Is wealth a zero-sum game?

[Brainfade]

If rich people are getting richer, does it automatically mean that poor people are getting poorer? Do we have to accept a worldview in which there is a finite amount of wealth, which has to be be shared equally among everyone? Or can we imagine a world where there is increasing wealth to go around? Should the goal be to make people prosperous, even if some people (be it by their intellect or hard work or shrewdness or willingness to take risks or being in the right place at the right time) are more prosperous than others? A world where everyone has equal opportunity to prosper, but some prosper more than others because - let's face it - we're not all created equal. Discuss. (Disclaimer: I take no credit for this thought ... I was reading an article on Investors.com, and it "inspired" me.) Disclaimer 2: The word "created" was not meant to espouse any creationist views :-).

[triam]

Partially agreed. Essentials of human life, food, shelter and health. As long as these needs are met, I have no problems if my neighbor makes 10 million a week and I am stuck at 200$ a week. The 3 basic requirements have to be met though regardless of if I am an idiot with an IQ of 20

[punjabi_khota]

Of course it is not a zero sum game and everyone can prosper, at different rates. The rich getting richer is not a problem, but increasing disparity among the rich and poor implies that the rich are using their 'richness' to deprive the poor of the opportunity to become rich or even 'less poor'. Probability to prosper is increasingly getting correlated with being born rich. Which is wrong and should be minimized. I mean obviously if the parents worked hard/smart to be rich, their offsprings deserve some advantages. But if the people being born poor cannot even ****ing get education/health insurance /etc , they stand no chance in hell to compete with the rich kids. And thats where the govt's role lies...in maintaining the basic standard of living for everyone.

[Silva]

Of course it is not a zero sum game and everyone can prosper, at different rates. The rich getting richer is not a problem, but increasing disparity among the rich and poor implies that the rich are using their 'richness' to deprive the poor of the opportunity to become rich or even 'less poor'. Probability to prosper is increasingly getting correlated with being born rich. Which is wrong and should be minimized. I mean obviously if the parents worked hard/smart to be rich, their offsprings deserve some advantages. But if the people being born poor cannot even ****ing get education/health insurance /etc , they stand no chance in hell to compete with the rich kids. And thats where the govt's role lies...in maintaining the basic standard of living for everyone.

I agree with this completely but I don't think this is the fault of rich people alone. The US spends as much on primary education per child as any other country but we still get terrible results. The teachers union blocks virtually every reform that doesn't involve them getting a pay increase for no reason. meanwhile private charter schools deliver better results with far less funding and whats the teachers unions response? Shut them down because they are making it harder for public schools, by doing a better job a guess.

[yoda]

No it is not a zero sum game in theory, but practically speaking the Rich seem to be getting richer by crushing the poor, thereby making it (seem like at least) a zero sum game. Execs and boards giving themselves fat paychecks and options packages and leaving their own employees to struggle in mediocrity is an example.

[Clarke]

It definitely is a limited sum game these days. Here's something related on my wish list and makes sense to me:

A popular explanation right now is that the root cause underlying these symptoms is technological stagnation-- a slowdown in the kinds of ideas and inventions that bring progress and prosperity. In Race Against the Machine, MIT's Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee present a very different explanation. Drawing on research by their team at the Center for Digital Business, they show that there's been no stagnation in technology -- in fact, the digital revolution is accelerating. Recent advances are the stuff of science fiction: computers now drive cars in traffic, translate between human languages effectively, and beat the best human Jeopardy! players. As these examples show, digital technologies are rapidly encroaching on skills that used to belong to humans alone. This phenomenon is both broad and deep, and has profound economic implications. Many of these implications are positive; digital innovation increases productivity, reduces prices (sometimes to zero), and grows the overall economic pie. But digital innovation has also changed how the economic pie is distributed, and here the news is not good for the median worker. As technology races ahead, it can leave many people behind. Workers whose skills have been mastered by computers have less to offer the job market, and see their wages and prospects shrink. Entrepreneurial business models, new organizational structures and different institutions are needed to ensure that the average worker is not left behind by cutting-edge machines. In Race Against the Machine Brynjolfsson and McAfee bring together a range of statistics, examples, and arguments to show that technological progress is accelerating, and that this trend has deep consequences for skills, wages, and jobs. The book makes the case that employment prospects are grim for many today not because there's been technology has stagnated, but instead because we humans and our organizations aren't keeping up.

[ame=http://www.amazon.com/Race-Against-Machine-Accelerating-Productivity/dp/0984725113/ref=wl_it_dp_o_pC_nS_nC?ie=UTF8&colid=1JJ5J81JAGF6R&coliid=I36OXIKWF89UF8]Amazon.com: Race Against the Machine: How the Digital Revolution is Accelerating Innovation, Driving Productivity, and Irreversibly Transforming Employment and the Economy (9780984725113): Erik Brynjolfsson, Andrew McAfee: Books[/ame] Add other important factors like free trade/outsourcing, the corporations might grow, profits will increase (wealth being created) and more efforts are extracted out of the employee/contractor but there's a chunk of the working class that loses out in the race.

[Silva]

It definitely is a limited sum game these days. Here's something related on my wish list and makes sense to me: Amazon.com: Race Against the Machine: How the Digital Revolution is Accelerating Innovation, Driving Productivity, and Irreversibly Transforming Employment and the Economy (9780984725113): Erik Brynjolfsson, Andrew McAfee: Books Add other important factors like free trade/outsourcing, the corporations might grow, profits will increase (wealth being created) and more efforts are extracted out of the employee/contractor but there's a chunk of the working class that loses out in the race.

This is the way capitalism works. Its not pretty obviously. The best way to combat that is to offer free education for people to gain a new skill when they have been laid of do to outsourcing or technology. Protectionist policies don't work, we've seen what its done to India during the Hindu rate of growth period.

[Prakat]

Generally it's easier to take poor or ignorant people's money than actually creating wealth. A big part of the world we live in is an elaborate play intended to separate you from your money. The biggest corpus of such ordinary people money is in the treasury in the form of taxes. Check out where America's money goes: the Military industrial complex is just a huge siphon for taking money from across the land and dropping it in a select few pockets. The government keeps the people on the edge by fear mongering and constantly enganging the armed forces in external conflicts to keep the munitions and ordnance inventory restocked therefore giving the industries a reason to keep producing said stocks. To create wealth from nothing: say by inventing a doodad or creating a killer app (jobs/gates/ford), or just doing something better than anyone else contributes to society by adding value is rare and priceless.