Dr. Mike Walden, North Carolina Cooperative Extension economist in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences at N.C. State University, responds:

"This question has been debated for centuries, absolutely centuries, among economists. You can really take two broad approaches. One, you can take the cost side. You can say that the value of something, some product or service out there, is related to the cost of it. And in fact, what many economists have done over the years is say labor cost is the biggest contributor. So one view says that the value of something, some product or service, is the amount of labor that goes into producing it. In fact, we call that the labor theory of value. There's another side, though, that says, look, it doesn't really how much it cost to make something and produce it and bring it to market if no one wants to buy it. And so this side says that the value of something really is based on demand, what someone is willing to pay for that. So, for example, if it costs $300,000 to build a house, and let's say most of that is labor, but the builder can only sell it for $200,000, then this approach would say, hey, the value is not $300,000; it's $200,000. And, indeed, if you look at how economics has changed over time, the demand side of value really has won out. And that's the approach that most economists now take."