"Vous semblez croire que la richesse est un bien « public » (LOL) ou que c’est un gateau qui pousse aux arbres, à ce sujet je ne peux que vous conseiller de vous instruire en lisant ceci : http://www.forbes.com/sites/objecti..."

J’ai lu le texte de votre lien, lequel texte me laisse perplexe tant il fleure bon la mauvaise foi et surtout la bonne conscience de ceux qui s’enrichissent indûment. Je n’ai pas le temps de démonter un à un les arguments de vos idoles. Je me permets juste de copier-coller un commentaire d’un lecteur que je trouve assez pertinent :

Mr. Brook & Mr. Waktins,

You wrote :”One metaphor responsible for a great deal of confusion is that of wealth as a pie–a metaphor that shows up again and again in debates over income inequality.”

The “pie” is not a metaphor here. It is common use “pie charts” present distributions of data of all sorts. When people seek of dividing up the pie, they are referring back to the pie chart, not an actual pie. The pie chart does not suggest to the reader a “zero sum game” scenario.

Even if were to use the image (it is actually a simile, not a metaphor) of physical fruit filled pastry traditionally backed in a circular pan, everyone understands that one can make the pie larger or smaller. It is not unusual for people to speak of the “pie getting smaller (or larger)”.

I point this out not simply to be pedantic, although that is always fun, but rather to point out that while you are correct that while increasing wealth does not *have to be* a zero sum game, currently in the United States, it is. How are the wealthy getting wealthy, by closing down factories here in the United States and moving them overseas where labor costs are dramatically lower, ensuring dramatically higher profits. For those fortunately enough to benefit from those record high profits, the size of their slice of the pie goes up. For the vast majority of Americans however, plant closures are devastating, shrinking the size of their slice of the pie dramatically. Thus, to extend the simile, the whether the overall size of the pie is getting larger or smaller is not even the point, the size of the slice taken by the wealthiest Americans has been getting larger and larger while the size of the slice left for everyone else has been getting smaller and smaller. The absolute size of the pie is entirely irrelevant.

Here is an excellent story in the Washington Post which illustrates this point effectively.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/good-for-obamas-jobs-council-good-for-america/2011/06/10/AGQTbmTH_story.html?hpid=z2