I take it the OP isn’t a proofreader or editor.
I provide support to labor unions in their work to, among other things, raise wages.
In my day job, I respond to computer security incidents. When people break into computer systems and steal data, I’m one of the people who sort out what happened, contain the incident, and figure out how bad it was. So, my job doesn’t directly create wealth. I suppose I help protect it. Good information security controls are part of effective corporate governance, so my job adds value to the corporation I work for. As **Sigene **says:
But, by night, I become… Adjunct Instructor Man! I teach information security management at a university. I hope, like **Chronos **says, I’m increasing the wealth of my students.
I make Rum. It costs me about $6 to make it a sell it to a bar for $21 who resells it for $80-100. That’s all kinds of wealth generations. I’ve also built my company from an idea to a little over $750k in valuation in the last 2.5 years. So both my operations and my management are directly related to wealth growth.
My previous job was designing oil wells in some cases I was able to get to reserves that were previously untapable and in others I just managed to get there cheaper and safer then it would be without me. So my entire career has been in wealth creation.
My job before Trophy Wife was IT Security Project Management. From the level of dysfunction within that organization, I think I was actually creating wealth for Serbian hackers and ISIS terrorists - which explains why I’m now a Trophy Wife.
Like Bayard, my day job is more about protecting wealth than creating it.
In my side job, I manufacture actual physical goods in my basement and sell them over the internet, so I guess that counts as direct wealth creation.
I facilitate the selling of goods by my clients to their clients via the Web. I help make wealth for my clients’ companies who disperse it as they see fit. And they disperse a little bit to me which does not make me wealthy but I do own a house with a shed.
I take information and turn it into proposals for my company to get work.
I have no idea if that counts as “creating wealth” or not and as long as they keep paying me, I guess I don’t care.
ISTM that this just pushes the question down the line. Are these trained people creating wealth? If you’re training people to be able to do something that doesn’t create wealth, then are you creating wealth?
The same applies to a lot of service jobs. If you’re contributing a tangible service to a process which is not that useful, how useful are you?
I develop data that is used inside of software programs. Very specific data for very specific programs in a very specific industry. This data is put together by my own knowledge of the industry, my expertise in the software I work with, plus much research. In some cases I can develop a new product in a short time, from existing product I have and that works for a specific market segment of people who need it. In other cases I can work on and off on a project for 12-18-24 months before it is ready.
I then package all of this up and sell the 1 and 0’s to those who pay handsomely for it.
I then pay my employees, taxes, office infrastructure, and once that is done keep some of it for myself.
You remember what happened to the A and C arks.
I’m real curious what the OP thinks is “wealth creation” and what isn’t.
In my case I convert perfectly good hydrocarbon fuel into noise and air pollution. That doesn’t sound like an obvious path to wealth creation.
But lots of folks buy my employer’s service in the service of their own wealth creation. They must think it’s essential or they wouldn’t be buying it. My role in delivering that service is 100% essential.
Some years my employer makes a tidy profit. Which means they created wealth. And over the years my individual income has exceeded my individual expenses by a good margin so I’ve gained some wealth along the way too.
So I think that rises to the level of “wealth creation” per the OP. I think.
I’m a university professor. I generate wealth like mad.
The account execs who work for me deal directly with customers. Their clients don’t go thru an automated menu (unless you count voice mail). We provide a concrete service to businesses.
I think pretty much every organization is terribly dysfunctional in the security area. Actually trying to improve an organization’s security posture is a job for people with more patience than me. I like incident response. Someone gets hacked, I drop in and clean up the immediate mess, tell them why it happened, and leave them with, “Yeah, you guys need to fix that shit. See you next time!” One client of ours had a really stupid sales and support model that virtually guaranteed that their sales folks would have their computers compromised any time an attacker wanted to do so. I remember one meeting with them where I told them, “Your sales people are sitting ducks until you fix this.” Three major incidents later, they finally fixed it. This kind of thing is discouraging, but it’s also the reason why I get a nice paycheck every two weeks.
Come to think of it, this is probably a good example for the “Baptists and Bootleggers” thread. I get paid as long as I live in a world with crummy developers, negligent companies, and computer criminals. Hmmmm. Perhaps I need to start advising people not to bother putting patches down on their systems…
That counts. It’s half if what my account execs di.
Of course, every time you spend money, you help increase the velocity of money, which is one of the variables in the money supply equation. So all you have to do to “create wealth” is spend money.
It seems a little hostile at first, but apparently merely answering a customer’s questions or shipping a package would count as wealth creation to jtur88. I’ve known a few people, mostly blue collar tradesmen who work a lot with their hands who fixate on whether anybody else does “real work”. Most of them would scoff at the idea that merely shipping a package or answering the phone is adding any value to the world. So **jtur88 **at least seems more lenient that similar people I’ve met in the real world.
It is impossible to correct a typo in the title. The title was corrected in the body of the text, but it cannot be changed except by a moderator in the title menu.
I feel like I know a lot of finance and tech people who say the same thing about intellectual work. In that their work is the “real work” and the “actual making stuff” is crap work to be done by a robot, offshore or someone who can’t get a “real job”.
There’s a difference between building wealth and adding value. The blue collar tradesman is partially correct in that the wealth being created is the sum of all the product he manufactures.
Of course that product does little good sitting in the warehouse, which it would do if there was no one to take orders or ship the packages.
But the company itself is also an asset. If whatever product they were making suddenly became obsolete, there is still value inherit to having infrastructure already in place to sell and distribute products.