To me, becoming wealthy is like acquiring physical fitness -I can get there to a certain degree within my abilities if I want to pay the price. I desire an X amount of wealth and I desire an X amount of physical fitness, but do I really want to do what it takes to get there? It takes effort and work to achieve either.

thats pretty much it, the entire "definition of wealth" thing was hair splitting to deflect from the real point.

No, that would be the case if you believed that $1 was worth as much to the very poor as to the very rich. Since we are talking about what's best for society overall, as opposed to what would maximise total wealth for society, it is quite possible that what's best for society overall might be to have government performing some redistribution which would likely involve a larger government (both in size and tax intake).

Well if you had a static amount of money (i.e. no expansion in money supply) and wealth (measured in terms of intrinsic value) increased, the amount of money wouldn't change, but instead you'd effectively have deflation. That is, let's say you start off with a fairly simple situation where person A is producing food, and person B is producing water, and person C is producing clothing, and there's a fixed level of money floating around. Now lets say person C discovers a special way of making clothes that improves their quality+durability, making them more valuable, while A and B's quality+levels of production remain the same. The value of what's being produced in that mini-economy will have now risen, even though the amount of money will be the same (and if you were doing an inflation index for that economy, you'd likely register deflation on it, since you would have had an increase in quality without an increase in prices overall). So in this case C was able to make a gain without needing A or B to squander something. I'm not sure if this answers your question, but hopefully it might.

The market should ensure that minimal taxation in the US (or a similarly developed country) wouldn't result in such high levels of absolute poverty. Even if say 50% of people in the US would be in absolute poverty were it not for government handouts (something I highly doubt), that in itself wouldn't be enough to support your figures since the reduction of taxation would likely increase total wealth in the economy, meaning some of that 50% would be shifted up from absolute poverty.

Or you can use capitalism to solve such problems - remove barriers to entry and if an owner did try exploitation (e.g. via a monopoly situation) a competitor could enter who could provide better conditions. Similarly ensure that labour itself is mobile so that those workers can move to a different town/firm for employment where things are better, rather than being 'pullman employees living in pullman's town'. Of course democracy will be the right environment for that, but organized labour wouldn't.

Do the poor live in caves? If not, then they seem to benefit when society as a whole becomes wealthier.

Besides, society as a whole decides what it considers to be the minimum tax rate is.  The problem is, most people don't recognize the unintended consequences of taxation.

I actually read that book over a year ago, and interestingly enough, I also heard that the only reason the author (what's his face, Richard Kirsosaki or something like that) is rich today is because he sold so many copies of that book.

Not to say I disagree with the concepts presented therein, especially the point about aspiring to nothing more than to work for someone else for the rest of your life.  I'm not sure it had an effect on me though, since I'm still working through college to go work for someone else for the rest of my life.

Maybe I'll come see if I can work for you once I'm finished and you've expanded your building a bit.

By the way, people who have lived their whole lives in the United States shouldn't be talking about poverty at all.  We don't know what poverty really is here.

If you have a society of 1 poor person and 10 average income people, and then society's wealth doubles, with the average income people all becoming rich, and the poor person having their income unchanged, other than the relatively insignificant positive impact on the poor person of there being a chance the rich might choose to give them money (via chairty), assuming that such charitable givings weren't included in the original 'wealth' measures. This would also be offset (either wholly or partially) by the negative impact of inequality (for example relative income inequality has a negative impact on happiness), which incidently would also have a harmful impact on those now rich people. Living in caves also has nothing whatsoever to do with this. I'd rather have $1 than have my neighbour have $2 and me have $0. Meanwhile society if looking to maximise the overall 'benefit' of people may well prefer a poor person to have $1 than a rich person to have $2 for the reasons I already explained.

So if the poor person isn't benefitting significantly when the rich person gets wealthier and the poor person's wealth doesn't change, that then means that for that poor person to benefit from society becoming wealthier more than if society was made a bit poorer as a result of redistribution (taking from the rich to give to that poor person), you'd need the negative impact of the redistribution to outweigh the money from the redistribution to that poor person, which is a highly unlikely result (and would likely occur with very high tax rates where you can end up with the situation of an increase in taxes causing a decrease in revenue).

So, the poor can benefit when society becomes richer, but not as much as if society is made a bit poorer and they receive some of that money (i.e. taking $1.5 from the rich to give $1 to the poor), hence if starting from a position of such a redistribution then adopting a non-redistributive wealth increasing policy would not benefit the poor. Similarly if starting from a position of non-redistribution and adopting a redistributive policy you can benefit the poor. The value of $1 to each person can then be used to weight the wealth for society to determine which result it feels produces the greatest benefit, which will typically lead to some distribution in a democracy

True, but many people also don't recognise some of the reasons for taxation that produces unintended consequences either

And you are living in a society where the poor still live in caves and thus haven't profitted from the voerall increase of wealth?

I'm not sure I understand your point here.

There is no possible reality in which consumers don't exist. They are not a group, they are an aspect. Everyone is a consumer.

He seems to be making a lot of "ifs". Many of which are impossible ifs.

No there is not.  That is apparent by the new industries that have sprung up just in the last few years.  Wealth is indeed created, not limited.  The only limit is your imagination.

I'm not sure I understand your point! I've never argued that a growth in wealth will see the poor getting 0% of the wealth, with the rich getting all of it (examples I've used which feature this have been to demonstrate another point, and hence have been simplified to more clearly illustrate this), in fact the reverse, and so see the cave point as irrelevant to what I was arguing, as I mentioned above. If you still think it's relevant wrt what I'm arguing, perhaps you would care to explain how it negates (partially or wholly) my point?

For good reason - if people struggle understanding a simple concept/relationship when all other things are stripped out so as to allow the one specific thing to be focused on, how will it make it any easier to include every conceivable scenario that might affect that? To put it another way, if A = B, then A+X+Y+Z = B+X+Y+Z. Simply saying A=B might be making an 'impossible if' that X+Y+Z = 0, but it also makes it much simpler to examine.