Populists of both the left and right would like you to think things are getting worse, but that’s not true — and their policies wouldn’t make things any better.
One idea unites the left and right lately: a zero-sum view of the world. Unfortunately, nice as it would be to hail a rare instance of ideological harmony, both sides are very much mistaken.
The zero-sum view manifests itself in both rhetoric and policy, with the left aiming to redistribute from the rich to the poor, and the right from foreigners to natives. This is a strange preoccupation, since today’s world economy is not zero sum. It is not without its problems — there are pockets of scarcity and widespread uncertainty — but real wages and wealth are increasing, as is our standard of living.
Perhaps the greatest achievement of modern civilization is that it allowed people to overcome the natural human bias that expects scarcity and competition. Now that instinct seems to be reasserting itself. But there is an irony here: Policies that aim to address the problems of a zero-sum world can actually make it more zero-sum.
Continue reading the entire piece here at Bloomberg Opinion (paywall)
___________________
Allison Schrager is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and a contributing editor of City Journal.
Photo by Yuichiro Chino/Getty Images