Some people view the world, at least major parts of it, as a zero sum game where one person gains only to the extent that another loses. Starting with this point of view, it is natural enough to see all disagreements as questions of which side you are on. Do you favor workers or employers, landlords or tenants' The alternative is to see disagreements as not only about how to divide up the pie but about how to change its size. It then becomes not only a question of us vs them but also of our arguments vs their arguments, with some hope that one set of arguments will eventually persuade almost everyone. These different viewpoints are reflected, in political rhetoric and political thinking, in the difference between relative and absolute measures. If we define the poor as the bottom ten percent of the income distribution we can be confident that they will always be with us. If we define the poor by the real income of the tenth percentile as of the US in1900 the problem of poverty has...
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