Tuesday, April 22, 2014

Thomas Piketty Proposals to Advance Income Equality

Daniel Shuchman in WSJ informs on some of the proposals and ideas bandied about by Thomas Piketty in Capital in the Twenty-First Century:
Mr. Piketty urges an 80% tax rate on incomes starting at "$500,000 or $1 million." This is not to raise money for education or to increase unemployment benefits. Quite the contrary, he does not expect such a tax to bring in much revenue, because its purpose is simply "to put an end to such incomes." It will also be necessary to impose a 50%-60% tax rate on incomes as low as $200,000 to develop "the meager US social state." There must be an annual wealth tax as high as 10% on the largest fortunes and a one-time assessment as high as 20% on much lower levels of existing wealth. He breezily assures us that none of this would reduce economic growth, productivity, entrepreneurship or innovation...
Mr. Piketty is not the first utopian visionary. He cites, for instance, the "Soviet experiment" that allowed man to throw "off his chains along with the yoke of accumulated wealth." In his telling, it only led to human disaster because societies need markets and private property to have a functioning economy. He says that his solutions provide a "less violent and more efficient response to the eternal problem of private capital and its return."
It's clear that  Piketty is a hater of capital. He apparently has no idea of the role of capital (which is generally held by the rich) in advancing a society. Further, he has no clue at to the absurdity of promoting income inequality. It is typical left wing nonsense, a subset for the push for an broad-based egalitarian society. As Murray Rothabard wrote 40 years ago in Egalitarianism as a Revolt Against Nature And Other Essays, when discussing those who promote the egalitarian society:
 In no area has the Left been granted justice and morality as extensively and almost universally as in its espousal of massive equality. It is rare indeed in the United States to find anyone, especially any intellectual, challenging the beauty and goodness of the egalitarian ideal... 
The unquestioned ethical status of "equality" may be seen in the common practice of economists. Economists are often caught in a value-judgment bind — eager to make political pronouncements. How can they do so while remaining "scientific" and value free? In the area of egalitarianism, they have been able to make a flat value judgment on behalf of equality with remarkable impunity. Sometimes this judgment has been frankly personal; at other times, the economist has pretended to be the surrogate of "society" in the course of making its value judgment. The result, however, is the same. Consider, for example, the late Henry C. Simons. After properly criticizing various "scientific" arguments for progressive taxation, he came out flatly for progression...economists in favor of egalitarian programs have typically counterbalanced their uncriticized "ideal" against possible disincentive effects on economic productivity; but rarely has the ideal itself been questioned... 
[E]galitarians are acting as terribly spoiled children, denying the structure of reality on behalf of the rapid materialization of their own absurd fantasies. Not only spoiled but also highly dangerous; for the power of ideas is such that the egalitarians have a fair chance of destroying the very universe that they wish to deny and transcend, and to bring that universe crashing around all of our ears. Since their methodology and their goals deny the very structure of humanity and of the universe, the egalitarians are profoundly antihuman; and, therefore, their ideology and their activities may be set down as profoundly evil as well. Egalitarians do not have ethics on their side unless one can maintain that the destruction of civilization, and even of the human race itself, may be crowned with the laurel wreath of a high and laudable morality..

16 comments:

  1. "Mr. Piketty urges an 80% tax rate on incomes starting at "$500,000 or $1 million." This is not to raise money for education or to increase unemployment benefits. Quite the contrary, he does not expect such a tax to bring in much revenue, because its purpose is simply "to put an end to such incomes." It will also be necessary to impose a 50%-60% tax rate on incomes as low as $200,000 to develop "the meager US social state." There must be an annual wealth tax as high as 10% on the largest fortunes and a one-time assessment as high as 20% on much lower levels of existing wealth. He breezily assures us that none of this would reduce economic growth, productivity, entrepreneurship or innovation..."

    The reincarnation of Vladimir Lenin. Sheesh!

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  2. Did Piketty mention anything about the banker fiat cartel and the billionaire banker boys?

    Did he mention anything about currency debasement?

    Anything about how the centralization of political power leads to the centralization of wealth?

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  3. Where can I chip in to buy this jerk a one-way ticket to Cuba or North Korea?

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    1. Seconded. I bet you anything that that little hypocritical shithead won't be so quick to endorse his anti-capital stupidity when he gets a good dose of real socialism. He'll be no different than any other socialist hypocrite. He'll do everything he can to minimize his taxes while wanting everyone else to pay up.

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    2. He probably already does just that.

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  4. Piketty's Gold?

    Reflecting on French economist Thomas Piketty's new book, "Capital," the New York Sun today offers a most politically incorrect explanation for the explosion in income inequality and unemployment in the United States since the 1970s: the end of the dollar's gold convertibility and the unleashing of the age of infinite fiat money. The Sun's commentary is headlined "Piketty's Gold?" and it's posted here:

    Well, feature the chart that Professor Piketty publishes showing inequality in America. This appears in the book at figure 9.8; a similar version, shown alongside here, is offered on his Web site. It’s an illuminating chart. It shows the share of national income of the top decile of the population. It started the century at a bit above 40% and edged above 45% in the Roaring Twenties. It plunged during the Great Depression and edged down in World War II, and then steadied out, until we get to the 1970s. Something happened then that caused income inequality to start soaring. The top decile's share of income went from something like 33% in 1971 to above 47% by 2010.

    Hmmm. What could account for that? Could it be the last broadcast of the “Lawrence Welk Show?” Or the blast off of the Apollo 14 mission to the Moon? Or could it have something to do with the mysterious D.B. Cooper, who bailed out of the plane he hijacked, never to be seen again? A timeline of 1971 offers so many possibilities. But, say, what about the possibility that it was in the middle of 1971, in August, that America closed the gold window at which it was supposed to redeem in specie dollars presented by foreign central banks. That was the default that ended the era of the Bretton Woods monetary system.

    http://www.gata.org/node/13934


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  5. -- He [Piketty] breezily assures us that none of this [taxes on income and wealth] would reduce economic growth, productivity, entrepreneurship or innovation --

    Oh, I am sure that the good Professor Piketty knows that taxes on capital and accumulated wealth (also known as *savings*) will reduce growth, productivity, entrepreneurship and innovation. He's simply lying through his teeth because he wants to sell his baby, his reason for living: equality by force. He's ideologically committed to this, so lying about the true potential costs of higher and more confiscatory taxes is one of the means to the end.

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  6. "He breezily assures us that none of this would reduce economic growth, productivity, entrepreneurship or innovation"

    I am productive and creative and through that creativity have added millions of dollars to the world's economy in my career. Many multiples of my salary over that time. Take my saved, post-tax wealth and I quit working. I'm done. I'll go on the dole. I'll sell used auto parts or flip cars. That's one of the tipping points where I just grab my ball and go home.

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    1. Agreed 100% Jimmy Joe. Implement Maximilien Piketty's edicts and I'm shuttering the business, done working. Maybe that's what it would take to drive a stake through vampiric Marxism's heart.

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    2. I'm right there with you. People don't seem to get what drives us. I love what I do and its still exciting after all these years, but I've also paid a huge price to get here through long hours, incredible stress in the early years meeting payrolls, customer deadlines, etc. I would never have quit my job to start my company if I didn't believe that I could be much better off than working for someone else. Today if someone asked me what's the easiest way to get rich, I would tell them to go work for the government, preferably in a public safety job. You will not end anywhere near as as rich as Warren Buffet or Oprah Winfery, but you'll be richer than 95% of the people paying taxes out of their meager incomes to support your job. I certainly would not encourage anyone to do what I did and start a business. The risk is too high that ideas from people like this guy will gain traction with the idiots that vote. Nothing could be worse than building your business only to have all the wealthy you created confiscated by the government in the name of equality. Screw that! This guy also makes owning physical gold and silver a no brainier.

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  7. Clinton's PEU Staff Pushed Dropping Glass Steagall

    Three close advisors to President Bill Clinton pushed repeal of Glass Steagall in the 1990's. They are:

    Bo Cutter
    Gene Sperling
    John Podesta


    This trio is in addition to Larry Summers and Robert Rubin. Former Co-Chairman of Goldman Sachs Robert Rubin went on to work for CitiGroup before joining PEU Centerview Partners as Counselor.

    Bo Cutter left the Clinton team to work for PEU Warburg Pincus from 1996 to 2009. Gene Sperling made good money working for the PEU boys in 2008:

    Goldman Sachs paid Sperling $887,727 for his advice in 2008, according to Bloomberg News' analysis of financial disclosure forms.

    It was a lucrative year for Sperling. During that time he also earned $250,000 for giving briefings to two hedge funds, Brevan Howard Asset Management and Sterling Stamos Capital Management. He also earned $480,051 as director of the Philadelphia Stock Exchange. During October 2007, he was paid to speak at an event sponsored by Citigroup.

    John Podesta founded the Center for American Progress. His lobbying brother Tony and sister in law Heather made out like bandits from the Podesta insider connections. Tony's firm earned $27.2 million in lobbying fees in 2013, while Heather grossed $7.6 million.

    http://peureport.blogspot.com/2014/04/clintons-peu-staff-pushed-dropping.html

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  8. "The solutions – a top income tax rate of up to 80%, effective inheritance tax, proper property taxes and, because the issue is global, a global wealth tax – are currently inconceivable. The task of economists is to make them more conceivable" - Thomas Piketty.

    All the austrians just aren't doing their tasks as economists.

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  9. Will Piketty be giving up 80% of his book proceeds? After all, it's only fair…right?

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  10. I am utterly amazed that someone with such a child like understanding of the world could ever be handed any kind of advanced degree from any university anywhere in the world. But then again in an egalitarian society, there would be no degrees since such instruments would lead to inequality. Even more disturbing is that there are people willing to hand this pseudo intellectual their hard earned money to read and hear about his ideas that one could validate as worthless by looking at how they are turning his homeland into a formerly developed economy.

    I think he really needs to spend time in North Korea, perhaps harvesting rice to gain a better understanding of the wonderful life egalitarianism creates for its citizens. Or, I guess, he could open a history book. If you want pure evil, collectivism is the way to go.

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  11. The most fundamental inequality in this world is not income inequality, but inequality in sexual attractiveness. In order to achieve an egalitarian society, handsome men like Picketty should have government sulfuric acid dumped on his face, or have 1ft of length cut off from his height, so he is no more attractive to members of his chosen sexual orientation than any other human being would be.

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    1. Thank GOD you were kidding. He's a troll. I googled his image, and hoped he wasn't cute. I have a hard time hating cute people.

      /sarc

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