Meanwhile, our economy is so enormous that we are both the world’s largest importer and exporter, and also have the least amount of import/export activity as a percentage of our GDP of any country in the world.

So we paid the kid $400, we made $300 at the lemonade stand, and we created $100,000 of goods and services used inside the property in the garage workshop, back garden, and upstairs office.  And dad is tired and mom is tired and the other kids are busy and your whiney cousin who does nothing but complain wants more and your cranky uncle is peeved about the extra $100 the neighbor kid got.  Grandma gets $33k of internal effort for retirement and medical needs for past services rendered but we can’t let the neighbor kid’s MD dad come help her because he doesn’t know the password to get into the front door.  

We got lots of problems and removing artificial barriers to trade is one of them but demanding that we balance the lemonade stand money and the kid’s hard work money is a symptom of the problem, not the problem.