[semimojo]

You make a million dollars making/selling emojis and you don’t increase wealth at all.

This is what make me wonder how you're defining wealth.

I can take the $1M emoji money and buy gold. Am I not $1M more wealthy?

How do you account for the growth in market cap for US stocks, now in excess of $30T?

What do you think that would be without PCs and small office computers?

[mrsmith]

In the emoji example You are a million richer, but society isn’t.
Wealth has just moved, not increased.

Stocks are priced by the money they make, not by the wealth they produced.