Wealth

Allow me to clarify on this word and its meaning, since it was thoughtfully brought up by my friend from DC.
Wealth brings with it a connotation of rich businessmen living beyond their means. Or anyone living beyond their means for that matter. This is distasteful to most, for obvious reasons, especially in Christian theology where Christ has exhorted His followers to be mindful and help the poor.
The free market type of wealth refers more broadly to a type of value creation. Wealth means any measure of resources that are expendable in exchange for goods or services.
Why is it a factor? Calvin Coolidge said it well in a speech he gave to the American Society of Newspaper Editors on January 17, 1925. This excerpt took place towards the end of the speech about the relationship between the free, capitalistic press in America to a popular government. He used the poem as a preface to the following paragraph:

Ill fares the land, to hastening ills a prey,
Where wealth accumulates, and men decay. (Goldsmith)

Excellent poetry, but not a good working philosophy. Goldsmith would have been right, if, in fact, the accumulation of wealth meant the decay of men. It is rare indeed that the men who are accumulating wealth decay. It is only when they cease production, when accumulation stops, that an irreparable decay begins. Wealth is the product of industry, ambition, character and untiring effort. In all experience, the accumulation of wealth means the multiplication of schools, the increase of knowledge, the dissemination of intelligence, the encouragement of science, the broadening of outlook, the expansion of liberties, the widening of culture. Of course, the accumulation of wealth can not be justified as the chief end of existence. But we are compelled to recognize it as a means to well nigh every desirable achievement. So long as wealth is made the means and not the end, we need not greatly fear it. And there never was a time when wealth was so generally regarded as a means, or so little regarded as an end, as today. Just a little time ago we read in your newspapers that two leaders of American business, whose efforts at accumulation had been most astonishingly successful, had given fifty or sixty million dollars as endowments to educational works. That was real news. It was characteristic of our American experience with men of large resources. They use their power to serve, not themselves and their own families, but the public. I feel sure that the coming generations, which will benefit by those endowments, will not be easily convinced that they have suffered greatly because of these particular accumulations of wealth.

Hopefully that provides some clarification on an important aspect of economic development. Thanks, DM!