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O'Rourke: If the 1% had less, would the 99% be better off?
Author P.J. O'Rourke poses for a portrait at Book Soup in Los Angeles, Calif. He says Occupy protesters shouldn't believe in the Zero Sum Fallacy.
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Kai Ryssdal: Regardless of how or where the Occupying is being done, the protests have launched important conversations in this country about the wealth gap. We've been riffing on that this week and asking our commentators: If the 1% had less, would the 99% be bettter off?
Here's P.J. O'Rourke.
P.J. O'Rourke: The "Occupy This, That and the Other Place" people are right about the sins of the financial system and right about the evil of government supporting and subsidizing this malfeasance. It's not fair that 1 percent of Americans are rolling in dough while the rest of us are scrimping to pay for our Internet connection so we can go on Groupon.
But the Occupiers are wrong about something much more important. They believe in the Zero Sum Fallacy -- the idea that there is a fixed amount of the good things in life. Anything I get, I'm taking from you. If I have too many slices of pizza, you have to eat the Dominos box. The Zero Sum Fallacy is a bad idea -- dangerous to economics, politics, and world peace. It means any time we want good things we have to fight with each other to get them. We don't. We can make more good things. We can make more pizza -- or more tofu, windmills and solar panels, if you like.
The Zero Sum Fallacy is just that, a fallacy. Economic history since the Industrial Revolution proves -- be the rich however stinking rich -- we ordinary people can make more of the good things in life. But we have to make them ourselves, with our knowledge, skills and hard work. Government can't give us good things. Government doesn't make things, it just redistributes them. This brings us back to fighting with each other.
The good things in life are remarkably expandable, but it's ordinary people who expand them. Look at China, look at India. Yes, it's upsetting that some people have so much while other people have so little. It isn't fair. But I accept this unfairness. Indeed, I treasure it. That's because I have a 13-year-old daughter And that's all I hear, "That's not fair," she says. "That's not fair! That's not fair!" And one day I snapped, and I said, "Honey, you're cute, that's not fair. Your family is pretty well off, that's not fair. You were born in America, that's not fair. Darling, you had better get down on your knees and pray that things don't start getting fair for you."
Ryssdal: P.J. O'Rourke is a political satirist. His newest book is called "Holidays in Heck." You can hear all the commentaries from this series, and offer your answer to the question du jour: If the 1% had less, would the 99% be better off?
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I doubt it was, except perhaps for the 'praying for others' continued unfair misfortune' bit...but perhaps we all could use an item John Hodgman claims to sell: the Hodgman Literary Tone Detector...he needs the money, as the Apple commercials are over for him and the lifestyle of a Deranged millionaire doesn't come cheap....
Mr. O'Rourke clearly has no idea what is going on. I support OWS and do NOT believe in the "Zero Sum Fallacy." I have analyzed this problem years ago when I was an investor. In no way does OWS evidence a belief in the zero sum fallacy. We know life is unfair. We have lived with a reasonable level of unfairness all our lives. The glory of America used to be that, while the game was and is always rigged in favor of the rich, the rest of us had a chance at a little security and a little share in the ever growing pie. That is no longer true. Our income and wealth has been shrinking for decades while the rich take an ever larger proportion of the ever growing pie. What people like us are complaining about is a system that has lost ANY interest in seeing the majority benefit from the economic system. The worship of the obscenely wealthy, and the belief that they should pay NOTHING toward the support of this country, which has made it possible for them to achieve wealth beyond the dreams of potentates, while leaving the rest of us to die broke if we have the misfortune of getting sick is a perversion of economics. The principle that, if you are truly rich and powerful, your losses are laid on the public while your gains are private profits, while the rest of us go bankrupt, is, I submit, NOT a democratic (small 'd') principle. I could go on for pages about what we ordinary folks are angry about, but I suspect I would be wasting time. Why you bothered to air Mr. O'Rourke's utterly misinformed comments, I can only guess. But it would be better if you aired some of the actual arguments around OWS.
-Frank out in the cornfields.
Why are you giving air time to PJ O'Rourke to read out loud from an Econ 101 textbook (and misinterpret the message at that)? Belief in a zero-sum fallacy is not a necessary condition for supporting regulation of derivatives trading, separate of investment and commercial banking activities, and indictment of top executives who oversaw the fraudulent expansion of the mortgage market. O'Rourke is trying to use economic principles to condescend to the Occupy movement, but in doing so he simply reveals his own pedestrian understanding of economics. A couple of other specifics that he gets wrong: the government does not just redistribute wealth, it also helps create new products, knowledge and wealth through the NIH, the NSF, military research programs and federal education loans, to name a few. And in reference to the power of the individual O'Rourke says "Look at China", as if China, with its closed capital account and government ownership of substantial segments of the manufacturing and financial sectors is a model of free enterprise and the creative power of the individual unshackled by government!
Mr. O' Rourke states that "The Zero Sum Fallacy is a bad idea -- dangerous to economics, politics, and world peace." What is even more dangerous, Mr. O'Rourke, is the wealth or power of any one nation to lie in the hands of so few. The Occupy Movement is not about wealth redistribution or class warfare, it is about true freedom and democracy.
It is good to point out that progress is not necessarily a zero-sum game, though it often becomes one when the winners can only enjoy it that way...but Mr O'Rourke goes seriously beyond decency, and quickly. It is one thing to enjoy one's unfair advantages, especially when not in the actual presence of the disadvantaged---it is only natural. As a corollary, it is thereby easy for someone to be deluded into thinking that the system were "working" when it is in fact "working for him and the people about whom he cares, a relatively minute portion of the world".
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It is another thing entirely to ask one's young daughter to lower herself to praying that life not get more fair. Mr O'Rourke in fact contradicts himself here in this wise: if prosperity is _not_ in fact a zero-sum game, why not ask his daughter to pray that life would in fact become fair, but at no cost to her or de minimus?
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Or better yet, discourage her from praying at all, point her toward a career in the sciences or technology, and encourage her to enrich herself and the race as an whole by helping to make the scarcity that distorts us now a thing of the past. We should probably never give up the "market" game---so many seem to love its dominance and submission and winning and losing----but it is entirely possible to make it a lot less hard on its losers, there by virtue of lack of talent or drive or simple dumb luck...life not being fair.
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