wealth

(redirected from wealths)
Also found in: Dictionary, Thesaurus, Legal, Encyclopedia.

Wealth

The state of having strong financial resources. There is no strict definition of how much one needs to have in order to be "wealthy," but, in general, it refers to one with significantly more assets than liabilities. However, socially, a person with too much debt may be considered to be wealthy because others are not aware of his/her true financial state. Excess wealth (and wealthy persons) drives economic growth. Some believe this ought to be encouraged, as it eventually makes the remainder of society wealthier. Others, however, believe growth is strongest when the needs of multiple classes, and not just the wealthy, are balanced. A few others believe most wealth ought to be confiscated and redistributed, but this is a minority opinion.

wealth

the total stock of ASSETS owned by the population of a country. Wealth represents past income flows which have been used to buy such assets as houses, land, stocks and shares etc. One commonly used measure of wealth in the UK is that of ‘marketable wealth’, consisting of those assets which are readily saleable. Wealth in the UK, like income, (see DISTRIBUTION OF INCOME), is unevenly distributed (see Fig. 89). See WEALTH TAX.

Fig. 197 Wealth. The distribution of marketable wealth in the UK, 2002. The total includes land and dwellings (net of mortgage debt), stocks and shares, bank and building society deposits and other financial assets but excludes life assurance and pensions. Source: Social Trends, 2004.

wealth

the stock of net ASSETS owned by individuals or households. In aggregate terms, one widely used measure of the nation's total stock of wealth is that of ‘marketable wealth’, that is, physical and financial assets that are in the main relatively liquid. In 2002, marketable wealth in the UK totalled around £3,400 billion (this excludes life assurance and pension entitlements, which account for some one-third of all wealth assets but which are not readily liquid). Marketable wealth is not equally distributed in the UK, as Fig. 197 shows. In 2002, the richest 5% of the population owned 43% of marketable wealth.

References in classic literature ?

You cannot but grant that the ownership of wealth constitutes essential power in the United States to-day.

It is the primitive strength, it is the strength that is to life germane, it is the strength that is stronger than wealth, and that wealth cannot take away.

View in context

There was not only great wealth but high court interest among the connections of Edward Effingham.

Major Effingham, in declining the liberal offers of the British ministry, had subjected himself to the suspicion of having attained his dotage, by all those who throng the avenues to court patronage, even in the remotest corners of that vast empire; but, when he thus voluntarily stripped himself of his great personal wealth, the remainder of the community seemed instinctively to adopt the conclusion also that he had reached a second childhood.

View in context

376-380) There should be an only son, to feed his father's house, for so wealth will increase in the home; but if you leave a second son you should die old.

381-382) If your heart within you desires wealth, do these things and work with work upon work.

View in context

And what more can man desire than wealth with descent from a county family

To bring that about, their fellow slaves all over the world must unite in a vast international association of men pledged to share the world's work justly; to share the produce of the work justly; to yield not a farthing--charity apart--to any full-grown and able-bodied idler or malingerer, and to treat as vermin in the commonwealth persons attempting to get more than their share of wealth or give less than their share of work.

View in context

Wealth would bring him, uneducated though he was, happiness enough and to spare.

View in context

When a country is fully developed and its production keeps pace with its consumption, if private wealth is to increase as well as the wealth of the community at large, there must be exchanges with other communities, which will keep a balance on the right side of the balance-sheet.

View in context

I have no doubt that it was largely nervousness that kept the mysterious playwright so long fumbling behind the scenes, for it was obvious that it would be no ordinary sort of play, no every-day domestic drama, that would satisfy this young lady, to whom life had given, by way of prologue, the inestimable blessing of wealth, and the privilege, as a matter of course, of choosing as she would among the grooms (that is, the bride-grooms) of the romantic British aristocracy.

View in context

The more the plundering by the French continued, the more both the wealth of Moscow and the strength of its plunderers was destroyed.