Thomas Sowell challenges one of the most persistent economic myths: the idea that the rich become rich by making everyone else poorer.

Comment “Wealth” and we’ll send you an article that explores this further. That way of thinking treats wealth as a fixed pie. If someone gets a larger slice, someone else must necessarily receive less. But market economies do not work that way. Entrepreneurs can become extremely wealthy by creating products, technologies, services, and businesses that raise living standards for millions of other people. Their fortunes may grow at the same time that ordinary households gain access to better food, transportation, medicine, communication, entertainment, and housing. Sowell’s point is simple: if billionaires caused poverty merely by existing, societies with more billionaires should systematically have poorer populations. The more useful question is how wealth is created in the first place. Economic progress comes from producing more value, raising productivity, investing capital, and discovering better ways to satisfy human wants.