Roots of Economics and Political Science. Value is “stuff”: land, natural resources, knowledge, labor, buildings, and other things like services, manufactured products and information. Political power has a lot to do with how stuff is controlled, by whom and how they are selected.

Control exists on a continuum, neither end of which works. A “free market” does not work as the USA learned in the late 1800s: e.g., factories dump poison in water and air without controls. Total control does not work as the USSR learned.

When fewer people control more stuff, they are able to control more people. The Framers of The Constitution saw this in history and suggested ways to choose those people. Free and fair elections are safeguards against dictators. Fewer people today control more stuff.

They have been able to make some people believe that a lot of people gaining benefits from a government is “socialism” and evil. When the few enjoy benefits of government largesse it is a subsidy to aid a non-existent free market.

Economics and political science (I always preferred to call that branch of studies “government”) are not easy. However, I hope I have set out the basics so that even an idiot like the immediate past occupant of The Oval Office, or his blind sycophants, can understand.