To paraphrase (again) the British politician and historian Thomas Babington Macaulay: People always think that life has been improving — up until their own time, that is. Somehow they don’t expect ...

Some situations in life are zero-sum. On Super Bowl Sunday, two teams take the field but only one will emerge victorious, Vince Lombardi Trophy in hand. In a presidential election, only one candidate ...

In recent years, researchers have increasingly focused on zero-sum thinking, namely the widespread belief that economic, social, or political gains for one group can only be achieved at the expense of ...

Allison Schrager is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering economics. A senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, she is author of “An Economist Walks Into a Brothel: And Other Unexpected Places to ...

LOOK at the news or social media these days, and you might see a pattern. Stories are about groups in conflict, competing for limited resources, with the gains for some framed as losses for others. If ...

This is the introduction to Blighty, a weekly, subscriber-only newsletter in which our correspondents turn their gaze on the latest developments in Britain. Sign up for Blighty. Matthew Holehouse, our ...

Zero-sum thinking has spread like a mind virus, from geopolitics to pop culture. Credit...Photo illustration by Pablo Delcan Supported by By Damien Cave Damien covers global affairs. He is based in ...