I understand that Don is very narrowly conceding that in that particular statement, Krugman is not claiming that wealth creation is a zero-sum game. He is merely giving that illusion. Purposely so. Very passive aggressive.

I still don’t like the way Don’s apology divorces GDP from its creators, but that’s my problem.

Having said that, I remain deeply respectful of Professor Boudreaux and still consider reading his posts the spiritual highlight of my day.

Ditto.

I insist upon giving even devils their due — or, even more than their due. We (true) liberals can afford to be generous in our interpretations of others.

Even if you can’t practically aggregate it and everything is subjective, two people still can’t own the same thing at once.

Depends on how you define wealth – if it’s the cumulative market price (however that’s determined) of all of the stuff in a country/town/whatever then your statement is correct. If it’s the cumulative value, then aggregation is impossible (as value is subjective) and Steve_O is correct.

If Krugman had made the distinction between business owners and paid corporate executives, his arguments about inequality may have been more acceptable. As a shareholder of a number of corporations, I am frequently disturbed by the large sums paid to some mediocre executives. Occasionally I let the Board of Directors know of my displeasure. Having known a couple of “hired guns” and read about many more, I am unconvinced most are worth the sums they are being paid.

Of course, where Krugman and I likely disagree is about the prescription to this problem. I want the Boards of Directors to reduce executive compensation and return the money to the shareholders. My guess is that he favors either government controls or high taxation.

Business owners are a different matter for me. Giants such as Micheal Dell, Fred Smith, and Philip Knight have every right to the billions their customers have exchanged with them.

Don is not agreeing with the tone of Krugman’s essay, which I read as an appeal to pure envy. But it certainly seems that, by taking one sentence out of the context of a blatant criticism of wealth and income, Don is giving credence to the entire essay. Perhaps that is why his apology bothers me. Having said that, I remain deeply respectful of Professor Boudreaux and still consider reading his posts the spiritual highlight of my day.

Wealth creation is certainly a positive sum game. Given a set of created wealth, dividing it up at a point in time isn’t. That’s just property rights.

I guess you do see that wealth creation is a positive sum game.

This is also typical nonsense from Krugman. There is no faith about it. It is an undeniable empirical fact. Take any objective measure of income (size of house, number of cars, leisure time, etc.) and unskilled labor has seen improvements over every generation. This comment is just a way to discount the overwhelming fact (It’s just a matter of faith, like garden fairies.) in order to feed his ignorant readers what they want to hear, while keeping plausible deniability (“He said everyone believes it. What are you complaining about?”). It’s disgusting.

No, it’s not at all. Given an aggregation of wealth, if one person owns 50% of the wealth no other person can own more than 51% of the wealth. That’s not zero sum economics – that’s called “property rights”.

Zero sum economics is if you assume that for one person to benefit another person has to lose. Simply recognizing that the numbers have to add up doesn’t imply this zero sum mentality at all.

The math may be technically correct, but the conclusions drawn from the math are not.

Does the pie have any meaning? Even given that the pie has meaning does the inequity have meaning? That’s a different sort of question – but it doesn’t change the math.