Is wealth-building zero-sum?

Last updated on: July 30, 2017 at 7:47 am by Jane the Actuary

Is wealth-building zero-sum? 2017-07-28T13:01:41-06:00 Jane the Actuary

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

This isn’t so much a rhetorical question as a real issue for discussion.

Here’s an article I came across in my twitter feed earlier today: “This is what reparations could actually look like in America.” Not much is really new here: the author, Chuck Collins, proposes that the funds for the reparations would come from the usual “millionaires and billionaires” and would cover such items as home purchase subsidies, free college tuition for first-generation students, “roots trips” to Africa, endowments for museums covering the history of slavery and its aftermath, and funds to expand African-American history in schools.

And the rationale for reparations is likewise not new. Here’s how Collins expresses it:

Many whites with little in the bank to show for their racial advantage will understandably be frustrated by the concept of reparations. If they never owned slaves—and neither did their ancestors—why should they have to pay? By the same token, many first- or second-generation Americans, whose European ancestors fled their own hardships to come to the US, feel miles and centuries apart from slavery.

The key point, however, is the unpaid labor of millions—and the compounding legacy of slavery, Jim Crow laws, discrimination in mortgage lending, and a race-based system of mass incarceration—created uncompensated wealth for individuals and white society as a whole. Immigrants with European heritage directly and indirectly benefited from this system of white supremacy.

The bottom line to this line of argumentation always tends to boil down to this: there’s a limited amount of wealth to go around. Regardless of whether white people “feel” better off, the fact that blacks were denied the ability to build wealth means that by definition, whites benefited. And that sounds intuitively correct. After all, if their was a certain pool of funds for homeownership subsidies, for instance, and blacks were excluded from the pool, then that means more for the whites, right? Likewise, denying black men and women the opportunity to study at universities left more places open for whites, and denying them jobs at good wages left those jobs open for whites.

But consider the rhetoric behind “diversity.”

We’re told that we should support “diversity” and “multiculturalism” because having a diverse society benefits everyone, because those with alternate perspectives increase innovation, allow businesses to be more successful, and so on. We’re told that enabling underrepresented groups to study helps them “achieve their full potential” and enables them to make their fullest contribution to society, that everyone wins when discrimination is ended.

We’re told this (and by “we,” I admittedly mean “white people”) to get our buy-in onto anti-discrimination programs for practical reasons, not just because it’s the morally right thing to do. But, of course, both these things can’t be true simultaneously: white people can’t have been enriched all these years due to slavery and Jim Crow, and at the same time, anti-discrimination pro-diversity measures can’t be a boon to our society and economy because of all of the potential contributions of minority groups.

Or, rather, both of these things cannot be true in their exaggerated, simplistic form.

So that’s what I invite readers to chew on for the day.

Image: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AMoney_Cash.jpg; By Jericho [CC BY 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

Previous Post

July 29, 2017

So stopping the tenure clock . . . backfired

Next Post

July 31, 2017 The Economist's alternate take on childlessness

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category Actuarial/Retirement Issues Politics Uncategorized

Select a Month September 2026 August 2026 July 2026 June 2026 April 2026 March 2026 February 2026 January 2026 December 2025 November 2025 October 2025 July 2025 June 2025 May 2025 April 2025 March 2025 February 2025 January 2025 December 2024 November 2024 October 2024 September 2024 August 2024 July 2024 June 2024 May 2024 April 2024 March 2024 February 2024 December 2023 November 2023 October 2023 September 2023 August 2023 July 2023 December 2022 September 2022 August 2022 July 2022 June 2022 May 2022 February 2022 January 2022 December 2021 August 2021 June 2021 April 2021 February 2021 January 2021 December 2020 November 2020 October 2020 September 2020 August 2020 July 2020 June 2020 May 2020 April 2020 March 2020 February 2020 January 2020 December 2019 November 2019 October 2019 September 2019 August 2019 July 2019 June 2019 May 2019 April 2019 March 2019 February 2019 January 2019 December 2018 November 2018 October 2018 September 2018 August 2018 July 2018 June 2018 May 2018 April 2018 March 2018 February 2018 January 2018 December 2017 November 2017 October 2017 September 2017 August 2017 July 2017 June 2017 May 2017 April 2017 March 2017 February 2017 January 2017 December 2016 November 2016 October 2016 September 2016 August 2016 July 2016 June 2016 May 2016 April 2016 March 2016 February 2016 January 2016 December 2015 November 2015 October 2015 September 2015 August 2015 July 2015 June 2015 May 2015 April 2015 March 2015 February 2015 January 2015 December 2014 November 2014 October 2014 September 2014 August 2014 July 2014 June 2014 May 2014 April 2014 March 2014 February 2014 January 2014 December 2013 November 2013 October 2013 September 2013 August 2013 July 2013

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz

How many people did Jesus feed with five loaves of bread and two fish?

Select your answer to see how you score.

2,500 500 5,000 1,000