[quote]orion wrote:
pittbulll wrote:
You sound like a working class guy, so am I. Do you know that the top earning one percent of the population made fifty percent of all the gains, financially, in the Bush Administration? And it was not because they worked any harder. It was because Bush changed RULES that were a huge benefit to the VERY wealthy
Do you even know that the Bush tax cuts resulted in more revenue for the state?
[/quote]
You will have to explain that one to me
[quote]Unaware wrote:
pittbulll wrote:
The poor are better off because we have public schools, public roads, we have, city water and sewer, we have thrash collection, we have utilities that are subsidized, we have food that is subsidized. America is a pretty good place to live.
For now.[/quote]
That is why we have to keep the Roght wing nuts out of it:)
[quote]Gambit_Lost wrote:
Unaware wrote:
hmmmmm… you’re not Orion. Should I bite? Okay, I’ll give it a shot. Two questions,
The first question was a question to Orion’s personal perspective. The second question dealt with facts. If you want to know my personal opinion I can certainly give that to you.
I am not intimately familiar with Russian culture so I can not explain to you why it is so, I can only tell you that it is so. Take for example the Russian government seizing the Shell’s oil fields after shell invested all that money in the project. That doesn’t exactly inspire more investment in the country.
The issue is obviously more complex than a single answer, but this is a large contributing factor.
The collapse of the government probably had a good deal to do with it too.
Fair enough, you didn’t see the point I was getting at. A lot of people argue that it was government involvement specifically that allowed for the huge GDP growth rates in Viet Nam and China, and it was Russia moving “too quickly” to capitalism (without the necessary institutions in place) that caused a lot of the pain.
In short, I was calling into question the libertarian belief that less government=better government in policy. (I still think the theory is fine overall.)[/quote]
I got the point. My explanation is you are comparing apples to oranges. Russia has a host of other problems that china doesn’t have, namely the collapse of the governmemt and the subsequent rise of a corrupt regime. Property rights are integral to succesful capitalism.
I would argue china is profiting inspite of government interference, not because of it Its important to remember the chinese are pretty lax on labor law and pollution.
[quote]pittbulll wrote:
orion wrote:
pittbulll wrote:
You sound like a working class guy, so am I. Do you know that the top earning one percent of the population made fifty percent of all the gains, financially, in the Bush Administration? And it was not because they worked any harder. It was because Bush changed RULES that were a huge benefit to the VERY wealthy
Do you even know that the Bush tax cuts resulted in more revenue for the state?
You will have to explain that one to me
[/quote]
Laffer curve.
If you raise taxes beyond a certain point you get less tax revenue.
Either people work less or they try to declare their income as a form of income that is taxed less-
So higher taxes equals less revenue. Less taxes, more money. That is precisely what happened with Bushs tax cuts.
So if those tax cuts are undone the rich will actually pay less and the US will be even deeper in the hole.
[quote]John S. wrote:
My grandmother survived the great depression. My grandma was raised by a single mother and she had 3 siblings, they never took a hand out from uncle Sam once!
My grandparents are not on medicare, they buy their own insurance.
Edit*[/quote]
Its no longer a thing of shame to be on the dole…not when your parents…their parents…their parents… all where too.
[quote]Valor wrote:
John S. wrote:
My grandmother survived the great depression. My grandma was raised by a single mother and she had 3 siblings, they never took a hand out from uncle Sam once!
My grandparents are not on medicare, they buy their own insurance.
Edit*
Its no longer a thing of shame to be on the dole…not when your parents…their parents…their parents… all where too.[/quote]
Exactly, a fella told me years ago that Rome went to hell when people on the dole were allowed to vote.
[quote]tom63 wrote:
Valor wrote:
John S. wrote:
My grandmother survived the great depression. My grandma was raised by a single mother and she had 3 siblings, they never took a hand out from uncle Sam once!
My grandparents are not on medicare, they buy their own insurance.
Edit*
Its no longer a thing of shame to be on the dole…not when your parents…their parents…their parents… all where too.
Exactly, a fella told me years ago that Rome went to hell when people on the dole were allowed to vote.[/quote]
Ive heard a lot of crackpot ideas and lectures about the fall of Rome, and that has to take the cake. The Roman government was incredibly poor before it’s collapse and they stopped nearly every public assistance project to keep funding the legions. In fact Rome was probably a prime example of how too high of taxes ruins everything, Rome was sky rocketing taxes and placing price controls to keep funds up for the government, a lot of people reacted by trying to leave the cities and practice subsistence farming, and feudalism was occurring. Then Rome pretty much switched to totalitarianism when shit hit the fan big time.
Christianity and horseshoes were probably more plausible reasons for Rome’s fall then leting people on the dole vote.
[quote]archiewhittaker wrote:
I grew up in Sweden.
What you guys have to realize is that the main problem with socialized healthcare is that the time you spend waiting is comparable to a communist breadline. Unless you fall down on the street with a life-threatening issue, you will have to wait. If you have the money here in the US, you’ll get treated right away for any illness, and there is no shortage of doctors. Also, medical innovation is booming here. Innovation means nothing to a socialized healthcare system. [/quote]
If you have a life threatening issue in the US you will been seen immediately, if no you wait, regardless of your insurance, maybe if your a charitable donor to the hospital you wont.
you either dont live in California, or youve never been to a hospital
the average doctor patient time is 15min and falling in cali because of doctor shortages. the average wait to see a specialized doctor for a non life threatening condition is a month (which is actually not bad).
only in the past decade has the US been moving past Europe in terms of medical innovation, its due to our pretty amazing and scary as hell biotech industry. And coincidentally the way our health care system works, especially here in cali, is actually hurting innovation.
[quote]PB-Crawl wrote:
archiewhittaker wrote:
I grew up in Sweden.
What you guys have to realize is that the main problem with socialized healthcare is that the time you spend waiting is comparable to a communist breadline. Unless you fall down on the street with a life-threatening issue, you will have to wait. If you have the money here in the US, you’ll get treated right away for any illness, and there is no shortage of doctors. Also, medical innovation is booming here. Innovation means nothing to a socialized healthcare system.
If you have a life threatening issue in the US you will been seen immediately, if no you wait, regardless of your insurance, maybe if your a charitable donor to the hospital you wont.
you either dont live in California, or youve never been to a hospital
the average doctor patient time is 15min and falling in cali because of doctor shortages. the average wait to see a specialized doctor for a non life threatening condition is a month (which is actually not bad).
only in the past decade has the US been moving past Europe in terms of medical innovation, its due to our pretty amazing and scary as hell biotech industry. And coincidentally the way our health care system works, especially here in cali, is actually hurting innovation.[/quote]
Im not sure where in california you live but a month to see a specialist is a long time.
I tore my lateral meniscus a week or so before I headed to england for 2 months. I got to see an orthopedic surgeon before I left, but obviously there was no time to schedule surgery. I’m still a UK citizen so im eligble for the NHS(not that you need to be a citizen), but there is zero point in me trying to get surgery here before I go back to cali because it won’t happen. I will be lucky to see an orthopeic surgeon/get an MRI before then.
Claiming that the US system is hurting R&D is obviously silly. You think drug companies develop drugs so that they can sell them to governments with huge bargaining power, or so they can sell them to insurance companies/consumers that pay top dollar? Get real.
[quote]pittbulll wrote:
orion wrote:
pittbulll wrote:
You sound like a working class guy, so am I. Do you know that the top earning one percent of the population made fifty percent of all the gains, financially, in the Bush Administration? And it was not because they worked any harder. It was because Bush changed RULES that were a huge benefit to the VERY wealthy
Do you even know that the Bush tax cuts resulted in more revenue for the state?
You will have to explain that one to me
[/quote]
[quote]orion wrote:
Gambit_Lost wrote:
orion wrote:
The point was that the “poor” in the US are better off because of hundreds of years of capital accumulation.
Very true
If you interfere with that process by redistributing money capital grows slower so the “poor” of tomorrow will be far worse off than they would have been otherwise.
It’s a great theory, and mostly true. But I wonder, as a card-carrying libertarian, are there any investments that are worth taxation in your world? Universal primary education? Roads?
Also, from a libertarian perspective, why is it that China and Viet Nam are progressing so rapidly with such a heavy government hand and with such slow deregulation whereas Russia and other did so poorly with “shock therapy?”
I think that there are some investments that call for taxation but not that many because most of f.e infrastructure financing could be done with user fees which would have the advantage of no unwanted cross subsidies.
Why pay for a highway you never use? [/quote]
Well, that might work for maintenance. But you’ve still not addressed how they could be built.
We are talking about subsidization for schooling (I suppose I should have left the “universal” part off). I very much doubt tht 96% of all children went to school w/o government financing…
…but even if that’s true, you know as well as I that throughout the developing world regression after regression has shown a huge rate of return for primary education. Are you honestly arguing that government has no role?
As you know, roads and primary education are somewhat “easy” cases where almost everyone agrees that government should play a role. Just one more time to make sure, Are you honestly answering that, in fact, you don’t believe that government should be collecting taxes for roads and primary schooling? Not just in the developed world but in the developing as well?
(I think)This is my point exactly. Inconsistency increases risk and slow, incremental movement towards capitalistic principles is by far better than a rapid movement. In short, government has a huge role to play, in practice.
[i]Imagine there’s no taxes. It’s easy if you try. No redistribution below us. Above us only 10% growth rates. Imagine all the people, living for today…
Imagine there’s no country, it isn’t hard to do. Nothing to kill or die for, and no religion too. Imagine all the people, living life in peace.
You may say I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one. I hope some day you’ll join us, and the world will be as one. …[/i]
10% growth rates, huh? That sounds like reality in the developed world.
[quote]Unaware wrote:
Gambit_Lost wrote:
Unaware wrote:
hmmmmm… you’re not Orion. Should I bite? Okay, I’ll give it a shot. Two questions,
The first question was a question to Orion’s personal perspective. The second question dealt with facts. If you want to know my personal opinion I can certainly give that to you.
I am not intimately familiar with Russian culture so I can not explain to you why it is so, I can only tell you that it is so. Take for example the Russian government seizing the Shell’s oil fields after shell invested all that money in the project. That doesn’t exactly inspire more investment in the country.
The issue is obviously more complex than a single answer, but this is a large contributing factor.
The collapse of the government probably had a good deal to do with it too.
Fair enough, you didn’t see the point I was getting at. A lot of people argue that it was government involvement specifically that allowed for the huge GDP growth rates in Viet Nam and China, and it was Russia moving “too quickly” to capitalism (without the necessary institutions in place) that caused a lot of the pain.
In short, I was calling into question the libertarian belief that less government=better government in policy. (I still think the theory is fine overall.)
I got the point. My explanation is you are comparing apples to oranges. Russia has a host of other problems that china doesn’t have, namely the collapse of the governmemt and the subsequent rise of a corrupt regime. [/quote]
Could you explain what you mean more here? China had a new regime in '79 (late '78), Viet Nam in, what, '86. Before I respond, What do you think the difference?
While I agree with this theoretically, I’m sure you’re aware that western-style property rights simply don’t exist in China or Viet Nam (not without prefacing with “defacto” or “dejure” anyway). And yet these are the two greatest examples of economic development in the last, what 20 years. In short, I don’t understand why you wrote that. Please, explain.
This goes against the historical record however. The Asian tigers, Botswana I believe, even Indonesia when they were growing, all had strong government “interference.” Those counties where the government tried stepping out of the way simply didn’t do as well. You might be able to find an example, but in large, a strong government has been very important for economic growth in developing countries.
To your point about labor and pollution, this is true throughout the developing world. Yet the type of economic development we’re looking at does not.
[quote]Unaware wrote:
Gambit_Lost wrote:
Unaware wrote:
hmmmmm… you’re not Orion. Should I bite? Okay, I’ll give it a shot. Two questions,
The first question was a question to Orion’s personal perspective. The second question dealt with facts. If you want to know my personal opinion I can certainly give that to you.
I am not intimately familiar with Russian culture so I can not explain to you why it is so, I can only tell you that it is so. Take for example the Russian government seizing the Shell’s oil fields after shell invested all that money in the project. That doesn’t exactly inspire more investment in the country.
The issue is obviously more complex than a single answer, but this is a large contributing factor.
The collapse of the government probably had a good deal to do with it too.
Fair enough, you didn’t see the point I was getting at. A lot of people argue that it was government involvement specifically that allowed for the huge GDP growth rates in Viet Nam and China, and it was Russia moving “too quickly” to capitalism (without the necessary institutions in place) that caused a lot of the pain.
In short, I was calling into question the libertarian belief that less government=better government in policy. (I still think the theory is fine overall.)
I got the point. My explanation is you are comparing apples to oranges. Russia has a host of other problems that china doesn’t have, namely the collapse of the governmemt and the subsequent rise of a corrupt regime. [/quote]
Could you explain what you mean more here? China had a new regime in '79 (late '78), Viet Nam in, what, '86. Before I respond, What do you think the difference?
While I agree with this theoretically, I’m sure you’re aware that western-style property rights simply don’t exist in China or Viet Nam (not without prefacing with “defacto” or “dejure” anyway). And yet these are the two greatest examples of economic development in the last, what 20 years. In short, I don’t understand why you wrote that. Please, explain.
This goes against the historical record however. The Asian tigers, Botswana I believe, even Indonesia when they were growing, all had strong government “interference.” Those counties where the government tried stepping out of the way simply didn’t do as well. You might be able to find an example, but in large, a strong government has been very important for economic growth in developing countries.
To your point about labor and pollution, this is true throughout the developing world. Yet the type of economic development we’re looking at does not.
[quote]pittbulll wrote:
I have to go back to physics, not everybody can be on top, and you need people below to build on. . If some one rises some one has to sink it is a law of nature. We can all build a better society collectively, but we can not all be top dog, [/quote]
BULL-FUCKING-SHIT
I know I am coming late to this debate, but for one person to succeed another has to fail? That is some of the dumbest shit I have ever heard.
This is not only failure mentality, but the scapegoat mentality. “I ain’t successful because you are.”
I know plenty of poor people. A few are intelligent, but a god awful lot of them are complete idiots. I am sorry to say that but it is true. And it is one of the factors that keeps them poor, or results in them being poor. You do dumb shit, you are more likely to end up poor.
And just like like you they blame others for their problems.
My in-laws lived on welfare, but they have a son who became a Physicist doing research for the Air Force. One of their daughters became a Nurse. Both, while not rich, are doing well financially.
4 kids, and none are on welfare. How? They worked their asses off, and didn’t blame others.
Here, let me teach you the single most important sentence, that if learned, and believed, will result in more success, and more people getting off welfare then all the government debt could:
“I am responsible for my own life and success, and nobody else is.”
[quote]orion wrote:
pittbulll wrote:
orion wrote:
pittbulll wrote:
You sound like a working class guy, so am I. Do you know that the top earning one percent of the population made fifty percent of all the gains, financially, in the Bush Administration? And it was not because they worked any harder. It was because Bush changed RULES that were a huge benefit to the VERY wealthy
Do you even know that the Bush tax cuts resulted in more revenue for the state?
You will have to explain that one to me
Laffer curve.
If you raise taxes beyond a certain point you get less tax revenue.
Either people work less or they try to declare their income as a form of income that is taxed less-
So higher taxes equals less revenue. Less taxes, more money. That is precisely what happened with Bushs tax cuts.
So if those tax cuts are undone the rich will actually pay less and the US will be even deeper in the hole.
[/quote]
I see where the theory says it will create more wealth, because it gives people the incentive to work harder. But I could find no where either Bush or Reagan collected more taxes because of this theory
[quote]The Mage wrote:
pittbulll wrote:
I have to go back to physics, not everybody can be on top, and you need people below to build on. . If some one rises some one has to sink it is a law of nature. We can all build a better society collectively, but we can not all be top dog,
BULL-FUCKING-SHIT
I know I am coming late to this debate, but for one person to succeed another has to fail? That is some of the dumbest shit I have ever heard.
This is not only failure mentality, but the scapegoat mentality. “I ain’t successful because you are.”
I know plenty of poor people. A few are intelligent, but a god awful lot of them are complete idiots. I am sorry to say that but it is true. And it is one of the factors that keeps them poor, or results in them being poor. You do dumb shit, you are more likely to end up poor.
And just like like you they blame others for their problems.
My in-laws lived on welfare, but they have a son who became a Physicist doing research for the Air Force. One of their daughters became a Nurse. Both, while not rich, are doing well financially.
4 kids, and none are on welfare. How? They worked their asses off, and didn’t blame others.
Here, let me teach you the single most important sentence, that if learned, and believed, will result in more success, and more people getting off welfare then all the government debt could:
“I am responsible for my own life and success, and nobody else is.”[/quote]
I like that ( BULL FUCKING SHIT:)I see life as a microcosm; letâ??s reduce America to 100 people and a total of $100. One person makes 50 dollars, 4 people make 10 dollars, 50 people 10cents, 40 people make a nickel, 3 make a penny and 1 makes nothing. The only way for some one to make more money is for some one to make less. I know it does not add up to a hundred dollars but it states my point.
[quote]Gambit_Lost wrote:
orion wrote:
Gambit_Lost wrote:
orion wrote:
The point was that the “poor” in the US are better off because of hundreds of years of capital accumulation.
Very true
If you interfere with that process by redistributing money capital grows slower so the “poor” of tomorrow will be far worse off than they would have been otherwise.
It’s a great theory, and mostly true. But I wonder, as a card-carrying libertarian, are there any investments that are worth taxation in your world? Universal primary education? Roads?
Also, from a libertarian perspective, why is it that China and Viet Nam are progressing so rapidly with such a heavy government hand and with such slow deregulation whereas Russia and other did so poorly with “shock therapy?”
I think that there are some investments that call for taxation but not that many because most of f.e infrastructure financing could be done with user fees which would have the advantage of no unwanted cross subsidies.
Why pay for a highway you never use?
Well, that might work for maintenance. But you’ve still not addressed how they could be built.
Elementary school, no, but just because in England before mandatory schooling 96% of all children went to school. That beats what we have now.
We are talking about subsidization for schooling (I suppose I should have left the “universal” part off). I very much doubt tht 96% of all children went to school w/o government financing…
…but even if that’s true, you know as well as I that throughout the developing world regression after regression has shown a huge rate of return for primary education. Are you honestly arguing that government has no role?
As you know, roads and primary education are somewhat “easy” cases where almost everyone agrees that government should play a role. Just one more time to make sure, Are you honestly answering that, in fact, you don’t believe that government should be collecting taxes for roads and primary schooling? Not just in the developed world but in the developing as well?
Then, what is a heavy government hand? I think a market can suffer a lot of abuse if it is at least consistent. If in the case of Russia you can be thrown into jail and lose everything you got merely because Putin says so that is far worse than some stupid rules.
(I think)This is my point exactly. Inconsistency increases risk and slow, incremental movement towards capitalistic principles is by far better than a rapid movement. In short, government has a huge role to play, in practice.
All in all I would be happy if government just got out of the redistribution business. Then they would be somewhere around 10% GDP and could probably finance themselves through indirect taxes.
[i]Imagine there’s no taxes. It’s easy if you try. No redistribution below us. Above us only 10% growth rates. Imagine all the people, living for today…
Imagine there’s no country, it isn’t hard to do. Nothing to kill or die for, and no religion too. Imagine all the people, living life in peace.
You may say I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one. I hope some day you’ll join us, and the world will be as one. …[/i]
10% growth rates, huh? That sounds like reality in the developed world. [/quote]
I think they should have a bidding who wants to build a road as specified in the details. Let us see who shows up to build it.
And yes, even primary education should be private. If there is one thing that we know it is that parents will send their kids to school if they can, and if a whole family saves to send a kid to school that kid automatically gets that eduction is important.
[quote]pittbulll wrote:
orion wrote:
pittbulll wrote:
orion wrote:
pittbulll wrote:
You sound like a working class guy, so am I. Do you know that the top earning one percent of the population made fifty percent of all the gains, financially, in the Bush Administration? And it was not because they worked any harder. It was because Bush changed RULES that were a huge benefit to the VERY wealthy
Do you even know that the Bush tax cuts resulted in more revenue for the state?
You will have to explain that one to me
Laffer curve.
If you raise taxes beyond a certain point you get less tax revenue.
Either people work less or they try to declare their income as a form of income that is taxed less-
So higher taxes equals less revenue. Less taxes, more money. That is precisely what happened with Bushs tax cuts.
So if those tax cuts are undone the rich will actually pay less and the US will be even deeper in the hole.
I see where the theory says it will create more wealth, because it gives people the incentive to work harder. But I could find no where either Bush or Reagan collected more taxes because of this theory
[/quote]
In the 1980s, President Ronald Reagan chopped the highest personal income tax rate from the confiscatory 70% rate that he inherited when he entered office to 28% when he left office and the resulting economic burst caused federal tax receipts to almost precisely double: from $517 billion to $1,032 billion.
Now we have overpowering confirming evidence from the Bush tax cuts of May 2003. The jewel of the Bush economic plan was the reduction in tax rates on dividends from 39.6% to 15% and on capital gains from 20% to 15%. These sharp cuts in the double tax on capital investment were intended to reverse the 2000-01 stock market crash, which had liquidated some $6 trillion in American household wealth, and to inspire a revival in business capital investment, which had also collapsed during the recession. The tax cuts were narrowly enacted despite the usual indignant primal screams from the greed and envy lobby about “tax cuts for the super rich.”
Earlier this month the Congressional Budget Office released its latest report on tax revenue collections. The numbers are an eye-popping vindication of the Laffer Curve and the Bush tax cut’s real economic value. Federal tax revenues surged in the first eight months of this fiscal year by $187 billion. This represents a 15.4% rise in federal tax receipts over 2004. Individual and corporate income tax receipts have exploded like a cap let off a geyser, up 30% in the two years since the tax cut. Once again, tax rate cuts have created a virtuous chain reaction of higher economic growth, more jobs, higher corporate profits, and finally more tax receipts.
This Laffer Curve effect has also created a revenue windfall for states and cities. As the economic expansion has plowed forward, and in some regions of the country accelerated, state tax receipts have climbed 7.5% this year already. Perhaps the most remarkable story from around the nation comes from the perpetually indebted New York City, which suddenly finds itself more than $3 billion in surplus thanks to an unexpected gush in revenues. Many of President Bush’s critics foolishly predicted that states and localities would be victims of the Bush tax cut gamble.
[quote]pittbulll wrote:
I like that ( BULL FUCKING SHIT:)I see life as a microcosm; let�¢??s reduce America to 100 people and a total of $100. One person makes 50 dollars, 4 people make 10 dollars, 50 people 10cents, 40 people make a nickel, 3 make a penny and 1 makes nothing. The only way for some one to make more money is for some one to make less. I know it does not add up to a hundred dollars but it states my point. [/quote]
I own a snandwich shop, my neighbor owns a bread shop, my other neighbor owns a meat shop. I sell 10 sandwiches @ $5 apiece, making me $50. (Hey, I am now the richest man in the country.)
I now need more supplies, so I buy $20 worth of bread from one neighbor, and $20 worth of meat from the other neighbor. They each get hungry, and each spend $15 of their profit on my sandwiches, making me another $30.
Wait a second, that means I made $80, and my neighbors each made $40. That means somehow only $50 turned into everyone making $120.
Ok, your analogy is highly flawed for multiple reasons. The first is that money is not static, as I just showed. Like blood, it flows through the economy, being used multiple times.
Second is the whole idea that there is any limit to money. My little story is actually flawed simply because because the bread and meat are forms of money. Not just those little pieces of paper. The bread and the meat are forms of money too. So are the plates and napkins.
Too many people think that money is a real thing, but it is not, and that is its strength and its weakness. And because it is not real, it can be created, and is all the time.
Every time a farmer plants a seed, it is like planting a penny, and up comes a dollar out of the ground.
If you loan a person money, say $50, you no longer have the $50, but you have now created a debt instrument worth $50, while the other person has $50 to spend, and eventually pay back.
This means that even with only $100 in cash in circulation, people can still be making thousands. And that is proven by the the fact that the Federal Reserve of New York states the total amount of printed currency in circulation is ~$829 billion. But so far, America’s GDP for the year is over $8.5 Trillion. (Estimate according to http://www.usdebtclock.org/ )
Another way to think of money, $5 worth of scrap steel can make $80 worth of paper clips. (If my estimates are right, based on the June price of scrap steel, and the Staples price on 1000 paper clips.)
That is a serious anti-capitalist fallacy that is utterly ridiculous.
If you think about it, it would actually mean that if you work and create wealth you would at the same time impoverish your neighbor.
You think capitalism is a zero sum game which it is not.
http://www.promethea.org/Misc_Compositions/PrometheanCapitalism/Zero-Sum.html
In one form or another, a zero-sum equation is probably the most common systematic argument against a really free market of voluntary exchange. The essential basis of this argument, whatever its particular focus, is a ‘zero-sum game’ of wealth, in which everyone cuts pieces of a ‘wealth pie,’ if you will, which can only be sliced so many ways and is only so large. According to this, any addition to the amount of wealth must have been balanced by its removal from somewhere else. The additions and subtractions add up to consistent amount. Wealth may not be created, only redistributed, the gain and loss adding up to zero.
If one believes this, it is perfectly understandable to object to anyone being richer than someone else (since they have necessarily appropriated more than their ‘fair share’), or to think the wealthier western world has to be exploiting the rest of the world since it has a greater piece of the pie, or that profit is unfair because it must come at the expense of someone else even in a voluntary exchange, or to believe in the use of force to ‘redress the balance.’ These things follow from the zero-sum game of wealth if it is accurate. However, the worst of this phenomenon of belief may be that in some cases, these conclusions themselves are desired, and the zero-sum economics have been discovered as a justification. I believe that to have been the case with many communist economists such as Marx, who really wanted to be justified to hate capitalists, since they already did. Before discussing any specifics, it is worth noting initially that this claim is characteristic of pessimism, and while dealing with it, it is wise to keep in mind that the proclamation of this kind of limit may have less to do with a realistic perception of the world than a pessimistic desire for such a limit to exist.