About a third of Americans either “agree” or “strongly agree” that the economy is a zero-sum game — that one person must lose for another to gain.
The figures are higher still for Democrats when they are talking about different ethnic groups, and for Republicans when talking about immigrants who aren’t U.S. citizens.
So determined researchers Sahil Chinoy and Stefanie Stantcheva of Harvard University, Sandra Sequeira of the London School of Economics, and Nathan Nunn of the Vancouver School of Economics, based on a survey of 20,000-plus U.S. residents.
Some 31% of Americans told pollsters they agreed or strongly agreed with this statement: “If one ethnic group becomes richer, this generally comes at the expense of other groups in the country.”
And that figure rose to 40% among self-identified Democrats, while only 30% disagreed or strongly disagreed.
Meanwhile, 35% of all Americans, and 46% of Republicans, either agreed or strongly agreed that “If those without American citizenship do better economically, this will generally come at the expense of American citizens.”
The figures were similar on international trade, where 33% felt that if one country makes more money, another country generally makes less.
Meanwhile more than two in five, or 43%, of those polled felt the same that if people in one “income class” become wealthier, “it is usually the case that this comes at the expense of other groups.”
“The data indicate the presence of a general zero-sum worldview … which has the greatest explanatory power and affects respondents’ perceptions of the relationships between individuals or groups in the different scenarios,” they write.
“We find that individuals who view the world in more zero-sum terms tend to support policies that redistribute income from the rich to the poor or redistribute access to resources towards disadvantaged groups,” they write, adding: “These policies include taxation, universal healthcare, and affirmative action for women and African Americans. They also tend to support more restrictive immigration policies.”
The findings, circulated by the National Bureau of Economic Research, said belief in “zero sum” economics was higher among young people than among older people. The researchers hypothesized that this was because young people have experienced the slower economic growth of the past two decades, while older Americans remember faster growth in the postwar era. The researchers did not raise an alternative hypothesis, namely that this was a function of experience. Older Americans have had longer to witness the results of economic growth over time.
Belief in zero-sum economics was also higher among three ethnic groups, researchers found. The most prominent was Black Americans.
“Among all racial groups in the United States, Black respondents emerge as, on average, the most zero-sum [and] among Black respondents, those who have ancestors who were enslaved have a more zero-sum worldview,” they write.
Zero-sum thinking was also more common in other groups, including Jews who survived the Holocaust and immigrants from other countries that also had slavery as recently as 1860, researchers found.
And it was also common among whites whose ancestors had emigrated from the American South, especially if they carried a large amount of “Confederacy culture” to their new region, say the researchers.
“Respondents who were raised, or had ancestors who were raised, in counties with a higher share of white Southern migrants have a stronger zero-sum mindset,” they write. “The same patterns emerge when we look at respondents and their ancestors who grew up in counties with a stronger ‘Confederate culture’, ” they add.
Meanwhile zero-sum thinking was least common among many immigrant groups, particularly among Asian-Americans, the authors report.
The authors argue that the findings explain various factors . Why do higher-earning young people in big cities support more “redistributive” economic policies, even at their own expense? They tend to be more inclined to zero-sum thinking, the authors found. Meanwhile researchers found that white people in many rural areas, including those on lower incomes, are less likely to believe in zero-sum economics — which may help explain why many oppose redistributive policies, the authors agree.
Democrats who are more zero-sum are more likely to support restrictions on immigration, the authors found. Republicans who are more zero-sum are more likely to support trade wars and redistributionist policies, they also found.
People who were zero-sum thinkers, including Democrats, had been much more likely to vote for Donald Trump in the 2016 election, the researchers determined.
Zero-sum thinking may have its roots in the first 300,000 years of the human race, when humans essentially lived in agrarian tribes and villages and economic growth was effectively zero.
As late as 1800 many economists still thought in terms of “mercantilism,” where one society got rich at the expense of others, and Thomas Malthus was arguing that the world wasn’t productive enough to support a bigger population.
The exponential economic growth that took off first in Western Europe a few hundred years ago, mainly due to the Industrial Revolution, had no antecedents. Apparently human thinking is still struggling to adapt.
Naturally it is perfectly possible to become richer by stealing from someone else. Robbing a bank is a zero-sum enterprise. But most modern economic activity in a free society is positive-sum. Both parties gain.
Which is why, according to International Monetary Fund data, U.S. income per person has doubled in the last 40 years, even after stripping out the effects of inflation.