The book the 1% don't want you to read

[Basil Ransom]

"The book the 1% don't want you to read"

I thought the book was going to be about entrepreneurship and innovation.

But no, of course it's about wealth redistribution and higher taxes. Take what isn't yours and give it to people who didn't earn it, and then label it a moral act. Blah blah blah. Sounds like communism to me. I don't think the wealthy are going to be too scared about this book.

The shrillest critics of Piketty, like BlurredSevens above, focus on just one piece of his work, without recognizing his overall goal of preserving democracy, where the state is not a plaything of rich elites. Hell, he would probably argue that the inequality he seeks to moderate, if left unchecked, would imperil the entrepreneurship and free market you so esteem. Titans of industry hate the free market. They hate competition. Competition in a free market where barries to entry are low means profits are low too, not quite an endearing state to businessmen of any stripe. It's only when a businessman is an upstart that he lauds competition. When a firm becomes dominant, it has every reason to starve and eliminate competition. So unless you're already at the top of your industry and would like the government's aid to stay there, you may find that you have some points of agreement with him if you overlook his prescription for global taxes.

Piketty's diagnosis is that increasing inequality leads to regulatory capture and crony capitalism that eventually impoverishes everyone but the oligarchs. The novelty of his work I suppose is that when investment rates exceed economic growth rates, inequality increases, together with the historical empirical backing for this assertion. But this link is then lumped in with his prescribed treatment of global taxes, which is what gets the haters cranked up.

Unfortunately, it seems like most people who are unfriendly to his idea of substantial global taxes, instead of exploring alternative, non-leftist alternatives, are just arguing to do nothing, and let inequality and crony capitalism keep growing apace. You don't have to be a socialist to share his concern about the effects of growing inequality, nor do you have to sign on to his policy prescriptions if you are so concerned.

Rent-seeking activity is everywhere in our economy, and it's growing. The funny thing is that leftists and liberals are always trying to fight inequality by imposing more regulations and more taxes, instead of removing those regulations and taxes that promote them. If the left truly seeks to moderate inequality, and the right to enhance economic freedom, they should agree on minimizing rent-seeking. Things like expensive licensing requirements to practice an occupation, or requiring medallions to drive taxis, are one such example. Byzantine regulations are invariably costlier for smaller firms to comply with than for larger firms. Yet the left is in no hurry to whittle away such programs. I suppose the reason why is that these rent-seekers effectively lobby politicians and fund their campaigns precisely for these special hand-outs, so the left (and the right, mostly) keeps mum about it, and drones on instead about the need for new taxes.

Would eliminating rent-seeking opportunities achieve what Piketty seeks to accomplish with his global taxes? I don't know. I don't know that either one would work - but I can't see how rent-seeking would hurt anyone except the rent-seekers themselves. Global taxes on the other hand could have unforeseen severe, negative consequences. Where would I start? Reduce or eliminate occupational licensing programs; allow occupational testing so that people can prove their proficiency without acquiring an expensive college degree. Reduce or eliminate regulations that have an unduly high compliance cost on smaller firms (eg arduous food safety rules for cottage businesses and farms); constant vigilance about regulatory capture aka the revolving door (eg Goldman Sachs dangling a fat paycheck in the future for current SEC honchos). Making the state smaller and simpler in general reduces opportunities for hustlers to get their cut. The smaller the pie, the smaller the slice.

A personal example: housing in liberal cities like San Francisco, New York City and Los Angeles is very expensive, thanks to regulations that limit supply. What does the left do? It demands a few set-asides for poor people for every new luxury condo complex that goes up. And that does nothing to help the people in the middle that aren't poor enough to benefit from that, and aren't rich enough to afford the new swanky condo. It sure does benefit the pre-existing homeowners and landlords - who also benefit massively from artificially low property taxes that would skyrocket if say, I were to acquire their property. No, the left mostly doesn't address issues like that. It clamors for greater equality but refuses the market-friendly policies that would promote it. I see Tyler Cowen makes much the same charge in his review of Piketty's work - http://marginalrevolution.com/margi...oposals-thomas-piketty-forgot-to-mention.html (last paragraph).

Look at the list of highest paying occupations ( http://www.bls.gov/ooh/highest-paying.htm), and you'll see that some 60-70%+ of the highest paying occupations have substantial barriers to entry. Same for practicing law, which is not in that list but has many wealthy practitioners.

I haven't read the book, just read some summaries of it.

 

[kdolo]

he's the typical French Marxist -

 

[Maciano]

Basil,

Good post. Piketty's critique of inequality is 'old'; we've been here before. Leftist intellectuals arguing the rich are getting richer. There's been so much research, hard thinking & ideas that have come up since the Great Depression & the 70s New Left that it's pretty hard to accept Piketty's line of reasoning. The idea of the "1%" or "the rich" or "the bankers" in itself is a form of framing that as an completely wrong in analysis method of our societies.

I completely agree that rich people try to make people believe w/ libertarian theories & Republicanist free marketeering that their wealth is justifiable. There's more to this story. Did the two guys from Whatsapp really deserve to be handed 19 Billion $ for inventing a webchat app (w/o many cool innovative features) that would have been invented down-the-line anyway? This winner-take-all stuff might work economically, it is something the non-winners will feel unfair. OTOH, there simply is no way to prevent elites from wealth accumulation because talents are unequally divided between groups of people. Social democratic Sweden has the same kind of social mobility as the US! US elites are simply much richer than anyone else, because success in the US often means global success.

The only sensible tax that I could think of to make society more equal is to financially knee-cap the children of elites by raising the inheritance tax to 100%: only that would give both everyone an equal start, while not punishing their talents. But this kind of tax would bring lots of moral dilemmas in itself and it presupposes equality is by definition necessary (which isn't true, see Dubai) or moral (which isn't true either, see communism).

This is why I think Piketty is fighting windmills. To achieve his goals he should go much further than he does. I'm also sick of intellectuals who tell us society is bad because A, B, C and then come up with some bogus/dummy hobbyhorse that's exactly warmed-up shit that has been refuted n-th times, like the gender pay gap. If an intellectual can't couple a sound critique to a sound solution, he/she should be ignored.

 

[Basil Ransom]

I found a free ebook by progressive economist Dean Baker that tackles the points I mentioned - The End of Loser Liberalism. I haven't read it yet, but from a glimpse it looks like he wants to achieve progressive ends by harnessing the free market, and not repressing it.

"knee-cap the children of elites by raising the inheritance tax to 100%: only that would give both everyone an equal start, while not punishing their talents. "

It is impossible to create even the shadow of a level playing field; there's more than just material wealth that varies from one man to another. Harrison Bergeron is a good antidote to that fantasist notion. Not that an inheritance tax is off the table, but setting up an impossible goal is a recipe for dramatic failure.

"The idea of the "1%" or "the rich" or "the bankers" in itself is a form of framing that as an completely wrong in analysis method of our societies. "

Many of the rich are in fact leeches, in the sense that they are rent seekers whose incomes and fortunes would decline if there were more competition. Bolstering the free market is anathema to progressives, so they never quite go down that route. Local politics is full of these sorts of hustlers. You don't need to be a 'hater' to object to these types, you just need to be cognizant of the fact that they are impoverishing everyone else - as with, for instance, Carlos Slim did to common Mexicans with his telecoms monopolies.

"It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!" - Upton Sinclair

 

[Feisbook Control]

Maciano: Inheritance taxes would have one of two effects. Either people would move their money offshore (and migrate with it if need be) or they would severely curtail their economic and entrepreneurial efforts within their lifetimes. Why would people work hard to build anything if it would be taken away and they would not be able to leave a legacy? I wouldn't. I'd make just enough to live quite well within my life and that would be it. We're already seeing a similar effect with men dropping out of the labour force in droves. Likewise, we're seeing men drop out of marriage in droves for similar reasons. If you're going to get taken for a ride, better not to play the game at all.

Basil: I'll come right out and say that I don't believe in democracy, at least not universal suffrage. At the most, I think there should be a very limited franchise to prevent the shiftless of society helping themselves to others' money. The trouble is that a limited franchise inevitably tends towards universal suffrage, so we get right back to where we began.

I think that the deeper issue is not even economic, but that economic problems are symptoms of cultural problems. I don't believe that there is any coincidence that many developed nations now face major problems of growing inequality. At the same time that that has happened, we have seen everything from the destruction of the family unit to mass immigration. In the former case, everything from the autonomy of individuals to a well-educated and informed populace has broken down. Coupled with highly diverse societies now, is it any wonder that people are disconnected from one another, their local communities and their national political systems? There is no sense of common wealth, and thus, there is no commonwealth. Of course this has led to a huge opening for rent seeking activity and regulatory capture. I don't believe that has been opportunistic. I believe it has been by design. Democracies work best when the next voter and you both see each other as compatible, as brothers or neighbours with a lot in common and a shared bond. When the next voter and you see each other as competitors, if not outright enemies, democracy ends up in a shambles. The reality of the situation is that we're only going to see a lot of trust and shared values if we return to fairly homogeneous communities that are fairly patriarchal also. Yet that's not exactly on the cards. I think things are going to get a lot worse before they get better, and as such, I am making preparations for me and mine, screw everyone else. Of course, that exacerbates the problem, but -- as certain groups are finding out -- being the only one playing by the rules or caring about others doesn't make you noble, it just makes you a sucker. I don't want to be a sucker.

Also, I am not sure how we would get global taxes without global government, and that would only be like the present system magnified. Imagine if the world got to vote either as one person, one vote, or even just one country, one vote. The developed world, either in terms of population or number of nations, would soon be completely overwhelmed. Screw that.

 

[Tail Gunner]

I think that the deeper issue is not even economic, but that economic problems are symptoms of cultural problems.

:highfive:

Basil: I'll come right out and say that I don't believe in democracy, at least not universal suffrage. At the most, I think there should be a very limited franchise to prevent the shiftless of society helping themselves to others' money. The trouble is that a limited franchise inevitably tends towards universal suffrage, so we get right back to where we began.

Originally, many individual states (of the United States) allowed only landowners to vote, because they had a vested interest in how tax money was spent and most tax money was raised through property taxes. Then all free males. Then all males. Then all females. Now dead men and hamsters vote.

I believe quite strongly that there should be a voting test akin to a citizenship test, where a prospective voter should prove a very basic level of knowledge before being allowed to vote.

 

[cardguy]

@Feisbook Control - Glengarry Glen Ross is my all-time favourite movie and I can lip sync the whole film!

 

[Feisbook Control]

cardguy: It's definitely a gem. Great writing and great acting. There was not a single passenger in the whole film. I looked up how old Baldwin was in that. If I'd had to guess, based upon his demeanour, I'd have thought he was at least 40, and I was thinking, "Damn, he looks good for 40". He was 34. I know it was acting, but still, look at everything about him. This happens to me all the time when I look up certain actors in classic roles. I think it's because so many people in my generation are really pathetic. The average Gen Xer or Millennial dresses like crap and carries himself like crap.

Tail Gunner: I agree that there should be a barrier to voting. The trouble is that I think that incrementally, we'd end up right back where we are today. I think this is a fundamental problem with democracy. I think the issue is that we might easily say that B (limited franchise) is preferable to A (some form of authoritarianism) and C (mob rule). Yet it seems to me that B probably can't ever become an end point in itself, but rather, is transitory. Yet we take a snapshot of B at a particular point and wrongly conclude that it wasn't transitory and that C didn't inevitably/necessarily follow. I have a somewhat cyclical view of history.

I admit that I don't have a political solution to this because I think that either A or C have major problems. Likewise, technocracy also has major problems, namely that it works brilliantly until it doesn't (at some point, China is going to implode, and then we will really see the limits of that, as we are now with the E.U.). People might propose the free market, but I think that would be transitory also as power and wealth would accumulate to a breaking point too. In theory, there is someone who prevents concentration of power or wealth, but who regulates the regulators? In theory, the American political system was designed with checks and balances, yet they're evidently not working, so there's a problem there. I don't think anything remains static indefinitely. The world is always in flux.

I think that it eventually comes down to culture, and levels of trust between individuals or groups, and how willing or able they are to interact in good faith, even putting aside immediate selfish concerns sometimes to avoid a tragedy of the commons. Firstly though, I don't think good culture can be manufactured. There have been all sorts of Utopian attempts at that and they have failed miserably. Good culture has to appear organically, usually after/in response to periods of great turmoil. Yet great periods of turmoil don't necessarily produce good cultures. There's a problem here with thinking about what would have to occur for our culture to get back on track simply because it's that old metaphysical problem of not being able to step into the same river twice, and even if you could, would you not end up at the same place downstream again?

Secondly, getting beyond all of that, even if you live in a place that has its act together, you still have to interact with neighbours who don't, and so you can (will?) get dragged into their nonsense or have it spill over into your own domain.

I think that to some extent, all one can do is play as best he can with the hand he's been dealt, or at least be willing to go down fighting. If our culture, our political system, etc. had been worth fighting for, we would have fought for them, would we not? Either they weren't really worth fighting for, and we acted correctly, or we were/are full of crap. People aren't willing to look at their own role and come to the conclusion that maybe we do actually get the governments or cultures we deserve.

It reminds me of this:



It does trouble me that we live in a "me and mine" age and that a lot of people are focused on their size of the slice of the pie rather than growing the pie. In some ways, I've tried to mitigate this by expatriating, etc. Yet largely, if that's the game being played, then I need to be good at playing that game, not how I imagine the game was, or should have been, played in the past. That is why I criticised the middle class above with their obsession with some sort of overarching cosmic justice and how that makes them suckers.

 

[poutsara]

The men who can manage men, manage the men who manage only things, and the men who can manage money manage all.

Will Durant.

 

[Tail Gunner]

Tail Gunner: I agree that there should be a barrier to voting. The trouble is that I think that incrementally, we'd end up right back where we are today. I think this is a fundamental problem with democracy.

You are right, which is exactly why the Founding Fathers created a constitutional Republic instead of a democracy where everyone could vote.

It is not as if the Founding Fathers ignored the dangers of a democracy. By creating a constitutional Republic, they did their best to ensure that future generations did not fritter away the liberty that they had won.

The fundamental flaw in the system was that a constitutional Republic must rely upon an educated and moral voting class, which is why I highlighted your comment "that economic problems are symptoms of cultural problems." That is certainly the crux of the problem.

 

[Dubby]

Austrian economists are losing their shit similarly to how the Jews were losing their shit over Mein Kampf. Both groups understand the negative repercussions of idiotic literature blaming an "other" in times of economic crisis. This doesn't end well, especially for the poor and middle class, because the rich are the best suited and able to flee any country that takes this book seriously enough to implement policy based on Marxist drivel that has failed time and time again.

can austrians stop using the term "Marxist" as an all-encompassing insult? It's not. It's a term to refer to a certain kind of person that supports a certain set of ideas. It does not simply means "SOMEONE WHO LOVES BIG GUMMINT" or anyone who believes the gov't should do a little more than just protect property and enforce contracts.

Case in point: Piketty. If you REALLY studied economics (instead of just reading a dozen or so Mises.org pdfs), and maybe if you had actually read Pickety's damn book (instead of watching a five minute "rebuttal" video put out by the Ayn Rand Institute), maybe you'd realize Piketty is not a Marxist. In fact, he reserved some space in his book to trash Marxists and Marxism.

That's not to discredit Marxism however. I'm just saying you can't just call someone a "Marxist" in the same way you can call someone who is mean a "Nazi". At least not in a serious economic debate.

 

[berserk]

I think the major problem is that people actually believe in the democratic religion. We believe we are free and equal, but we are not. Since the dawn of time, a small elite have ruled the majority. This should really be an easy conclusion considering the base of redpill knowledge of the minority alpha banging the majority women or Roosh' recent post about the excellent man vs the 99,5% sheep.

We're always ruled. Communist societies were ruled by the corrupt party officials. The few truly anarchist societies required a willingness to use violence to defend your property and freedom, such as viking Iceland and that only lasted until the Danish king sailed to Iceland and threatened to kill them all if they didn't submit.

There is no equality and never has been. Humans have been ruled by Popes, Kings, Great Leaders, Party Directors etc for all time and likely will be as long as the average is very risk-averse.

The historic element is missing. We're always so quick to announce the end of history. 100 years ago there were Kings and royalty ruling subjects. 50 years ago there were despot tyrants in Europe. 20 years ago there was communist dictatorship.

I find this debate similar to MRAs vs Manosphere. Do we really expect to be able to topple people with years and years experience in real-politik and power plays within a few years? And do so by using the very channels they've set up themselves?

Nope, the best we can do is get behind things like Bitcoin and other anarchistic technology, which destroys political and historic monopolies.

 

[RexImperator]

I saw this book being discussed on Bill Moyers with Paul Krugman. Not a PK fan by any means but I do agree that the US/West is moving more towards oligarchy. I don't presume to have the answer but perhaps this may actually be tied to the increase in enfranchisement? As democracy devolves, and elections are decided by easily manipulated masses, perhaps more critical decisions necessarily become the provenance of the unelected deep state.

You can see the interview here:

http://video.pbs.org/video/2365227038/

One thing that annoyed me was this certain level of arrogance I picked up from Krugman as he discussed redistribution for it's own sake. So as the argument goes, you need to take away other people's money and then decide how to spend it for the public good, which sounds reasonable to some degree, since all governments must necessarily do this to some extent, but who decides? I get the sense that Krugman believes that only the "right sort of people" like himself (elite liberal types) are really "enlightened" enough to decide where to spend the money. Here's the catch: Keynesian economics seems to be incompatible with "democracy" at some level (or if not, then with the form of governance as it now stands in the USA), because, when the economy stalls and tax revenues fall, as public debt increases, the population seems to vote for the government to reduce it's spending, which is the opposite of what Keynes recommended.

Besides Piketty's proposed solution of a wealth tax, didn't Milton Friedman propose a guaranteed minimum income? Perhaps this would be a more free-market-oriented answer.

 

[Samseau]

For me, the most revealing flaw of these socialist thinkers is that they never advance the idea of a net worth tax. Always the focus is shifted to high income earners, but those are people who actually work. As correctly noted, the real rich are rent seekers - they do not actually work!

Why not just slap a 5% net worth tax on the top 1%? And a 1% net worth tax on the top 20%. Would generate hundred of billions. Send that money to the poor, and reduce income taxes to relieve the middle class.

But none of these left wing "thinkers" ever propose such an idea, which leads me to believe they are nothing more than shills for the rich. Income taxes only keep the rich entrenched in power, but that's all the democrats ever want to do - tax the working class via income taxes.

The fact that none of the reviews about Piketty's book talk about a net worth tax leads me to believe he is also nothing more than a shill for the rich disguised as a hero for the poor.

 

[Tail Gunner]

I read a good article on this book by Michael Barone just this morning.

"Thomas Piketty calls for an 80 percent tax on incomes above $500,000 in the United States." Now that is insane.

Thomas Piketty wants income equality --- and the hell with growth
By Michael Barone
APRIL 30, 2014 AT 1:15 PM

French economist Thomas Piketty's book Capital in the Twenty-First Century has been inspiring a lot of comment and controversy. The English translation published last month zipped to No. 1 on amazon.com.

It has given a lift to economists on the Left who have cheered on President Obama's flagging attempts to make income inequality a voting issue. They have hailed it as “truly superb” and “extraordinarily important.”

Others, not all on the Right, have taken a jaundiced view. “All wrong” was the verdict of one. “The main argument is based on two (false) claims,” concluded another.

Piketty’s title echoes Karl Marx’s Das Kapital and his argument is similar: Returns on capital tend to exceed returns to labor, producing increasing income inequality and concentration of wealth.

That happened in the nineteenth century, he says, and is likely to happen again in the twenty-first. The twentieth century was a happy exception because of the wealth-destroying effects of two world wars and the Great Depression.

Piketty goes far beyond Obama's tepid responses -- a higher minimum wage, forgiveness of college loans -- to a red-hot remedy: an 80 percent tax on incomes above $500,000 in the United States. On global wealth, he proposes a progressive tax, topping out at two percent on fortunes greater than 5 billion euros ($6.9 billion).

That’s obviously not going to happen any time soon. But from the hosannas and harrumphs that have greeted the book — no, I haven’t read all 577 pages — certain conclusions can be drawn.

There is general agreement that Piketty has compiled an impressive array of data on income inequality in multiple nations going back 200 years or more. There is agreement also that he thoughtfully states caveats and cautions about data interpretation.

His thesis seems at least plausible at a time when the very top incomes have increased much more rapidly than those at the middle and bottom. Even some critics acknowledge that, as the Washington Post's Robert Samuelson writes, “the present concentration of income and wealth instinctively feels excessive. It understandably stirs resentment.”

But is his picture of current trends complete? The Manhattan Institute's Scott Winship points out that relying, as Piketty does, on tax returns for the U.S. statistics means omitting income from Social Security, food stamps, public housing, Medicare and Medicaid.

Tax returns count roommates and unmarried partners as separate units when they are part of a larger household. They don’t include employer-paid health insurance — an increasing share of employee compensation in recent decades.

Including these factors, Winship notes, means that incomes below the top 10 percent have not stagnated but have risen significantly since the 1970s. Increasing inequality is compatible with increases in ordinary people’s incomes.

Economist Tyler Cowen takes issue with another of Piketty’s assumptions, that the rich can earn 4 to 5 percent on their wealth “automatically, with the mere passage of time, rather than as the result of strategic risk taking.”

The French economist, Cowen says, has “a notion of capital as a growing, homogeneous blob” when in fact “sudden reversals and retrenchments are inevitable.”

Piketty concedes this is true for people with ordinary incomes. He opposes personal investment accounts in Social Security because there is too much risk of making bad investments.

His assumption that wealthy investors face no similar risks may have seemed plausible in the generation after World War II, when the Fortune 500 list of major companies remained remarkably stable.

But it has made little sense in recent years, when General Motors has gone bankrupt and Google, founded in 1998, is one of the world’s most highly valued companies.

“There's a persistent tension,” writes Bloomberg's Clive Crook, “between the limits of the data [Piketty] presents and the grandiosity of the conclusions he draws.”

Like global warming alarmists, he extrapolates from abstract theory and a few years' trend lines out a century forward -- and presents the results as inevitable.

He also presents them as justifying the confiscation, more or less, of wealth accumulated by private individuals and putting it in the hands of mandarins guided by their supposedly superior sensitivity to public welfare.

There might be less inequality in such a world, but also less economic growth and a lower, though more equal, standard of living.

“In perhaps the most revealing line of the book,” Cowen writes, “the 42-year-old Piketty writes that since the age of 25, he has not left Paris, ‘except for brief trips.’ ”

France, where a cozy elite runs government and large corporations, has a 75-percent top income tax rate and essentially zero economic growth. Is that the future American liberals want?

CLARIFICATION: Thomas Piketty calls for an 80 percent tax on incomes above $500,000 in the United States. On global wealth, he proposes a progressive tax, topping out at two percent on fortunes above 5 billion euros ($6.9 billion). This column was originally posted on April 27 and was updated at 1 p.m. April 30 to include this clarification.

http://washingtonexaminer.com/thoma...lity-and-the-hell-with-growth/article/2547740

 

[RexImperator]

Maybe we should be talking more about why there are higher taxes on people's labor vs. returns on capital and whether or not that is a just arrangement.

Samseau, Piketty did mention a wealth/ net worth tax in one of the interviews I heard.

 

[Samseau]

Maybe we should be talking more about why there are higher taxes on people's labor vs. returns on capital and whether or not that is a just arrangement.

Samseau, Piketty did mention a wealth/ net worth tax in one of the interviews I heard.

http://www.newrepublic.com/article/...know-about-thomas-pikettys-wealth-capital-tax

He argues for a global net worth tax... obviously ridiculous. No way to enforce such a global law.

He should have just argued for a net worth tax on it's own, not on a global level. No wonder everyone ignored that chapter.

Regardless, a net worth tax is easily the most fair way to tax the rich.

 

[DaveR]

Maybe we should be talking more about why there are higher taxes on people's labor vs. returns on capital and whether or not that is a just arrangement.

Samseau, Piketty did mention a wealth/ net worth tax in one of the interviews I heard.

http://www.newrepublic.com/article/...know-about-thomas-pikettys-wealth-capital-tax

He argues for a global net worth tax... obviously ridiculous. No way to enforce such a global law.

He should have just argued for a net worth tax on it's own, not on a global level. No wonder everyone ignored that chapter.

Regardless, a net worth tax is easily the most fair way to tax the rich.

Taking the criticism further, how would a net worth tax be implemented? Very few wealthy people own their assets directly. They are usually held in very complex structures in order to avoid any association with themselves, and therefore to separate their business from personal taxation. It's very difficult to legislate against that when family members are living in other jurisdictions.

 

[Tail Gunner]

Maybe we should be talking more about why there are higher taxes on people's labor vs. returns on capital and whether or not that is a just arrangement.

Samseau, Piketty did mention a wealth/ net worth tax in one of the interviews I heard.

http://www.newrepublic.com/article/...know-about-thomas-pikettys-wealth-capital-tax

He argues for a global net worth tax... obviously ridiculous. No way to enforce such a global law.

He should have just argued for a net worth tax on it's own, not on a global level. No wonder everyone ignored that chapter.

Regardless, a net worth tax is easily the most fair way to tax the rich.

Taking the criticism further, how would a net worth tax be implemented? Very few wealthy people own their assets directly. They are usually held in very complex structures in order to avoid any association with themselves, and therefore to separate their business from personal taxation. It's very difficult to legislate against that when family members are living in other jurisdictions.

Whenever a nation enacts draconion tax revenue measures capital simply flees the country, which results in less tax revenue instead of more.

When capital flees the country it is often followed by the investor. Then there is also a brain drain, as well as a capital drain and a tax revenue drain.

It is all highly predictable. It is interesting how liberals do not believe in God or Satan, but they believe that their foolish policies will somehow defy the basic laws of economics and the obvious proposition that the vast majority of people will act (and react) in their own economic self-interest.

 

[puckerman]

He sounds like the typical socialist. Government creates problems like economic inequality via inflation and corporate welfare. As a socialist, he blames what is left of the free market for this problem. Instead of advocating actual solutions, he just wants to give more power to the institutions that created the problem in the first place.