Canadian Politics Today

What exactly is wealth? Is it digits in some computer that account for who will get rewarded for your life and hard work?

It is the lack of poverty, the lack of malnutrition and starvation, the lack of people freezing to death in the dark, public health care and social services, public education, civil order and organization. Look at impoverished countries and you find none of these things because society can't afford to pay for them.

True wealth should be measured in the resources of the nation (or world). Those resources are human (education, capability, ambition, and achievements) and environmental (raw, products and by-products).

There are lots of impoverished countries with lots of natural resources. As for human resources, developing those requires money from some societal agency - generally the government. Government, in turn, has to get its money from society. Capitalism provides that wealth, because it provides the money to develop those natural resources, to pay for that education, and to make use of the skilled workers that education provides.

In that video of Haidt he shows a chart which demonstrates just how wealth has skyrocketed since Capitalism came into play. You might have a look at it.