that balance, the United States and Russia draw the most NEP work from others, and Egypt and Nigeria are drained of their Pads (Pads drained between societies).

Set beside the same balance, the price of land lines up with it. In the 16 economies whose balance sheets give the land share, the more NEP work an economy draws from others for each capable adult, the larger the part of its real-estate prices that is land: the two orders agree at 0.79, an agreement that chance would give fewer than once in a thousand tries. They still agree with crowding held equal (0.80), and with wealth held equal, read as the hours of work in all that a person uses (0.66); crowding by itself hardly orders the land share (0.37). This is read at one moment, so it shows that the two go together, not which comes first.