Editorial JGGM

The Most Important Check in Economics Blog Post | Mineral Production The Most Important Check in Economics The Simon–Ehrlich wager and why predictions of resource scarcity keep getting it wrong. Gale L. Pooley, Marian L. Tupy — Mar 20, 2026 Summary: A famous bet between Julian Simon and Paul Ehrlich illustrates two ways of thinking ...

Prosperity demands independence.

Karl Marx argued only labor creates value, so capitalist profit comes from underpaying workers. With Engels, The Communist Manifesto (1848) urged seizing production, inspiring revolutions worldwide.

Carl Menger, Austrian economist, published Principles of Economics (1871), developing subjective value and hinting at trouble for Marx: prices reflect human preferences, not accumulated labor.

Menger flipped causality: people work because goods are valued; goods are not valued because work was done. Labor follows value; value does not follow labor.

Building on Menger, Austrian economist Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk argued Marx predicted higher profits in labor intensive industries, yet competitive markets tend to equalize returns across sectors.

Some modern Marxists abandon labor value, but Menger’s framework explains entrepreneurship, prices, and profits as signals guiding resources toward higher valued uses in open economies.

For most US workers, overall purchasing power has risen substantially over the last two decades, despite inflation and widespread economic pessimism.

Learn more: https://humanprogress.org/are-americans-getting-richer-new-data-might-surprise-you/