Humor & Life Quote by Ben Elton

Elton’s punchline here is dressed up as a lecture, which is exactly the point: he’s mocking the way modern economies can sound profound while saying something fundamentally childish - if we just write a bigger number on it, we’ll have more. The line skewers the financial world’s talent for turning physical limits into abstract optimism. “Bounty” is deliberately pastoral, almost biblical; it reminds you that resources are harvested, not conjured. Then comes the dagger: “ever larger and more notional prices.” Notional is an accountant’s word, the kind that lets a spreadsheet launder reality. Elton uses it like an insult.

The intent is corrective, but the subtext is contempt. He’s not merely warning about inflation or commodity cycles; he’s pointing at a cultural habit of confusing market valuation with actual value. Price is a social agreement; “real value” is what keeps people fed, housed, warm, and alive. You can financial-engineer claims on the world indefinitely - derivatives, leverage, speculative bubbles, “growth” narratives - while the underlying soil, water, minerals, and climate remain stubbornly finite.

As a comedian, Elton knows that abstraction is a terrific hiding place for bad behavior. “Inventing” implies fraud with a straight face: the numbers aren’t discovered, they’re fabricated. Read in the context of late-capitalist churn - post-2008 cynicism, climate anxiety, the surreal rise of assets that feel detached from daily life - the line lands as a reality check and an accusation. It’s less economics than moral accounting: you can’t outbid the planet.