Monopoly Might Be a Zero-Sum Game, but Wealth Isn’t.
Foundation for Economic Education
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In this episode Seamus and the gang play Monopoly and discuss the fixed-pie fallacy — the least savory of all economic tropes.
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Written by Seamus Coughlin & Jennifer Maffessanti
Animated by Seamus Coughlin
Produced by Sean W. Malone
11.12.2021
Well, the do take the money from someone else, just someone from another contry
0:40 well it was made as a critique on capitalism so I can see how it's an inaccurate teaching device. What's funny is people feel the need to rig it further to push that systemic racism agenda.
Having more money does not mean you are more wealthy. You forgot to account inflation.
Shaemus,is that you?
I wonder how much money were paid to make this video
That being said, a lot of corporations can go fuck themselves when they discontinue their healthcare subsidy in 2020
The wealth pool is not actually fixed in Monopoly. The total game economy increases by M200 every time someone passes GO.
But IS monopoly a fun game?
1:04 sheamus get out of my head
love how no one seems to be talking about the baby beating tree adults in a game. lol.
The poor are getting poorer and the rich are getting richer! The pie size may increase, but the portions percentagewise say the same! Even though the poor do become better well-off, the rich use their increase to gain a larger percentage of the pie! The rich are usually more educated and sophisticated in their investments, meaning that they gain a larger percentage of the pie from the poor as time goes on…
pls don't say amongus ever again, I'm screaming and crying
Yet the fiat currency continues to lose its buying power because printing. Seamus please do one the federal Reserve fraud…
1:04 sus
1:04 (I'm sorry)
I really enjoyed this this is actually a serious myth that wars have been fought over in Europe because they believe that the only way to get wealth was to take wealth which led to the underlining problem of mass wars and lack of resources
There are two types of people, those that hate Monopoly and those that lie.
Capitalism pulls everyone up.
I always like this one, although I find Monopoly a rather boring game.
1:04 Sorry I had to say it…………….when the economy is Sus:
1:03
its only even a fixed pie in that theres only so much money …..IN THE BANK.
Ive seen games were litterally everyone is going up and down in wealth but due to multiple influxes of cash from cards and go that the net value of things incased to like something around 20,000+ from all the property, houses, hotels, and spare cash that only really changed when the guy with Boardwalk and Park Place with full hotels finnally not only got people to land on it but in one persons case landed on it, and then got a card to go straight to boardwalk soon after before landing on the light blues which was also owned by the guy that had the dark blues leading to a breakdown of houses and hotels and even a morgage or two (I actually won this game in the end by virtue of Pink and Orange monopoly, and control of railroads)
comment
I can clearly see here that FreedomToons, FEE, CSS and many other organizations run by Seamus Coughlin will talk about issues affecting the US while failing to see that the world around them is filled with countries that are better off because of left-leaning social programs and countries that are worse off because of right-leaning imperialism.
0:33 Ga Ga
While it is true that capital can be generated for everyone (up to a point anyway), the world itself has a limited amount of certain resources at any given time, and those CAN be hoarded… such as land. So technically, the rich CAN hoard or at least influence/control everything… which is more or less what happened during the Feudal era.
1:04📮📮📮
1:04
Maybe Monopoly wouldn't run off of it economically irrational system if they didn't have a flat earth and plastic houses.
Yeahh… forget to talk about inflation, living costs, and how rich individuals did improve their life conditions waay better. BUT ok lets wait another 50 years so children in underdeveloped countries don't die of simples díseases, sounds great ! Wtf people complain about nothing, if we just let the market work!!
As a 20 year old who works at Starbucks and has a phone, tv, car, pc, and daily meals, I can say I’m more wealthy than hundreds of years of humanity and that’s something I’m grateful for even if life isn’t perfect and money can be tight
"A family's combined wealth from 1979 increased 50% by 2010."
….cool. now tell me about the 200% inflation in the same window of time.
The only people who don't create any wealth are politicians
Stop expecting them to fix your problems
Wait. Didn't inflation increase the wages?
1:04 😳
“You can’t go by monopoly man, that game is rigged, you don’t just pick up get out of jail free cards, those things cost thousands”
yes passing go definitely dose not give money
1:04 sus
“Fix amount of wealth”
Money printer go brrrrrrrrrr…
It's not that the poor are getting poorer. It's that inflation has gone up faster than wages (thanks mass migration), good paying jobs are long gone (thanks NAFTA) and wealth gets concentrated into small areas on the coast while the middle of the country is hollowed out and the middle class, while earning more, have less purchasing power than they did in 1970.
For example, a new home in 1970 was 26,500 on average. However, in 2010, that same home would cost $186,843.44 The median income in 1970 was 9,870. Which is $69,590.37 in 2010 dollars.
The median income in 2010 was only $49,445. The same house in 1970 that you could own in like 3 years at the median rate, it would take you an extra year in 2010 to do the same.
So while wealth has gone up, you ARE poorer than you would have been in 1970.
1979-2010 the Bottom Fifths income might've grown 50% but inflation went up over 200%. That is a net loss.
An issue though is of course if 1 company owns all of one resource
Not just that the pie is getting bigger, but simply the fact there are billions of people on earth and a financial system allowing people to buy immediately, means stuff like commodities are heavily competitive. You'd be hard pressed to find a singe case in history, absent of state intervention, where one person held a monopolistic position that couldn't be broken in due time. In many markets there's alternatives, such as the food industry. So even if someone somehow bought all the tomatoes and tomato seeds, granting them a monopoly over tomatoes, people will simply stop eating tomatoes and go to other foods. Which is completely impossible to begin with.
OK I've been watching a number of their videos and they overlook basic things in modern economics that basically invalidates their argument.
They are overlooking buying power and inflation. Since most of the world went away from deflation assets like the gold standard, we went to an inflation standard. Where the gov has full legal right to print money because money switch from based on a supply of something to based on some idea or nothing. And then when the gov started to heavily print more and more money while going more and more into debt, the economic system started to be based on new debt paying for old debt.
Anyways, this caused a runway inflation where on average if you have money sitting on a table for years. Each year it isn't making more money with that money, it is losing about an average of 4% to 5% per year in buying power. Something to note with this virus stuff in a single year the USA printed off 40%+ of it's total wealth, and it is expected this has to get far far far worse in the coming year to just keep up with things since the country has to obtain bigger amounts of debt to pay for prior debt + the buying power decreasing.
Anyways, for those of you who don't know what buying power is. It is basically whatever you can buy with a given amount of $ and how that changes over time. So lets in in a normal year you are buying something for $100, the next with a 4% increase that is now $104 to buy the same thing, and so on. Something to note is goods don't do this. They jump in prices. So it might not change a price for 3 years or so, and lets say the price change is on the 3rd year. This means it would've jumped from $100 to $112.49. And this means your money/investments/job needs to make at least about 4%-5% per year to just keep up with this, but in reality it tends to be much much more.
Lets put it this way in 2021 from the start of the year to now, people have reported a 80% increase in price of basic items like food depending on the area.
Lets put it this way. If your job salary isn't increasing on average by 5% per year or matching the inflation rate. You are being screwed because you are actually getting paid less and less. Even if you got an average of 3% pay increase per year. Since it doesn't at least keep up with the lost in buying power this mean you're getting paid less. Now take that in mind and understand some people haven't gotten a pay increase for 20 years. Many places like retail environments will tell their workers they will pay them more, but then when the time comes around they won't. And keep in mind these are places like Walmart which how that works, when Walmart buys something they automatically double the price at minimum before selling it in their store. So if they bought something for $1 then at min they will see it for $2, maybe even $3. In the worse cases they will buy something for 10 cents and sell it for $5 or $10. And then if the company they buy the stuff from says they can't do that, then they go to another company or just find another product. Walmart itself has forced many companies out of business through this and harm many products.
I'm getting off point a little, but the lower classes do not match this buying power difference where the upper classes not only match it but go beyond. Keep in mind their bonuses and other things.
This also brings up another problem. The cost of living based on wealth and regulation. So what happens here is basic items like a single peach in Walmart if you price it out you might find the price can swing a large amount from store to store even if the Walmart's are less than 3 miles apart and in the next city over. And this is just because the people in said area don't have the resources or ability to find this information out and they will buy it because they have to eat. The poorer you are the less you have a choice on where to live which means the less choice of how much money to spend on basic goods and services. This increasing things like rent and other things. Some of it is simple supply and demand, but some of it is because the people have no choice but to pay because what x person/company/gov said so. This funnels the money upwards to the elite.
There is a few other things, but this video is total BS.
One caveat: when your business is a bank and your creating wealth through fractional reserve lending, it's a very bad thing and makes everyone poorer
Absolute bullshit the richer are getting richer at a much faster rate than inflation grows but it is opposite in case of other middle or lower class their increase in salary is less than the rate of inflation
Lol, Wow this man failed economics. If we were back on the gold standard and in the time of the gilded age of the industrial revolution the game monopoly would be a reality. Only an elected government of the people, for the people, by the people can break this Economic circle.
There is scarcity in resources like land, Precious metals, food and water that can be controlled by a few and monopolized.
Well considering that Monopoly was originally a game created by a communist to teach "the evils of capitalism", it's not really surprising that it's a poor representation of a market economy.
I’d be interested in a video that talks about the difference between generating new wealth and “printing money” as I expect many don’t understand the difference.
monopoly isn't even a zero sum game, there's the money at go that adds extra money