5 ms·

How does one eat a share of the economy? Do I have to assume it to be zero sum for the concept to be clear?

• wpietri 11y ago
  You don't have to assume zero sum in general. Just that some interactions can be zero or negative sum. The simple example is monopoly rents: monopolists can increase their share of total profits without increasing value delivered. By a lot of measures, the financial industry captures a lot more money than they did in previous decades. But it's far from clear that they're delivering a lot more value, and given that computers have drastically reduced their costs, it's reasonable to expect them to be smaller, not larger. As a start, this has some good graphs: http://esoltas.blogspot.com/2013/02/5-more-graphs-on-finance.html http://esoltas.blogspot.com/2013/02/5-more-graphs-on-finance... And here are a couple more general-audience articles: http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2011/03/30/chart-of-the-day-us-financial-profits/ http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2011/03/30/chart-of-th... http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2011/12/10/number-of-the-week-finances-share-of-economy-continues-to-grow/ http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2011/12/10/number-of-the-week...