The Causal Order of Private Residuals and Social Surplus: Why Compressing Innovator Payoffs Destroys Public Wealth
Popular political rhetoric routinely frames concentrated billionaire wealth as a static prize withheld from humanity. Yet from the irreducible prior of causality, action under uncertainty must precede any harvest, and physical diffusion inevitably dissipates gains downstream. William Nordhaus's landmark study reveals that innovators capture roughly 2.2% of the surplus created by technological progress, with 97.8% flowing to consumers. The inequality of residual wealth is the direct consequence of innovators consuming far less than they produce, juxtaposed against the mass consuming far more…
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