re: When you become rich, are you making other people poor?

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isn't 'the jews are getting rich off the backs of the people' what Hitler sold to the Germans?

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Certainly part of it. And it's a large reason why I despise (and quite frankly fear) the demonization of "the rich". Historically, it never ends well for anyone. Look at Venezuela... It's right before our eyes.

Anytime you have politicians trying to induce "the masses" against a slim minority of the population--you should be skeptical and on guard. It's a known vector toward bad outcomes and government overreach.

It's all good.

Not unless you are taking more from them than they are expecting. You can't get rich without selling something. Sellers need buyers who are willing to pay for their products or services, but they expect value for their purchases. If you deliver the value that purchasers expect, then you are not making them poorer.

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When you become rich, are you making other people poor?

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It depends on what you did to get rich. Clearly something like futures trading is a zero sum game. Opening and operating a factory that employs people isn't. I know its hard for a rightie to grasp this - but owning wealth by itself doesn't really say anything except that you own the wealth.

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That's a recipe for failure. You'll end up with lots of turnover, poor morales, and you won't be attracting the best employees.

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A good example of this involves the invention of the television set. Radios had sound but no pic. But people sat around the radio and looked at it as they were listening. Corporations knew it would be a gold mine to transmit pictures with the radio waves.

Three of the major competitors racing for the invention were GE, RCA and Westinghouse.

Researchers were under a set salary and their contract stipulated that any of their discoveries became property of the company.

It was a raw deal. So, the companies started raiding each others engineers. It went like this over lunch downtown:

GE: Bob, how much is RCA paying you?
Bob: $20K plus a 3K bonus if I can make a cathode ray tube work.
GE: Bob, quit GE and come work for us. We'll give you $40K plus a 10K bonus.

Bob would change companies and bring all of his knowledge on the research with him.

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Though I can see where one might make that argument, it actually is not true.

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$'s, yes. Utility, perhaps no.

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Is it a zero sum game? Is that the reason the redistributionist left want to tax the living daylights out of the "rich"?

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In our crony capitalist country it can happen. When people get rich here, they pay politicians to create rules to make it harder for others to get rich.

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Clearly something like futures trading is a zero sum game.

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Interesting that you are picking on futures trading.

IMO, futures provides an extremely valuable financial tool especially for users of commodities. It's make it much easier budget for following years to me as a commodity user to lock in cost. It's a huge tool for businesses in terms of predictability of their cost of goods.

Also, speculators don't even bother me in the futures market. When one party is speculating long there is another party speculating short. In fact it could be argued that speculators provide a valuable service, i.e. liquidity.

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Such as?

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Easiest example would be your local liquor licensing regime. Incumbent license-holders go out of their way to make the process of getting new licenses as onerous/impossible as they can.