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Wealth, according to your "logic", consists of goods, so we are IMPORTING wealth according to your "logic". No wealth is flowing out of the country (according to your own logic).

It is important to define wealth. You can't measure your wealth by the things you buy -- for example if you buy 3 cheap Chinese television for $200 each and used a credit card, you don't have $600 ---for one those televisions are only worth maybe $50 each once they're used ---so you owe $600 for something that might be worth $150. Same with a car, if you buy a car that costs $25,000 and stretch payments out for 5 years, first the minute you drive that car off the lot, you've lost at least $5,000 and in a couple years you still owe more than half but the car has lost more than half it's "value". Everything you own is technically used and isn't worth much.

It is important to define wealth. You can't measure your wealth by the things you buy

The problem with these discussions is you have different people operating off of different definitions.

For example, Willie Green defines wealth as "The net ownership of material possessions and productive resources. In other words, the difference between physical and financial assets that you own and the liabilities that you owe". Unfortunately, his definition does not include intellectual property like patents and copyrights, nor does it include knowledge and skill (an intelligent man with specialized knowledge can realize a bigger cash flow than the average man with a piece of manufactoring equiptment he doesn't know how to use). It also doesn't include certain rights (like the transferrable rights to use someone else's property)

IMHO, a modification of Willie's definition of wealth should be something like "the net present resale value of property, or the net present value of cash-flow resulting from ownership of property". Thus, used (or consumed) property has less wealth-value than what it was bought for, while other investment property may be currently worth more than what was paid for it.

In short, a good definition of wealth is "stuff that can be used to acquire desired goods or services". So, owning a working business is "wealth", owning rentable land is "wealth", owning salable or licensable intellectual property is "wealth", but a used TV set is only "wealth" to the extent that it has resale value

It is important to define wealth. You can't measure your wealth by the things you buy -- for example if you buy 3 cheap Chinese television for $200 each and used a credit card, you don't have $600 ---for one those televisions are only worth maybe $50 each once they're used ---so you owe $600 for something that might be worth $150. Same with a car, if you buy a car that costs $25,000 and stretch payments out for 5 years, first the minute you drive that car off the lot, you've lost at least $5,000 and in a couple years you still owe more than half but the car has lost more than half it's "value". Everything you own is technically used and isn't worth much.

I agree. That's actually another problem with his wealth creation theory. Virtually all manufactured goods disappear and have to be recreated. The value of manufactured goods is a tiny percentage of the accumulated wealth in the world. It's primarily intangible assets or a nonmanufactured tangible like land. See posts 244 and 246. He never answered my question. I was just applying his wealth theory to the trade deficit.

You can't measure your wealth by the things you buy -- for example if you buy 3 cheap Chinese television for $200 each and used a credit card, you don't have [the equivalent wealth of} $600

You have happened upon the secret of maintaining and increasing wealth.

Consumers have four choices when they make a purchase:

They may purchase an item that is new and take the personal financial loss associated with depreciation (and possibly interest).
They may purchase a used item at an already partly-depreciated value, thereby sharing the depreciation loss.
They may purchase a used item at an already fully depreciated value, thus owning an item that is equal in worth to its cost.
They can invest in an antique item that may increase in value.

A regular habit of purchasing only new items will obviously result in less wealth accumulation than a carefully executed program that combines the four types of purchases.