Although I disagree with some of the political sentiments (namely that the government by definition can’t help allocate resources in a way that does produce more wealth) this description of the difference between wealth and money is superb for understanding our current predicament.
I would characterize our problem as using our money to have an unsustainable amount of the world’s wealth flow to us, and now we are unable to pay it back because we don’t generate enough wealth ourselves. The only way forward is to either see a decrease in lifestyle until we can use our own technological and societal progress to regenerate wealth building actions, “borrow” from future generations by increasing worldwide production using our relatively inefficient means of generating wealth or see a major increase in wealth disparity internationally, most likely through war.
Historically it’s been a bit from the latter two, with eventual political exhaustion (and technology created to fight the wars) leading to recovery through the first.
Anyway I wouldn’t say that the article is Econ 101…I’d say it’s more fundamental than even that.