Wealth Is Wealth

We have been hearing “Health is Wealth” in length and breadth since childhood. But what people around us religiously follow is – Wealth is wealth!

Recently I read in a newspaper that despite economy slowdown, the number of ultra-high networth individuals (UHNI) in India has increased some 15% to 130,000 or so. A person is UHNI if he/she has accumulated wealth of over Rs. 25 Crores (USD 4.2 million). And the combined wealth of all these UHNI (in India only) amounts to some 50-60 trillion rupees. Ah, it looks like more and more people are getting wealthy despite so called economic doom or gloom. So, for a ‘Below UHNI’ person like me, question is what is this WEALTH? How is it obtained? And how is it disposed? Most importantly, what is the purpose of obtaining so much of wealth?

Here is the definition of wealth from Wikipedia: Wealth is the abundance of valuable resource or material possessions.

Here is an interesting anecdote from Encyclopaedia Britannica that quotes the famous American wealthy man Andrew Carnegie in his Gospel of Wealth: a man who accumulates great wealth has a duty to use his surplus wealth for the improvement of mankind in philanthropic causes. A man who dies rich dies disgraced.

Well, in my simplistic viewpoint, wealth is those excess possessions which are over and above what is needed for normal peaceful living. As I am not a great philosopher or UHNI for that matter, my viewpoint is only with me. But one thing is crystal clear – the concept of wealth is relative as also subjective. For someone, wealth might mean hectors of land owned, for some other land may mean only dirt, whereas precious metals and stones would mean wealth. This is ‘subjective’ characteristic of wealth. The ‘relative’ characteristic of wealth is quite interesting.

For one who has just come out of a drought village into a city slum, having a tin roof and walls is a dream of wealth because he strays on the roadside spending night on the sidewalk. But for one who is living in a congested dwelling made out of tin sheets, the wealth is a dream of getting into a concrete 2-room flat having proper door and window, even though toilet is public shared. He does not seem to consider himself wealthy from the perspective of the one who is out on the sidewalk. This relative quality of ‘having wealth’ keeps on going to the higher and higher layers of the people. We know that the richest person in India has recently developed a ’38-storey building’ house for himself to live! We also read in news that a IT tycoon in India owns more than 700 apartments in the US. My viewpoint about wealth is built based on these examples – anything more than one house is unnecessary surplus in those 38 storeys or 700 apartments. That’s why that is considered as their wealth.

If wealth means surplus unnecessary possessions, what’s the purpose of acquiring wealth? If it is a pure curiosity to collect fascinating things just like a child which collects marbles and shells, I admire that purpose. A child gets immense satisfaction by collecting his ‘wealth’. As a child, I was so victorious and joyful to collect wealth of marbles and empty cartons of cigarettes. But I doubt if such innocent is the purpose of gathering wealth of the grown up men and women. Who can believe that someone constructed 38-storey building as a house, just out of innocent curiosity? Who can believe that someone maintains 50 luxury cars in their stable just out of curiosity? And can it be considered a simple child’s play to treasure hundreds of precious ornaments in one’s custody? Even the owner of wealth would not take this. So, what’s the good purpose of acquiring so much of excess, surplus wealth? Why so many folks boil their blood and exploit others to earn this unnecessary, practically useless (not worthless) material?

I am at loss to answer this question, can you answer?