It isn't a zero sum game at all. China, India and Brazil have contributed to the global middle classes growing from 1.8 billion people in 2009 to an estimated 3.2 billion in 2020.

That the USA has failed to adopt sufficiently sensible policies to deal with these changes is not the fault of capitalism per se, and indeed in the case of things like a shockingly unequal education system is often driven by left wing people who dislike capitalism.

Sorry but until I see absolute numbers on a paper where the statistical analysis is detailed enough I'll keep my view.

Also, note that Europe (richest content) is undergoing a never-ending crisis which has broadened extremely the poor class, especially in South Europe and Ireland. But things in Britain and France are not looking good either.

The crisis in Europe is caused by the continued use of the Euro and all the policies being applied in an attempt to ensure it's existence.

Economics, and capitalism in particular are not a zero-sum game http://www.povertycure.org/issues/the-zero-sum-fallacy/

There's certainly ideas and actions to respect from povertycure.org

However, povertycure.org seems to be embraced by quite a few neo-libertarians, neo-cons and the specific page you linked to is high on platitudes and fairly low on facts, in my opinion.

Between the strange mix of a libertarian worship of a unicorn "free market" combined with religious overtones, they strike me as a somewhat confused group with quite a few ulterior motives running in the background.

For example, this charmer from povertycure.org's board:

http://www.theguardian.com/business/2009/oct/21/executive-pa...

That's not to say I think povertycure.org is all bad and I disagree with everything they all say and do, but I take them collectively with a grain of salt. For example, I think Michael Fairbanks has some very smart ideas here and there, but I'm still wary of anyone that embraces a "free market" blanket solution to so many issues as well.

As far as the crisis in Europe goes, I think the damage that austerity measures have caused aren't given enough credence by a lot of the corporate media for obvious reasons.

More on this:

http://www.social-europe.eu/2014/09/europes-austerity-disast...

It's ignored too much, in my opinion.

edit: spelling

> and capitalism in particular are not a zero-sum game

Look at it this way. Money causes corporations to become powerful entities (through propaganda, lobbying, internal R&D, etc.), and this reinforces the loop. There is a selective component, in that competition leads to corporate casualties. In other words, capitalism causes agglutination of money. Hence, capitalism leads to some people becoming rich, and most people becoming poor (because they are now out of business).

The effect will be directly noticeable to people here on HN when Google invents strong AI, and puts every programmer in the nation out of business :)

It most certainly is not a zero sum game. Any reading or thinking that led you to that conclusion is wrong.

Like the politicians, another believer in the theory that shuffling money about "creates wealth".

People working, manufacturing and creating things are what creates wealth. Not a magic money tree.

Totally agree.

An over-valued financial asset is thin air and creates nothing only the illusion of money. Add to that the ability of our current banking system to give Y-times more debit then their deposit (where Y -> OO+ ) one the one hand, on the other hand there are people producing items of value that we can actually use.

The rate at which over-valued asset are sold and re-priced + banks giving away loans that they will never get back and didn't had the money to support them anyway is orders of MAGNUTUDE bigger than the primary sector and secondary sector can produce.

There's also the problem of automation of the mainly the primary sector which makes things even worst. Now we have to create virtual scarcity in order to maintain this totally insane system because, let's face ... With today's technology 1 country could produce enough wheat for 5 planets.

Coordination isn't free, shuffling money around is a distributed and parallel way to reach consensus.

More efficient options may exist but to the best of my knowledge none currently do

It's not inherently a zero-sum game. It's just that the rich are doing everything in their power to capture all the surplus, which makes it feel like a zero-sum game for the rest of us.