The economy is zero-sum. The rich only get rich by making everyone else poorer.

Zero-sum is a good description of a raid, a throne, or a fixed plot of land in a Malthusian world. It is a bad description of an economy where people make new goods. World output per person has risen many times over since the 19th century; the typical person in a market-led country today consumes what no pre-industrial king could buy — antibiotics, refrigeration, a smartphone, a flight.

If Jeff Bezos becomes rich by building a logistics network, the customers who used it were not stripped of an equivalent pile of cash. They paid a price below the value they put on the delivery. That gap is consumer surplus. Wages in the firms that supply Amazon are a cost, not a theft from a fixed pot.

The zero-sum story survives because relative status is zero-sum. You can resent a neighbor’s house and still live in a richer country than your grandparents. A market economy is judged on the second fact.