New study/experiment. Uber conservatives now get a diagnosis?

[Undertoad]

People who have enough and continue to accumulate wealth are part of the reason there's as much poverty as there is.

How exactly do you figure that?

This is the zero-sum pie slicing theory which says that if you have a bigger slice of the pie, it indicates that somebody else has a smaller piece. If you have a large slice you should give some of yours back, so that smaller-sliced people can have a slice closer to your size.

It is a broken way of looking at economics. Almost nothing in economics is "zero sum". If you look at it on a national scale, clearly and obviously the American pie of 1907 is tiny and the pie of 2007 is huge. This is due to the creation of wealth that happens when innovations, education, productivity and dynamism multiply upon themselves.

(I had to use the term "American pie". Sorry, there was no alternative.)

A free market does not guarantee people equal sizes of the pie. But it does seem to be the best guarantor of a pie that increases in size... until the poor people of 2007 live nearly as well as the moderately rich people of 1907.