What is the way economics distinguishes between items that people buy to use/keep, and people just buy to sell at a higher price to other sellers? I see both referred to as “commodities”, and both have “intrinsic value” (People will pay for them), but they seem clearly different to me.

Question

What is the way economics distinguishes between items that people buy to use/keep, and people just buy to sell at a higher price to other sellers? I see both referred to as “commodities”, and both have “intrinsic value” (People will pay for them), but they seem clearly different to me.

In: 39

Answer 1

In Keynesian economics (which is derived from the work of English economist John Maynard Keynes) there is the idea of wage goods, which are what wage earners consume and e.g. exchanged for labor, and non-wage goods, which are more like the example you provided where the goods are bought to be sold for profit. In Keynesian economics, which is primarily about employment (and of course interest and money) the level employment can be raised with a shift from the consumption of wage goods to non-wage goods. If you have an issue with that see “Austrian economics”