It is!!! How do you not understand this? I paint a masterpiece on a $1 canvas, someone pays me $500 for it, I have created wealth. I refinish the deck on my house, and the value goes up $10k, I have created wealth. Please tell me some of this is resonating with you. In none of those examples is a rich person taking something away from a non-rich person. Other people don't have less to fight over because of this creation.
Because of sheer stupidity (my own) I am going to go over this once more.
I paint a masterpiece on a $1 canvas, someone pays me $500 for it, I have created wealth.
No. This is a transfer of wealth. Unless that putz printed off counterfeit money, nothing was created. It was transferred to you. Part of his "pie" went to you. Additionally, your $1 went to someone else. Wealth wasn't created for the guy that sold you a cheap ass canvas.
I refinish the deck on my house, and the value goes up $10k, I have created wealth.
Actually here, you have done nothing. Unless you sell the home. At which point you -gasp- transfer wealth. The money has been redistributed, not created.
Your wealth increases, while theirs decreases. In that sense, it is zero sum. And, newsflash, once you get to macro econ, this concept expands greatly and you can begin to see why it is a "pie." I use quotes because for some godforsaken reason you don't get an analogy otherwise.
Now, does that mean it is a zero sum system entirely? No. We do print money at the national level and effectively "create wealth" but that concept isn't easily explained. But you can suffice it to say that we don't just have Greg in a room printing Benjamins for shits and giggles. There are rules to it and it is a delicate balance.
All that said, for the purposes of this article, you can treat the economy as a pie in order to simplify the concepts for the general public, and for CPAs that think their micro level transactions still apply in an entirely different school of finance.
You are like a guy arguing 2i = 4; i =2 when in reality we are talking about imaginary numbers.