"He is a great simpleton who imagines that the chief power of wealth is to supply wants. In ninety-nine cases out of a hundred it creates more wants than it supplies"
About this Quote
Wirt’s line lands like a gentlemanly slap: wealth doesn’t just satisfy desire, it industrializes it. The insult is calibrated - “great simpleton” isn’t random heat, it’s a warning against a popular fairy tale in early American civic life, where prosperity was sold as proof of virtue and a ticket to contentment. Wirt, a statesman steeped in republican anxieties about corruption, is policing that myth from the inside.
The sentence turns on a quiet inversion. Most people treat “wants” as preexisting needs waiting to be met, as if money is merely a delivery system. Wirt argues the opposite: wealth is a machine that manufactures craving. Once you can afford options, you inherit comparisons; once you can buy comfort, you start buying status. The punch of “ninety-nine cases out of a hundred” is rhetorical overkill on purpose - not a statistic, a moral certainty dressed up as common sense. He’s trying to make the reader feel naive for believing otherwise.
Subtext: this isn’t only about personal psychology; it’s about political health. In the early republic, leaders feared that luxury would soften civic virtue, replace public duty with private appetite, and make citizens easier to bribe or manipulate. Wirt is also, slyly, defending limits: if wealth predictably escalates desire, then unregulated accumulation doesn’t just risk inequality; it breeds dissatisfaction as a social norm. The real target is the cultural prestige of rich people who present their consumption as “needs” and call it progress.
The sentence turns on a quiet inversion. Most people treat “wants” as preexisting needs waiting to be met, as if money is merely a delivery system. Wirt argues the opposite: wealth is a machine that manufactures craving. Once you can afford options, you inherit comparisons; once you can buy comfort, you start buying status. The punch of “ninety-nine cases out of a hundred” is rhetorical overkill on purpose - not a statistic, a moral certainty dressed up as common sense. He’s trying to make the reader feel naive for believing otherwise.
Subtext: this isn’t only about personal psychology; it’s about political health. In the early republic, leaders feared that luxury would soften civic virtue, replace public duty with private appetite, and make citizens easier to bribe or manipulate. Wirt is also, slyly, defending limits: if wealth predictably escalates desire, then unregulated accumulation doesn’t just risk inequality; it breeds dissatisfaction as a social norm. The real target is the cultural prestige of rich people who present their consumption as “needs” and call it progress.
Quote Details
| Topic | Wealth |
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