Ahhh the oldest myth/fallacy in the capitalist economics 101 book. Scarcity makes taxation and the economy, in fact, a zero sum. At any given moment there IS a finite amount of wealth in the world. To "create" more wealth requires access or ownership of - to use an old fashioned term - the means of production. If you don't own the means of production, you'll have to pay some portion of the wealth you create to the person who does. Conversely, a person who does own the means of production can accumulate large amounts of wealth that other people create. So whenever new wealth is created in society, the way it's distributed is determined by the current distribution of wealth, which is zero-sum.