DeLong: productive vs. extractive

Very Rough: Exploding Wealth Inequality and Its Rent-Seeking Society Consequences: (Early) Monday Focus for October 27, 2014 by DeLong

What I would like to see Emmanuel and Gabriel guess it is the share of wealth that is productive–that boosts the productivity of the working class and that shares those productivity benefits with workers–and the share of wealth that is extractive–that are pure claims on income rather than useful instruments of production, and thus that erode rather than boost the incomes of others. Wealth plays two roles, you see: as useful factors of production that boost productivity, and as extractive social power that is the result, the cause, and the maintainer of the rent-seeking society.