"These would include reparations for descendants of enslaved and colonized people, encouraging countries in the global south to tax the fortunes of nonresidents who do business there, cancellation of debts and a program he calls 'inheritance for all,' in which wealth taxes would reduce large fortunes and provide everyone with a financial cushion. He would also take a large measure of control over corporations away from their managers and shareholders and give it to employees, and create 'a system of egalitarian funding for political campaigns, the media and think tanks.'... He is well aware that changes on the scale he is proposing never happen incrementally.... Piketty doesn’t make predictions, but he treats the current system of 'hypercapitalism' as being obviously doomed. Other than socialism, the only real alternatives are authoritarianism, Chinese-style Communism or 'reactionary projects' like ISIS. ... Absent disaster, it seems possible, or even likely, that [incremental adjustments] will move economic policy in the direction Piketty would want... though to an extent that he would consider pathetically inadequate."
From Nicholas Lemann's NYT review of Thomas Piketty's new book "A Brief History of Equality."
Posts
78 comments:
'"...'virtually confiscatory tax rates have been an immense historical success'...'
In what universe?
Here's an example. If a high earner is to be taxed at 90 or 100% on anything over (let's pick a number) $500,000, that person will just earn $499,000 and then stop working for the year.
In many tech company's, there is a policy or unlimited time off. In reality nobody takes advantage of it. But if one were to test it out???
Contrary to liberal talking points, 'rich' people pay most of the taxes.
The economy would crater...
Democrats are okay with this stuff. After all, it's worked in the USSR, Cuba, Venezuela, etc. What could go wrong?
Didn't this guy already have his 5 minutes of fame? I thought we were past all of that.
Simply: He seems to have missed the entire 20th Century. Not to mention the first 21 years of this one. He'll sell a lot of books because those on the Left are starved for intelligent experts who approve of their desires. Unfortunately, this might not be the guy, but at least it'll buy them a few months of airtime to discuss these notions.
Or, we could just look at the last 200 years and dispel the entire thing.
It is amazing how many people who are obviously very bright want to go down a path that has only and always led to misery and poverty everywhere it has been tried. THIS time it will work!
"...'virtually confiscatory tax rates have been an immense historical success'...'
In what universe?
In the universe where people's primary economic concern is that someone else has more money than they do.
Other than socialism, the only real alternatives are authoritarianism
Socialism isn't authoritarian? Be still, my beating heart. The original sin of socialism is to ignore human nature. No, human nature won't fade away in the arc of history, transmogrifying into angelic goodness in the bliss of heaven.
"Piketty doesn’t make predictions"
That explains things.
"He would also take a large measure of control over corporations away from their managers and shareholders and give it to employees"
How has that worked out for Netflix? Netflix employee's protested Dave Chapelle's video on 21 Oct 2021, and the company's stock value was $653.16. Just now, the stock was selling at $213.97.
He sounds like the ideal Democratic economist. Why hasn't he won a Nobel Prize yet?
Imagine the catfights between Piketty and Krugman.
What a guy this Piketty is.
If ya had a BYOB party, would ya even consider asking a guy like Piketty?
If one were to implement these policies, it would have to be done globally so there is nowhere for capital to hide and it would have to have a guaranteed minimal income attached to it as a bribe to the proles. think this is a glimpse of the end game. This is a description of the actual plan that they want to achieve. These are not vague suggestions. All those "nutty conspiracy theorists" and supposed wing nuts who are scared of a New World Order/One World Govt future are scared of this list, which is presented to the public by a credentialed intellectual in a prestigious main stream respected newspaper. Twenty years ago these ideas would have been laughed at. Now they are taken seriously. Do not shrug this off. You will hear about this again in different forms until it becomes accepted, just as has been done with cultural issues as has been mentioned in other posts.
Oh my God! What a great idea that nobody is going to violently oppose! If these people are going to demand reparations for sins done against them, they should also be willing to pay reparations for those they have done. So let's get started. China needs to pay reparations for Covid 19. Covid 19 has done more damage to the global economy that both world wars did. India also sucks. The parallels between slavery and the Indian caste system are striking. So the Indians need to pay reparations to the lower castes. Obviously, the Arab world owes reparations alongside the Europeans for slavery. Arab merchants captured and sold into slavery around 200 million African people. Etc.
I'm amused when these 'experts' refer to our current situation as 'hyper-capitalism'.
It's not even real capitalism. The government is involved at every stage.
More importantly, since about 2000, extreme profits are privatized, while extreme losses are bailed out by public money.
And here we are again, in a Democratic administration, with Biden involved in giving government loans to his contributors' solar companies: First Solar and Masimo Corporation.
We can't even get the government to stop putting corn in our gasoline which is rumored to cost more than real gasoline (or is no saving).
We don't live in 'real capitalism', much less 'hyper-capitalism'.
"encouraging countries in the global south to tax the fortunes of nonresidents who do business there"
Which will make nonresidents really eager to business there.
"cancellation of debts"
Which will make it so much easier for people to borrow again in the future.
"provide everyone with a financial cushion"
Which they will manage equally wisely, so as to maintain equality of ownership.
"He would also take a large measure of control over corporations away from their managers and shareholders and give it to employees"
Which will really stimulate the founding of new, innovative, equitable companies.
Piketty supposedly has a net worth of $1.5 million. If he wants to walk the walk, rather than just talk the talk, he should immediately donate 90% of his wealth to the government and let the career bureaucrats decide how to spend it.
I'm not going to hold my breath waiting for that to happen. Like the wise man said, everybody is conservative when it comes to their own interests. Especially socialists.
I nominate Piketty to redistribute first. All revenues from the book should be confiscated. And ownership the book's publisher should be transferred immediately to the employees. To reduce inequality.
"...'virtually confiscatory tax rates have been an immense historical success'...'
What the hell? That needs to be explained, because it seems to me to be fucking nuts.
That an economist would so totally misunderstand what drives the technological advancement and well-being of humanity is shocking. Or perhaps pathetic is a better word choice.
Does he also discuss the Gulags that will be needed to enforce his Marxist nightmare?
It's been said before, but let's reiterate: to be a socialist after the experience of the 20th century, you have to loathe humanity with a passion that is frightening to behold.
First, a test case. Take all of Picketty’s property. Let’s see how that works out.
Why is Western Civilization responsible for reparations while the African princes who sold those slaves to the West are guiltless?
"...'virtually confiscatory tax rates have been an immense historical success'...'
Is he unfamiliar with the flight of British millionaires? And how starkly backward Great Britain was compared with the US during that era?
Everybody wants to rule the world.
I will give Piketty credit for fleecing his fans like a good capitalist rather than critique him for being as dumb as his fans.
The constitution prohibits any wealth tax at the federal level.
We will need a Constitutional Amendment for any federal wealth tax
John LGKTQ Henry
The company I work for has a monthly “values” presentation. Yesterday’s guest presenter was a charity our company supports. The charity has a $10 billion endowment and distributes about $2 billion a year in grants. Slide 3 of the presentation reviewed the enormity of wealth disparity in the US.
The problem with the "let the workers own the means of production" crowd (Piketey, et al) is that they don't understand the relationship between risk and reward and that it takes excess capital to make an investment. For those worried about the small things in life: food, housing, transportation, etc. won't risk capital un uncertain endeavors This innovation and the things that capitalism brought to the modern world would never happen. You have to have money to lose in order to risk it, and you have to have the promise of sufficient gain to offset the potential loss. But if the reward is greatly curtailed as it grows such that you get no extra value then the risk stops being worth it, and investment does not happen. I consider Pikety and economic idiot.
Blogger Mike Yancey said...
"I'm amused when these 'experts' refer to our current situation as 'hyper-capitalism'.
It's not even real capitalism. The government is involved at every stage."
Yeah. This alone disqualifies Piketty as a serious economist, IMO.
This is so outrageously stupid, I actually wish I could read the article. But the NYT won't let me because they require profits, or something…
Sounds like African democracy .. one wealth distribution, one time.
'That an economist would so totally misunderstand what drives the technological advancement and well-being of humanity is shocking.'
"Greed is good."
https://conversationswithtyler.com/episodes/thomas-piketty/
The constitution prohibits any wealth tax at the federal level.
We should need a Constitutional Amendment for any federal wealth tax
FTFY.
Simple position here:
We - the U.S. - are often accused to be excessively capitalistic and failing. What exactly is the measure of capitalism anymore?
I recently did my taxes. Took me about 8 hours across Federal, State, and Local. I bought land this year, made a significant income, operated a rental property in another state, and sold my current home. I received some dividends and sold some stock for short and long term capital gains.
Roughly 40% of my income was taken by the government across federal taxes, medicare, unemployment, state taxes, local taxes, sales taxes, and transaction taxes. I'm not even calculating in all the other stuff like gas taxes and what not.
Now I'm a top quintile earner and I get that. I'm not complaining about my quality of life.
But I can't sit here and see over 40% of my gross income be used by the state for it's own purpose and say we are in a capitalist society. The state is declaring more of my income is suitable for it's own use than my remaining disposable income after accounting for house, food, and clothes. The state has more control over my disposable income than I do.
This seems like a clear cut case to say: It ain't capitalist.
Joe Smith said...
'"...'virtually confiscatory tax rates have been an immense historical success'...'
In what universe?
=========
I am surprised at you Joe
in their Kantian-Rawlsian universe and what Kant-Rawls would define as success >>> being in charge of bags of loot to distribute
Mike Yancy nailed it, but I'd like to hear from comrade Bob.
"He would also take a large measure of control over corporations away from their managers and shareholders and give it to employees." Investors and small business owners, you tell me. How attractive do you find the notion of starting a small business with your or your investors' money, just to hand the running of it over to people hired off the street?
Even for a Communist these proposals are idiotic. However I guess the point of making them is to start the ball rolling so ultimately any counter offer that isn't quite as crazy will seem reasonable. That or it helps him sell a lot books and get paid speaking gigs.
"Piketty doesn’t make predictions, but he treats the current system of 'hypercapitalism' as being obviously doomed. Other than socialism, the only real alternatives are authoritarianism, Chinese-style Communism or 'reactionary projects' like ISIS. ."
But "hypercapitalism" sounds preferable to all of those.
I wonder which profession attracts more charlatans and cultists: psychiatry or economics? On balance, the wrong ideas of Marx and Engels did far more damage than those of Freud and Jung. I could even make an argument for Freud. Like Columbus he discovered something large and important although it wasn't where or what he thought. I don't think that Marx discovered anything except a novel and pseudo-scientific way of expressing the resentment that is the normal part of the human condition.....Nonetheless, it is better to light a flame rather than curse the darkness as Joan of Arc pointed out, so let me present a plan for the betterment of the world.... In our shared quest for equality, universities should take the lead. No job in the university should pay more than ten times the salary of the cafeteria workers. This would have two immediate beneficial aspects. The cafeteria workers would get an increase in salary, but, more importantly, the teaching assistants would finally make a salary commensurate with cafeteria workers. Very bliss it will be for them.
I, of course, exclude coaches from the above proposal.
Yancy is right
The constitution is pretty clear that we would need an amendment for any wealth tax.
But those fuckers in DC might do one without and amendment and those fuckers on the Supreme Court might allow it
I used to think that people were over-exaggerating a threat, but it really does look like our "elites" are trying to re-impose feudalism.
Stop whining about how much tax you paid, tree joe.
Those Ukrainian corrupt rats likn the 3 Vindmans, Natalie jaresko, zelenski, the Biden's et al deserve the money more than you do.
You should be happy to share with people like them
John LGKTQ Henry
Joe Smith said...
'"...'virtually confiscatory tax rates have been an immense historical success'...'
In what universe?
Here's an example. If a high earner is to be taxed at 90 or 100% on anything over (let's pick a number) $500,000, that person will just earn $499,000 and then stop working for the year.
There are actually real world examples of this. I don't even have to mention Zimbabwe.
Sweden had confiscatory taxes above an income of about $50,000. This was 40 years ago when that was a decent income. It was a well known fact that most of those with that income level were doctors (aside from politicians). The result was that no one could find a doctor after October. They all worked to the income level where tax rates went to 90% and then they took the rest of the year off. The doctors and other high earners were all around the Mediterranean in November and December.
Income and property redistribution is always first and foremost redistribution of income and property to the people who propose income and property redistribution.
The best part about free speech is getting to climb inside the mind of insane progressives before you have to climb into bed with them.
Another utopian communist wanting to try something that's never worked anywhere ever. Sigh. One would think they would finally realize there's something wrong with communism but the don't and never will.
Humans often think use simple propositional logic. They understand how to count apples and divide them among a group: 4 apples for 2 people results in 2 apples for each.
In response to this author, consider the Communist dream:
"From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs"
That didn't turn out so well for the millions who died in the USSR, China, and more.
Dividing current stuff up a given point in time isn't how nature works. Animals display a mix of impulsiveness, hoarding, gorging/partying, and other eccentricities. Maybe 2/3 play well with a group, while 1/3 wants to be alone and face the world alone or is a predator wanting to take from others. These various strategies can be effective, as nature is often random and unfair. "I didn't see the flood/comet/drought/lion/tiger/spider coming. I'm dead now and that meanie got fat from eating my body." This is organic, sustainable, the history of humans and all animals, and this is why wishful ideologies routinely fail. Nature is more complex than a fresh coat of paint on utopianism, religious heavens where lions lay down with lambs, and warmed-over Communism.
Still, simple thinkers need simple strategies. Mitigate, manage, and employ "checks and balanced" to avoid the worst.
Cook will be along any moment now to tell us Piketty isn't a real leftist.
"Democrats are okay with this stuff."
If they are, why haven't they tried to implement or even propose such "stuff" in the past half-century? (And, the economy was booming in the 50s and 60s when tax rates on the rich were much higher than now.)
The Dems are just de facto Republicans who are slightly less loathesome than the declared Republicans. They all serve the oligarchs who own this country.
"I'm amused when these 'experts' refer to our current situation as 'hyper-capitalism'.
"It's not even real capitalism. The government is involved at every stage.
More importantly, since about 2000, extreme profits are privatized, while extreme losses are bailed out by public money.
"We don't live in 'real capitalism', much less 'hyper-capitalism'."
To the degree this is true it is because the "capitalists" do not want to bear the risks of true competition; they want the public to bear the losses resulting from their actions, and they want the public to pay them for enterprises that will profit only them, (the "capitalists"). In short, it is the capitalists so hallowed here who are rigging the game and buying off both parties to keep the game rigged.
He’s a red diaper baby who claims he isn’t a commie. Sure. Anyway so what? They have been calling for these ideas for decades. Are you just now noticing?
"Cook will be along any moment now to tell us Piketty isn't a real leftist."
Why would I say that? I don't know anything about Piketty or what his political orientation may be, but his suggestions seem like leftist policy proposals. The Dems would never think of proposing any measures even faintly like Piketty's, which is the tell that our Dems are certainly not leftists, much less "hard leftists." They are just less nasty, more house-trained Republicans.
I volunteer to choose which property to wrest from its current owners, and also to decide who gets it next. I require no salary, the graft alone should sustain my meager needs.
Blogger John henry said...
"Yancy is right
The constitution is pretty clear that we would need an amendment for any wealth tax.
But those fuckers in DC might do one without and amendment and those fuckers on the Supreme Court might allow it"
I understand that Fauci thinks he can impose one by decree.
A tax that progressively taxes consumption, not income or wealth, is the only tax that can raise the kinds of revenues envisaged without discouraging saving and investment upon which the future growth of the economy will always depend. The technical name for such a tax is a graduated expenditure tax. I once devised a single parameter version of such a tax that has the virtue of being transparent, lobby proof, and continuously progressive over the entire range of consumer spending. But of course who am I, a mere amateur economist who was once a talented mathematician, to propose such a thing? Anyway here it is:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1WIdVnQEWdYgYYly9iKkesWCVhfINvbtwuVq2GMOxMbw/edit?usp=sharing
You don't a consitutional admendment for a "wealth tax". You just need 5 SCOTuS judges.
Agricultural billionaires have seed corn that they don't eat while the world is starving. Obviously the seed corn should be distributed and eaten.
Extra money is capital, and capital is seed corn. It buys heavy equipment for ditch diggers.
I believe Megan McArdle has done a definitive takedown of Piketty on economic grounds and understanding the data rather than theory. His data doesn't say what he thinks it does.
It's like he borrowed his program from the villains of Atlas Shrugged.
MMT is so five minutes ago.
Getting from each “according to his abilities” while deciding for him what he needs has always been a reach.
Pikkety is a French economist. That is all you need to know when it comes to his political leanings. What might fly in France will never pass in the U.S.
The concept of private property and the capitalist system have lifted more people out of abject poverty than any other system in the history of the world. It doesn’t involve equality because human life doesn’t involve equality. It is a great way to efficiently allocate resources, which are always scarce—or at least they have been since that fiasco in the Garden of Eden (as Armen Alchian once said).
Don’t mess with it.
If we are going to try something different, why don’t we start by taking away from Picketty, Krugman,and Tribe and Senators Warren, Warner, Feinstein, and President Biden everything they have (including that damn beach house) and give it to the next ten people that cross the US southern border claiming asylum. That could be interesting.
These ideas are absurd.
Piketty can't to the basic math that proves him wrong. Much like Stephanie Kelton, it's all sophistry.
'If they are, why haven't they tried to implement or even propose such "stuff" in the past half-century?'
https://www.foxbusiness.com/politics/biden-tax-hike-budget-request
The headline of above linked article is "Biden pitches largest tax hike in history as part of $5.8T budget request"
Are you even sentient?
Blogger Robert Cook said..."In short, it is the capitalists so hallowed here who are rigging the game and buying off both parties to keep the game rigged."
Few here will defend the crony capitalism you describe. On the flip side, we decry the Leviathan government which allows it to survive.
How can you participate in this forum for so long and not understand that? It is a willful ignorance, I think.
He says Reagan was a liberal, which puts him right around Lenin (whose birthday is today). I'm good with the liberalism of Reagan.
(And, the economy was booming in the 50s and 60s when tax rates on the rich were much higher than now.)
Which was mostly because the rest of the world at the time was still recovering from World War II,( When I lived in a small village in England in the mid 1970's, we were the only house within at least three miles that had a refrigerator. No trash service, we burned most of it in a pit in the back yard, and took what didn't burn to the dumpsters on RAF Lakenheath) and the U.S. took full advantage of that. It wasn't until the 1980's that Europe's standard of living began to approach ours. Most of Asia and Africa still haven't.
The thing that bugs me the most about all bitching about how bad things are is the sheer ignorance. Compared to the rest of the world, and history, the homeless in America are living high on the hog. Why do you think millions of people are willing to leave their homes and come to America illegally? Because everyone knows even the poorest of the poor in America live better than most people anywhere else.
Here's something to help Cookie get his mind right:
https://www.npr.org/2013/11/12/244772593/jfks-lasting-economic-legacy-lower-tax-rates
"But liberals say conservatives' interpretation is misleading because conditions were so different in the early 1960s, when the top marginal tax rate was 91 percent. The Kennedy-backed tax cuts took down that rate to 70 percent. Today, the highest rate is 39.6 percent. Cutting the top tax bracket now would not have the same impact because it already has been lowered several times, the argument goes.
"You can only go to the well so many times before you lose effectiveness," says David Shreve, an economic historian who has written about the Kennedy-era tax cuts.
Shreve says there's another factor conservatives overlook: Kennedy's biggest tax cuts were aimed at average wage earners in hopes they would spend more. Boosting the demand side of the economy "gave us the widest prosperity and longest unbroken run of growth in history" up to then.
In contrast, conservatives focus on "supply-side" cuts, which target the marginal tax rates for wealthier individuals. The goal is to encourage them to invest more and expand output.
So for the half century ever since, liberals and conservatives have been debating the lessons of the Kennedy-backed tax cuts. But Allen Matusow, author of The Unraveling of America: A History of Liberalism in the 1960s, says this much is clear: The cuts were game changers. Marginal tax rates never returned to the very high levels of the early 1960s, he says."
Yeah, that's right: N P R
('virtually confiscatory tax rates have been an immense historical success')
Ok, so he's a moron.
"virtually confiscatory tax rates" caused people not to work, and / or to take their compensation in non-taxable forms.
You don't need to own your own jet, if the company has one that flies you wherever you want to go.
it's like he's so stupid he's unaware that other people will fight back
"These would include reparations for descendants of enslaved and colonized people
1: Essentially every single African slave who came to America was sold by another African. Which means that other than the very first slaves, most of the rest were sold by someone who had previously enslaved and sold others.
It's virtually guaranteed, for example, that at least some of Barack Obama's African ancestors were slavers, and sold the ancestors of other black Americans into slavery
2: Who pays the "reparations"? People whose ancestors all came to America after the Civil War?
how about blacks, one of whom's ancestors was a slave owner who raped another of their ancestors? Do they get reparations, or pay them?
3: "colonized people"? Do we get to impose a charge for all the improvements brought about by the colonizers?
encouraging countries in the global south to tax the fortunes of nonresidents who do business there
Yeah, that's a great way to keep the "global south" poor, make sure no one will invest there
a program he calls 'inheritance for all,' in which wealth taxes would reduce large fortunes and provide everyone with a financial cushion
So he can't do math?
Because taking all the rich people's "wealth" and spreading it out over everybody might get you a couple nights out at a good restaruant
ahrie said...
(And, the economy was booming in the 50s and 60s when tax rates on the rich were much higher than now.)
Which was mostly because the rest of the world at the time was still recovering from World War II,
There were also these things called "tax shelters." I remember them well. Tax collections in this country have stayed around 20% of income for 50 years. They went up a bit when Obama was in office but have stayed steady for a long time whatever the rates were.
Piketty is what passes for elite intellectual thinking on the left. He is nothing more than a guy who discovered the power of envy. His economics are a mess of slanted analyses that don’t stand up under scrutiny. Piketty may have discovered the power of envy but he is ignorant of the power of incentives.
Piketty is just another con artist who reaps big bucks from the gubers of the so-called elites. The only honest supporters of Piketty admit they want some form of authoritarian rule with the power to take away all individual rights and property. That is, they are evil people who have envy-diseased minds that will quickly flip to the opposite position once they are in absolute control.
"Piketty may have discovered the power of envy but he is ignorant of the power of incentives."
I've often thought that one of the defining characteristic of leftists is they don't understand incentives.
Who pays the "reparations"? People whose ancestors all came to America after the Civil War?
how about blacks, one of whom's ancestors was a slave owner who raped another of their ancestors? Do they get reparations, or pay them?
What about the African princes who enslaved people and sold them to the White man? For that matter what about slavery in Africa today?
Richard Fernandez, yesterday-
"Communism's failures as a political, social and economic system have blinded historians to its success as a religion."
It all comes down to, "Where does wealth come from?".
Not the state.
Income or capital taxes? Redistributive change is invariably accompanied with democratic/dictatorial governance, progressive corruption, social dysfunction, and, historically, wicked solutions.
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