Public outrage about Dick Grasso’s 140 million dollar payoff stimulated all kinds of counterspin from America’s right-wing. After all, the American voter’s acceptance of greed as a new American virtue is crucial to the success of their economic policies. And an important part of their propaganda is to convince voters that wealth is not a zero-sum game.

     The following excerpt from a The Wall Street Journal editorial is typical of the conservative spin.

From The Wall Street Journal, September 24.

Who Decides How Much Is Too Much?

By HOLMAN W. JENKINS, JR.

In all the folderol about Dick Grasso's paycheck last week, one question worth pondering is how did it come to be everybody's business what he was paid? The money isn't yours or mine but comes out of the revenues of the New York Stock Exchange, owned by its 1,366 seatholders. They're the ones who get socked with the costs of the exchange (including the onerous new "technology" fee that keeps the exchange's head above water these days)….

Perhaps it's time to remember that fat pay—even misguidedly fat pay—is not an offense against anybody's rights. Luck was the biggest factor in tipping over the old salary scale at the exchange….

It's no skin off anybody else's back if his employer paid him too much, and looking over the past 20 years, one might readily conclude that we all benefit from the willingness of companies to wave big money carrots in front of their servants….

Little hissyfits of envy, like the one we witnessed in the Grasso case, might seem an expensive luxury when measured against the benefits of a fertile, lively economy, even one that occasionally offends us by delivering dramatic paydays to a few conspicuous public figures. David Altig, an economist at the Cleveland Fed who has studied income inequality, once put the anti-envy case this way: "I would gladly see you gain a zillion dollars of real income if doing so would obtain a billion for me, even if the distribution of our incomes becomes more unequal in the process."…

     The absurdities in this editorial are too numerous to deal with briefly. However, the crucial economic fallacy—that this editorial suggests, and that needs to be exposed to public scrutiny—is that wealth is not a zero-sum game.

     Wealth is a zero-sum game. When Jenkins Jr. questions “how did it come to be everybody's business what he was paid?,” he suggests that no one is hurt when Mr. Grasso’s investment advisors buy hundreds of rental homes for the benefit of his heirs. Those homes are taken off the market, and the prices of housing and rents continue to go through the ceiling—at great cost to the poor and middle-class.

     “The money isn't yours or mine but comes out of the revenues of the New York Stock Exchange.” Not true. The money did come from you and me, in the form of higher prices for the products and services that ultimately financed the entire financial community in New York.

     "Luck was the biggest factor in tipping over the old salary scale at the exchange." Not true. Luck had nothing to do with it. It was all part of a planned strategy by the "good 'ol boys club" to feather each others' nests, and at the direct expense of the clients of the New York Stock exchange. It's the same strategy that corporate executives have been using for the entire century, but especially for the past 25 years.

     “Little hissyfits of envy, like the one we witnessed in the Grasso case, might seem an expensive luxury when measured against the benefits of a fertile, lively economy, even one that occasionally offends us by delivering dramatic paydays to a few conspicuous public figures.” Wrong. It’s not envy, it’s anger. Anger against the greedy jerks at the top of our society who have destroyed working-class wages for the past 25 years—just so they could be incredibly rich. This “lively economy” has been a boon to rich investors and top corporate executives, primarily because it was a premeditated disaster for America’s workers.

     "I would gladly see you gain a zillion dollars of real income if doing so would obtain a billion for me, even if the distribution of our incomes becomes more unequal in the process." That’s probably true at the billion- and million-dollar levels. But it’s not true at the level of working-class wages. They’ve been stagnating for the past 25 years, while the rich have driven up the costs of everything from medical care to rents.

     The fallacy, “wealth is not a zero-sum game,” is one of the most important propaganda ploys of right-wing America, and it needs to be confronted at every opportunity.