And you're right. You see it. You're a serious person then lol.

By wealth I mean capital, I use them synonymously, when we talk about "money" as what we are worth or what we have we are conflating the value we have accrued, "earned value" as you put it, with the thing we use to measure it and the device we use to store it. That's a psychological trick that gets us to forget that we are being fleeced via the cantillion effect. Money gets debased, wealth does not, wealth gets siphoned via debasement.