In order to ensure that this thread continues to meet TL standards and follows the proper guidelines, we will be enforcing the rules in the OP more strictly. Be sure to give them a re-read to refresh your memory! The vast majority of you are contributing in a healthy way, keep it up!
NOTE: When providing a source, explain why you feel it is relevant and what purpose it adds to the discussion if it's not obvious. Also take note that unsubstantiated tweets/posts meant only to rekindle old arguments can result in a mod action.
Thomas Piketty is not the anti-capitalist radical that his critics fear.
"The market economy," he tells me at the bar of the St Regis Hotel in downtown Washington, DC, "is a system that has a lot of merit." (The location was chosen by the publicist for the English edition of his book; she admitted to me that perhaps it was a little too "top one percent," but it fit everyone's schedule nicely.)
Piketty is very French, with several buttons on his shirt undone, a fairly thick accent, and a Bourdieu reference ready to drop in response to a question about whether economists overemphasize mathematical models over empirical analysis. His book, Capital in the 21st Century (see our short guide), is being widely hailed as the most important economics volume of the decade and this week became the top-selling book on Amazon. It provides intellectual heft for some of the activist energy around Occupy Wall Street and other efforts to advance a post-Obama left-wing politics. Its core thesis is that capitalism, if left untamed, suffers from a fundamental flaw and will inevitably lead to a growing concentration of economic power into the hands of those lucky enough to inherit large sums of wealth from their parents, a state Piketty calls "patrimonial capitalism."
National Review and The Nation rarely agree on much, but both the right-wing and the left-wing magazines have reviewed Piketty as part of a revival of Marxist thinking.
It's probably no coincidence that Americans see Piketty — a professor at École des hautes études en sciences sociales — as more left-wing than he sees himself. The French political debate is considerably broader than the American one (I recall a dinner a few years back at which a senior member of what's considered the moderate wing of France's currently-in-power Socialist Party told the room that the problem with American Democrats is they don't see the need to "transcend capitalism entirely.") So the view that capitalism should be tempered by a top tax rate of 80 percent on wage income supplemented by a modest tax on net wealth is not necessarily a radical viewpoint there. During our conversation he expressed admiration for the "responsible" attitude of German labor unions toward the needs of the firms they work for, presumably in contrast to the counterproductively militant attitudes of French labor.
Indeed, he is at pains to stress that he's not even really a madcap tax raiser or an enemy of wealth accumulation. "My point," he says, "is not to increase taxation of wealth. It's actually to reduce taxation of wealth for most people."
I gotta hand it to the French to have an avowed Marxist really telling us what he thinks will fix the economy. "The market economy is a system that has a lot of merit" and "capitalism should be tempered by a top tax rate of 80%" and a wealth tax. Not for revenue per se, but we gotta blast the wealthy or inequality overtakes us all!
Thomas Piketty is not the anti-capitalist radical that his critics fear.
"The market economy," he tells me at the bar of the St Regis Hotel in downtown Washington, DC, "is a system that has a lot of merit." (The location was chosen by the publicist for the English edition of his book; she admitted to me that perhaps it was a little too "top one percent," but it fit everyone's schedule nicely.)
Piketty is very French, with several buttons on his shirt undone, a fairly thick accent, and a Bourdieu reference ready to drop in response to a question about whether economists overemphasize mathematical models over empirical analysis. His book, Capital in the 21st Century (see our short guide), is being widely hailed as the most important economics volume of the decade and this week became the top-selling book on Amazon. It provides intellectual heft for some of the activist energy around Occupy Wall Street and other efforts to advance a post-Obama left-wing politics. Its core thesis is that capitalism, if left untamed, suffers from a fundamental flaw and will inevitably lead to a growing concentration of economic power into the hands of those lucky enough to inherit large sums of wealth from their parents, a state Piketty calls "patrimonial capitalism."
National Review and The Nation rarely agree on much, but both the right-wing and the left-wing magazines have reviewed Piketty as part of a revival of Marxist thinking.
It's probably no coincidence that Americans see Piketty — a professor at École des hautes études en sciences sociales — as more left-wing than he sees himself. The French political debate is considerably broader than the American one (I recall a dinner a few years back at which a senior member of what's considered the moderate wing of France's currently-in-power Socialist Party told the room that the problem with American Democrats is they don't see the need to "transcend capitalism entirely.") So the view that capitalism should be tempered by a top tax rate of 80 percent on wage income supplemented by a modest tax on net wealth is not necessarily a radical viewpoint there. During our conversation he expressed admiration for the "responsible" attitude of German labor unions toward the needs of the firms they work for, presumably in contrast to the counterproductively militant attitudes of French labor.
Indeed, he is at pains to stress that he's not even really a madcap tax raiser or an enemy of wealth accumulation. "My point," he says, "is not to increase taxation of wealth. It's actually to reduce taxation of wealth for most people."
I gotta hand it to the French to have an avowed Marxist really telling us what he thinks will fix the economy. "The market economy is a system that has a lot of merit" and "capitalism should be tempered by a top tax rate of 80%" and a wealth tax. Not for revenue per se, but we gotta blast the wealthy or inequality overtakes us all!
Good, you didnt actually read a single word of it. Wanne try that again?
Piketty is not a marxist, not at all. Actually that's one of the most sound critic I've read about his book : he basically empirically shows that Marx was right (more than Kuznets or anyone else at least) but completly discard communism in the introduction (he says that he has no nostalgia for communism and basically imply that it always lead to totalitarism).
On April 25 2014 05:58 Boblion wrote: Taking economic lessons from the French. Good god America is truly doomed.
French economy is actually quite lively, with Olivier Blanchard, Esther Duflo and now Piketty and Emmanuel Saez.
Former Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens believes marijuana should be legalized by the federal government, predicting that the public will soon decide prohibiting the substance is "not worth the cost."
In a Thursday interview with NPR's Scott Simon, the retired justice was asked if he believes the drug should be legal at the federal level.
"Yes," Stevens said. "I really think that that's another instance of public opinion [that's] changed. And recognize that the distinction between marijuana and alcoholic beverages is really not much of a distinction. Alcohol, the prohibition against selling and dispensing alcoholic beverages has I think been generally, there's a general consensus that it was not worth the cost. And I think really in time that will be the general consensus with respect to this particular drug."
i like how it takes a racist remark to draw national criticism to a guy who's leading an armed rebellion against the federal gov't. That's not to say racism is okay in any context, but it just shows how sensationalized our media is in regards to this shit.
Thomas Piketty is not the anti-capitalist radical that his critics fear.
"The market economy," he tells me at the bar of the St Regis Hotel in downtown Washington, DC, "is a system that has a lot of merit." (The location was chosen by the publicist for the English edition of his book; she admitted to me that perhaps it was a little too "top one percent," but it fit everyone's schedule nicely.)
Piketty is very French, with several buttons on his shirt undone, a fairly thick accent, and a Bourdieu reference ready to drop in response to a question about whether economists overemphasize mathematical models over empirical analysis. His book, Capital in the 21st Century (see our short guide), is being widely hailed as the most important economics volume of the decade and this week became the top-selling book on Amazon. It provides intellectual heft for some of the activist energy around Occupy Wall Street and other efforts to advance a post-Obama left-wing politics. Its core thesis is that capitalism, if left untamed, suffers from a fundamental flaw and will inevitably lead to a growing concentration of economic power into the hands of those lucky enough to inherit large sums of wealth from their parents, a state Piketty calls "patrimonial capitalism."
National Review and The Nation rarely agree on much, but both the right-wing and the left-wing magazines have reviewed Piketty as part of a revival of Marxist thinking.
It's probably no coincidence that Americans see Piketty — a professor at École des hautes études en sciences sociales — as more left-wing than he sees himself. The French political debate is considerably broader than the American one (I recall a dinner a few years back at which a senior member of what's considered the moderate wing of France's currently-in-power Socialist Party told the room that the problem with American Democrats is they don't see the need to "transcend capitalism entirely.") So the view that capitalism should be tempered by a top tax rate of 80 percent on wage income supplemented by a modest tax on net wealth is not necessarily a radical viewpoint there. During our conversation he expressed admiration for the "responsible" attitude of German labor unions toward the needs of the firms they work for, presumably in contrast to the counterproductively militant attitudes of French labor.
Indeed, he is at pains to stress that he's not even really a madcap tax raiser or an enemy of wealth accumulation. "My point," he says, "is not to increase taxation of wealth. It's actually to reduce taxation of wealth for most people."
I gotta hand it to the French to have an avowed Marxist really telling us what he thinks will fix the economy. "The market economy is a system that has a lot of merit" and "capitalism should be tempered by a top tax rate of 80%" and a wealth tax. Not for revenue per se, but we gotta blast the wealthy or inequality overtakes us all!
Good, you didnt actually read a single word of it. Wanne try that again?
Mince words if you want, call him a socialist. With semantics we can loop all the way back around that true communism was never realized etc etc. I do know he advocates a 80% top tax rate i.e. a very high rate on high incomes. He claims to be favorably disposed towards the concept of a market economy. His confiscatory regime is exactly antagonistic to a market economy and that's what I find so laughable. Buy and sell goods on the market and earn your profit, but don't be too successful at it, otherwise we're going to get ya!
It's been plastered over the news for quite a while now. He was feted by White House advisers. He wants to put an end to those high incomes in service of inequality. Now Gorsameth, unless your primary academic understandings are in your profession of insult comic, perhaps you'd like to comment on Pikkety and America's economic or political situation?
Thomas Piketty is not the anti-capitalist radical that his critics fear.
"The market economy," he tells me at the bar of the St Regis Hotel in downtown Washington, DC, "is a system that has a lot of merit." (The location was chosen by the publicist for the English edition of his book; she admitted to me that perhaps it was a little too "top one percent," but it fit everyone's schedule nicely.)
Piketty is very French, with several buttons on his shirt undone, a fairly thick accent, and a Bourdieu reference ready to drop in response to a question about whether economists overemphasize mathematical models over empirical analysis. His book, Capital in the 21st Century (see our short guide), is being widely hailed as the most important economics volume of the decade and this week became the top-selling book on Amazon. It provides intellectual heft for some of the activist energy around Occupy Wall Street and other efforts to advance a post-Obama left-wing politics. Its core thesis is that capitalism, if left untamed, suffers from a fundamental flaw and will inevitably lead to a growing concentration of economic power into the hands of those lucky enough to inherit large sums of wealth from their parents, a state Piketty calls "patrimonial capitalism."
National Review and The Nation rarely agree on much, but both the right-wing and the left-wing magazines have reviewed Piketty as part of a revival of Marxist thinking.
It's probably no coincidence that Americans see Piketty — a professor at École des hautes études en sciences sociales — as more left-wing than he sees himself. The French political debate is considerably broader than the American one (I recall a dinner a few years back at which a senior member of what's considered the moderate wing of France's currently-in-power Socialist Party told the room that the problem with American Democrats is they don't see the need to "transcend capitalism entirely.") So the view that capitalism should be tempered by a top tax rate of 80 percent on wage income supplemented by a modest tax on net wealth is not necessarily a radical viewpoint there. During our conversation he expressed admiration for the "responsible" attitude of German labor unions toward the needs of the firms they work for, presumably in contrast to the counterproductively militant attitudes of French labor.
Indeed, he is at pains to stress that he's not even really a madcap tax raiser or an enemy of wealth accumulation. "My point," he says, "is not to increase taxation of wealth. It's actually to reduce taxation of wealth for most people."
I gotta hand it to the French to have an avowed Marxist really telling us what he thinks will fix the economy. "The market economy is a system that has a lot of merit" and "capitalism should be tempered by a top tax rate of 80%" and a wealth tax. Not for revenue per se, but we gotta blast the wealthy or inequality overtakes us all!
Good, you didnt actually read a single word of it. Wanne try that again?
Mince words if you want, call him a socialist. With semantics we can loop all the way back around that true communism was never realized etc etc. I do know he advocates a 80% top tax rate i.e. a very high rate on high incomes. He claims to be favorably disposed towards the concept of a market economy. His confiscatory regime is exactly antagonistic to a market economy and that's what I find so laughable. Buy and sell goods on the market and earn your profit, but don't be too successful at it, otherwise we're going to get ya!
It's been plastered over the news for quite a while now. He was feted by White House advisers. He wants to put an end to those high incomes in service of inequality. Now Gorsameth, unless your primary academic understandings are in your profession of insult comic, perhaps you'd like to comment on Pikkety and America's economic or political situation?
Except the entire point of his book is that those that have done nothing to earn their wealth (by inheritance or sheer luck) are able to keep it. Even in the case that they do earn it, however, they still pose a risk to the system by holding the power to influence the government (local, state, and federal) and communities to give them an unfair advantage and maintain their wealth.
A Texas jury has awarded $2.925 million to a family that filed suit after their air and drinking water were contaminated by an oil and gas company, a win attorneys are calling "the first fracking verdict in U.S. history," according to a post on DeSmogBlog.
Plaintiffs Bob and Lisa Parr sued Aruba Petroleum Inc. in 2011 alleging that drilling and fracking at the company's 22 sites, located within a few miles of their home, were making them sick.
"My daughter was experiencing nose bleeds, rashes and there were some mornings she would wake up covered in blood ... screaming and crying," Lisa Parr said during a 2011 press conference.
Despite Aruba Petroleum's plans to appeal the verdict, the Parr's attorneys said the family has been "vindicated."
“I’m really proud of the family that went through what they went through and said, ‘I’m not going to take it anymore,'" attorney David Matthews wrote in a blog post on his firm's site. "It takes guts to say, ‘I’m going to stand here and protect my family from an invasion of our right to enjoy our property.’ It’s not easy to go through a lawsuit and have your personal life uncovered and exposed to the extent this family went through.”
Thomas Piketty is not the anti-capitalist radical that his critics fear.
"The market economy," he tells me at the bar of the St Regis Hotel in downtown Washington, DC, "is a system that has a lot of merit." (The location was chosen by the publicist for the English edition of his book; she admitted to me that perhaps it was a little too "top one percent," but it fit everyone's schedule nicely.)
Piketty is very French, with several buttons on his shirt undone, a fairly thick accent, and a Bourdieu reference ready to drop in response to a question about whether economists overemphasize mathematical models over empirical analysis. His book, Capital in the 21st Century (see our short guide), is being widely hailed as the most important economics volume of the decade and this week became the top-selling book on Amazon. It provides intellectual heft for some of the activist energy around Occupy Wall Street and other efforts to advance a post-Obama left-wing politics. Its core thesis is that capitalism, if left untamed, suffers from a fundamental flaw and will inevitably lead to a growing concentration of economic power into the hands of those lucky enough to inherit large sums of wealth from their parents, a state Piketty calls "patrimonial capitalism."
National Review and The Nation rarely agree on much, but both the right-wing and the left-wing magazines have reviewed Piketty as part of a revival of Marxist thinking.
It's probably no coincidence that Americans see Piketty — a professor at École des hautes études en sciences sociales — as more left-wing than he sees himself. The French political debate is considerably broader than the American one (I recall a dinner a few years back at which a senior member of what's considered the moderate wing of France's currently-in-power Socialist Party told the room that the problem with American Democrats is they don't see the need to "transcend capitalism entirely.") So the view that capitalism should be tempered by a top tax rate of 80 percent on wage income supplemented by a modest tax on net wealth is not necessarily a radical viewpoint there. During our conversation he expressed admiration for the "responsible" attitude of German labor unions toward the needs of the firms they work for, presumably in contrast to the counterproductively militant attitudes of French labor.
Indeed, he is at pains to stress that he's not even really a madcap tax raiser or an enemy of wealth accumulation. "My point," he says, "is not to increase taxation of wealth. It's actually to reduce taxation of wealth for most people."
I gotta hand it to the French to have an avowed Marxist really telling us what he thinks will fix the economy. "The market economy is a system that has a lot of merit" and "capitalism should be tempered by a top tax rate of 80%" and a wealth tax. Not for revenue per se, but we gotta blast the wealthy or inequality overtakes us all!
Good, you didnt actually read a single word of it. Wanne try that again?
Mince words if you want, call him a socialist. With semantics we can loop all the way back around that true communism was never realized etc etc. I do know he advocates a 80% top tax rate i.e. a very high rate on high incomes. He claims to be favorably disposed towards the concept of a market economy. His confiscatory regime is exactly antagonistic to a market economy and that's what I find so laughable. Buy and sell goods on the market and earn your profit, but don't be too successful at it, otherwise we're going to get ya!
It's been plastered over the news for quite a while now. He was feted by White House advisers. He wants to put an end to those high incomes in service of inequality. Now Gorsameth, unless your primary academic understandings are in your profession of insult comic, perhaps you'd like to comment on Pikkety and America's economic or political situation?
Except the entire point of his book is that those that have done nothing to earn their wealth (by inheritance or sheer luck) are able to keep it. Even in the case that they do earn it, however, they still pose a risk to the system by holding the power to influence the government (local, state, and federal) and communities to give them an unfair advantage and maintain their wealth.
It's easier to just dismiss him and call him names, rather than go through the painstaking process of actually understanding his positions.
The obvious reality is staring everyone in the face but some just don't have the courage to face it.
Your first and second lines seem to contradict each other green. But since that's how you responded to my prior query in the end, it is not surprising; as this forum isn't a good place for thorough reasoned discussion.
How often do people in this thread write/call their congresspeople? I find I send about 1-2 messages a year of late; typically calls.
Thomas Piketty is not the anti-capitalist radical that his critics fear.
"The market economy," he tells me at the bar of the St Regis Hotel in downtown Washington, DC, "is a system that has a lot of merit." (The location was chosen by the publicist for the English edition of his book; she admitted to me that perhaps it was a little too "top one percent," but it fit everyone's schedule nicely.)
Piketty is very French, with several buttons on his shirt undone, a fairly thick accent, and a Bourdieu reference ready to drop in response to a question about whether economists overemphasize mathematical models over empirical analysis. His book, Capital in the 21st Century (see our short guide), is being widely hailed as the most important economics volume of the decade and this week became the top-selling book on Amazon. It provides intellectual heft for some of the activist energy around Occupy Wall Street and other efforts to advance a post-Obama left-wing politics. Its core thesis is that capitalism, if left untamed, suffers from a fundamental flaw and will inevitably lead to a growing concentration of economic power into the hands of those lucky enough to inherit large sums of wealth from their parents, a state Piketty calls "patrimonial capitalism."
National Review and The Nation rarely agree on much, but both the right-wing and the left-wing magazines have reviewed Piketty as part of a revival of Marxist thinking.
It's probably no coincidence that Americans see Piketty — a professor at École des hautes études en sciences sociales — as more left-wing than he sees himself. The French political debate is considerably broader than the American one (I recall a dinner a few years back at which a senior member of what's considered the moderate wing of France's currently-in-power Socialist Party told the room that the problem with American Democrats is they don't see the need to "transcend capitalism entirely.") So the view that capitalism should be tempered by a top tax rate of 80 percent on wage income supplemented by a modest tax on net wealth is not necessarily a radical viewpoint there. During our conversation he expressed admiration for the "responsible" attitude of German labor unions toward the needs of the firms they work for, presumably in contrast to the counterproductively militant attitudes of French labor.
Indeed, he is at pains to stress that he's not even really a madcap tax raiser or an enemy of wealth accumulation. "My point," he says, "is not to increase taxation of wealth. It's actually to reduce taxation of wealth for most people."
I gotta hand it to the French to have an avowed Marxist really telling us what he thinks will fix the economy. "The market economy is a system that has a lot of merit" and "capitalism should be tempered by a top tax rate of 80%" and a wealth tax. Not for revenue per se, but we gotta blast the wealthy or inequality overtakes us all!
Good, you didnt actually read a single word of it. Wanne try that again?
Mince words if you want, call him a socialist. With semantics we can loop all the way back around that true communism was never realized etc etc. I do know he advocates a 80% top tax rate i.e. a very high rate on high incomes. He claims to be favorably disposed towards the concept of a market economy. His confiscatory regime is exactly antagonistic to a market economy and that's what I find so laughable. Buy and sell goods on the market and earn your profit, but don't be too successful at it, otherwise we're going to get ya!
It's been plastered over the news for quite a while now. He was feted by White House advisers. He wants to put an end to those high incomes in service of inequality. Now Gorsameth, unless your primary academic understandings are in your profession of insult comic, perhaps you'd like to comment on Pikkety and America's economic or political situation?
Except the entire point of his book is that those that have done nothing to earn their wealth (by inheritance or sheer luck) are able to keep it. Even in the case that they do earn it, however, they still pose a risk to the system by holding the power to influence the government (local, state, and federal) and communities to give them an unfair advantage and maintain their wealth.
So you're saying he's declaring war against the lottery of birth?
On April 25 2014 08:23 oneofthem wrote: danglars can you explain the concept of economic rent to us.
Perhaps you will connect it to his argument and/or make your own. Amongst the abundance of invective and hyperbole here, there simply isn't time to play cute games with you to try to find your points. However, let me leave you with this: should you actually desire an explanation of an economic term, perhaps google.com will supply you one?
On April 25 2014 08:27 zlefin wrote: Your first and second lines seem to contradict each other green. But since that's how you responded to my prior query in the end, it is not surprising; as this forum isn't a good place for thorough reasoned discussion.
How often do people in this thread write/call their congresspeople? I find I send about 1-2 messages a year of late; typically calls.
I have no idea what you are talking about...What is your query?
Do you mean their local/state representatives or just any national congressperson in general?
Energy efficiency standards in Ohio that have been facing attacks from state lawmakers provide significant consumer savings relative to their costs, according to an Ohio-based clean energy organization.
From 2009 through 2013, the standards saved Ohio residents $1.03 billion and cost $456 million, according to reports from the Public Utility Commission of Ohio analyzed by the Ohio Advanced Energy Economy.
Ohio’s renewable energy and energy efficiency standards, which were signed into law in 2008, require “alternative energy” — including advanced nuclear power and “clean coal” — to make up 25 percent of investor-owned utilities’ electricity supply by 2025, and stipulate that half of that 25 percent must come from from renewable sources such as wind and hydropower. The law makes it so that utilities must meet yearly benchmarks for renewable energy and efficiency, but a proposed bill from the Ohio Senate would freeze the standards at their 2014 levels.
“The utility companies’ own numbers demonstrate that on average, every dollar that has been spent on energy efficiency programs has resulted in two dollars in savings for Ohio consumers,” Ted Ford, president and CEO of Ohio Advanced Energy Economy said in a statement. “It defies all logic that Ohio lawmakers would be tempted to do away with this kind of success.”
The Ohio Advanced Energy Economy also found that utilities praised the standards for their savings and ability to create jobs. American Electric Power Ohio said that energy efficiency programs have been “an important resource for the state of Ohio, AEP Ohio, and its customers, continuing to be important as future fuel and commodity prices remain volatile and environmental regulations become more stringent.”
However, AEP Ohio still thinks that costs will need to rise if the utility is to meet its benchmarks by 2025, a spokesperson told the Columbus Dispatch. This expectation of rising costs is why Republican lawmakers in the Senate proposed S.B. 310, the bill that would freeze the standards at their 2014 level. Supporters of the bill hope it will pass through the state legislature in the next month.
Thomas Piketty is not the anti-capitalist radical that his critics fear.
"The market economy," he tells me at the bar of the St Regis Hotel in downtown Washington, DC, "is a system that has a lot of merit." (The location was chosen by the publicist for the English edition of his book; she admitted to me that perhaps it was a little too "top one percent," but it fit everyone's schedule nicely.)
Piketty is very French, with several buttons on his shirt undone, a fairly thick accent, and a Bourdieu reference ready to drop in response to a question about whether economists overemphasize mathematical models over empirical analysis. His book, Capital in the 21st Century (see our short guide), is being widely hailed as the most important economics volume of the decade and this week became the top-selling book on Amazon. It provides intellectual heft for some of the activist energy around Occupy Wall Street and other efforts to advance a post-Obama left-wing politics. Its core thesis is that capitalism, if left untamed, suffers from a fundamental flaw and will inevitably lead to a growing concentration of economic power into the hands of those lucky enough to inherit large sums of wealth from their parents, a state Piketty calls "patrimonial capitalism."
National Review and The Nation rarely agree on much, but both the right-wing and the left-wing magazines have reviewed Piketty as part of a revival of Marxist thinking.
It's probably no coincidence that Americans see Piketty — a professor at École des hautes études en sciences sociales — as more left-wing than he sees himself. The French political debate is considerably broader than the American one (I recall a dinner a few years back at which a senior member of what's considered the moderate wing of France's currently-in-power Socialist Party told the room that the problem with American Democrats is they don't see the need to "transcend capitalism entirely.") So the view that capitalism should be tempered by a top tax rate of 80 percent on wage income supplemented by a modest tax on net wealth is not necessarily a radical viewpoint there. During our conversation he expressed admiration for the "responsible" attitude of German labor unions toward the needs of the firms they work for, presumably in contrast to the counterproductively militant attitudes of French labor.
Indeed, he is at pains to stress that he's not even really a madcap tax raiser or an enemy of wealth accumulation. "My point," he says, "is not to increase taxation of wealth. It's actually to reduce taxation of wealth for most people."
I gotta hand it to the French to have an avowed Marxist really telling us what he thinks will fix the economy. "The market economy is a system that has a lot of merit" and "capitalism should be tempered by a top tax rate of 80%" and a wealth tax. Not for revenue per se, but we gotta blast the wealthy or inequality overtakes us all!
Good, you didnt actually read a single word of it. Wanne try that again?
Mince words if you want, call him a socialist. With semantics we can loop all the way back around that true communism was never realized etc etc. I do know he advocates a 80% top tax rate i.e. a very high rate on high incomes. He claims to be favorably disposed towards the concept of a market economy. His confiscatory regime is exactly antagonistic to a market economy and that's what I find so laughable. Buy and sell goods on the market and earn your profit, but don't be too successful at it, otherwise we're going to get ya!
It's been plastered over the news for quite a while now. He was feted by White House advisers. He wants to put an end to those high incomes in service of inequality. Now Gorsameth, unless your primary academic understandings are in your profession of insult comic, perhaps you'd like to comment on Pikkety and America's economic or political situation?
Except the entire point of his book is that those that have done nothing to earn their wealth (by inheritance or sheer luck) are able to keep it. Even in the case that they do earn it, however, they still pose a risk to the system by holding the power to influence the government (local, state, and federal) and communities to give them an unfair advantage and maintain their wealth.
So you're saying he's declaring war against the lottery of birth?
On April 25 2014 08:23 oneofthem wrote: danglars can you explain the concept of economic rent to us.
Perhaps you will connect it to his argument and/or make your own. Amongst the abundance of invective and hyperbole here, there simply isn't time to play cute games with you to try to find your points. However, let me leave you with this: should you actually desire an explanation of an economic term, perhaps google.com will supply you one?
it becomes difficult to 'argue' with you if you don't know the basic structure of the arguments being presented.
Thomas Piketty is not the anti-capitalist radical that his critics fear.
"The market economy," he tells me at the bar of the St Regis Hotel in downtown Washington, DC, "is a system that has a lot of merit." (The location was chosen by the publicist for the English edition of his book; she admitted to me that perhaps it was a little too "top one percent," but it fit everyone's schedule nicely.)
Piketty is very French, with several buttons on his shirt undone, a fairly thick accent, and a Bourdieu reference ready to drop in response to a question about whether economists overemphasize mathematical models over empirical analysis. His book, Capital in the 21st Century (see our short guide), is being widely hailed as the most important economics volume of the decade and this week became the top-selling book on Amazon. It provides intellectual heft for some of the activist energy around Occupy Wall Street and other efforts to advance a post-Obama left-wing politics. Its core thesis is that capitalism, if left untamed, suffers from a fundamental flaw and will inevitably lead to a growing concentration of economic power into the hands of those lucky enough to inherit large sums of wealth from their parents, a state Piketty calls "patrimonial capitalism."
National Review and The Nation rarely agree on much, but both the right-wing and the left-wing magazines have reviewed Piketty as part of a revival of Marxist thinking.
It's probably no coincidence that Americans see Piketty — a professor at École des hautes études en sciences sociales — as more left-wing than he sees himself. The French political debate is considerably broader than the American one (I recall a dinner a few years back at which a senior member of what's considered the moderate wing of France's currently-in-power Socialist Party told the room that the problem with American Democrats is they don't see the need to "transcend capitalism entirely.") So the view that capitalism should be tempered by a top tax rate of 80 percent on wage income supplemented by a modest tax on net wealth is not necessarily a radical viewpoint there. During our conversation he expressed admiration for the "responsible" attitude of German labor unions toward the needs of the firms they work for, presumably in contrast to the counterproductively militant attitudes of French labor.
Indeed, he is at pains to stress that he's not even really a madcap tax raiser or an enemy of wealth accumulation. "My point," he says, "is not to increase taxation of wealth. It's actually to reduce taxation of wealth for most people."
I gotta hand it to the French to have an avowed Marxist really telling us what he thinks will fix the economy. "The market economy is a system that has a lot of merit" and "capitalism should be tempered by a top tax rate of 80%" and a wealth tax. Not for revenue per se, but we gotta blast the wealthy or inequality overtakes us all!
Good, you didnt actually read a single word of it. Wanne try that again?
Mince words if you want, call him a socialist. With semantics we can loop all the way back around that true communism was never realized etc etc. I do know he advocates a 80% top tax rate i.e. a very high rate on high incomes. He claims to be favorably disposed towards the concept of a market economy. His confiscatory regime is exactly antagonistic to a market economy and that's what I find so laughable. Buy and sell goods on the market and earn your profit, but don't be too successful at it, otherwise we're going to get ya!
It's been plastered over the news for quite a while now. He was feted by White House advisers. He wants to put an end to those high incomes in service of inequality. Now Gorsameth, unless your primary academic understandings are in your profession of insult comic, perhaps you'd like to comment on Pikkety and America's economic or political situation?
Except the entire point of his book is that those that have done nothing to earn their wealth (by inheritance or sheer luck) are able to keep it. Even in the case that they do earn it, however, they still pose a risk to the system by holding the power to influence the government (local, state, and federal) and communities to give them an unfair advantage and maintain their wealth.
How common is it to be rich just from inheritance? It seems like a lot of rich people got that way by working like Bill Gates and Warren Buffett. I know that's anecdotal, which is partly why I'm asking.
Thomas Piketty is not the anti-capitalist radical that his critics fear.
"The market economy," he tells me at the bar of the St Regis Hotel in downtown Washington, DC, "is a system that has a lot of merit." (The location was chosen by the publicist for the English edition of his book; she admitted to me that perhaps it was a little too "top one percent," but it fit everyone's schedule nicely.)
Piketty is very French, with several buttons on his shirt undone, a fairly thick accent, and a Bourdieu reference ready to drop in response to a question about whether economists overemphasize mathematical models over empirical analysis. His book, Capital in the 21st Century (see our short guide), is being widely hailed as the most important economics volume of the decade and this week became the top-selling book on Amazon. It provides intellectual heft for some of the activist energy around Occupy Wall Street and other efforts to advance a post-Obama left-wing politics. Its core thesis is that capitalism, if left untamed, suffers from a fundamental flaw and will inevitably lead to a growing concentration of economic power into the hands of those lucky enough to inherit large sums of wealth from their parents, a state Piketty calls "patrimonial capitalism."
National Review and The Nation rarely agree on much, but both the right-wing and the left-wing magazines have reviewed Piketty as part of a revival of Marxist thinking.
It's probably no coincidence that Americans see Piketty — a professor at École des hautes études en sciences sociales — as more left-wing than he sees himself. The French political debate is considerably broader than the American one (I recall a dinner a few years back at which a senior member of what's considered the moderate wing of France's currently-in-power Socialist Party told the room that the problem with American Democrats is they don't see the need to "transcend capitalism entirely.") So the view that capitalism should be tempered by a top tax rate of 80 percent on wage income supplemented by a modest tax on net wealth is not necessarily a radical viewpoint there. During our conversation he expressed admiration for the "responsible" attitude of German labor unions toward the needs of the firms they work for, presumably in contrast to the counterproductively militant attitudes of French labor.
Indeed, he is at pains to stress that he's not even really a madcap tax raiser or an enemy of wealth accumulation. "My point," he says, "is not to increase taxation of wealth. It's actually to reduce taxation of wealth for most people."
I gotta hand it to the French to have an avowed Marxist really telling us what he thinks will fix the economy. "The market economy is a system that has a lot of merit" and "capitalism should be tempered by a top tax rate of 80%" and a wealth tax. Not for revenue per se, but we gotta blast the wealthy or inequality overtakes us all!
Good, you didnt actually read a single word of it. Wanne try that again?
Mince words if you want, call him a socialist. With semantics we can loop all the way back around that true communism was never realized etc etc. I do know he advocates a 80% top tax rate i.e. a very high rate on high incomes. He claims to be favorably disposed towards the concept of a market economy. His confiscatory regime is exactly antagonistic to a market economy and that's what I find so laughable. Buy and sell goods on the market and earn your profit, but don't be too successful at it, otherwise we're going to get ya!
It's been plastered over the news for quite a while now. He was feted by White House advisers. He wants to put an end to those high incomes in service of inequality. Now Gorsameth, unless your primary academic understandings are in your profession of insult comic, perhaps you'd like to comment on Pikkety and America's economic or political situation?
Except the entire point of his book is that those that have done nothing to earn their wealth (by inheritance or sheer luck) are able to keep it. Even in the case that they do earn it, however, they still pose a risk to the system by holding the power to influence the government (local, state, and federal) and communities to give them an unfair advantage and maintain their wealth.
How common is it to be rich just from inheritance? It seems like a lot of rich people got that way by working like Bill Gates and Warren Buffett. I know that's anecdotal, which is partly why I'm asking.
Well that depends on what you mean by "How common is it to be rich just from inheritance?" and "by working like Bill Gates and Warren Buffett"
Thomas Piketty is not the anti-capitalist radical that his critics fear.
"The market economy," he tells me at the bar of the St Regis Hotel in downtown Washington, DC, "is a system that has a lot of merit." (The location was chosen by the publicist for the English edition of his book; she admitted to me that perhaps it was a little too "top one percent," but it fit everyone's schedule nicely.)
Piketty is very French, with several buttons on his shirt undone, a fairly thick accent, and a Bourdieu reference ready to drop in response to a question about whether economists overemphasize mathematical models over empirical analysis. His book, Capital in the 21st Century (see our short guide), is being widely hailed as the most important economics volume of the decade and this week became the top-selling book on Amazon. It provides intellectual heft for some of the activist energy around Occupy Wall Street and other efforts to advance a post-Obama left-wing politics. Its core thesis is that capitalism, if left untamed, suffers from a fundamental flaw and will inevitably lead to a growing concentration of economic power into the hands of those lucky enough to inherit large sums of wealth from their parents, a state Piketty calls "patrimonial capitalism."
National Review and The Nation rarely agree on much, but both the right-wing and the left-wing magazines have reviewed Piketty as part of a revival of Marxist thinking.
It's probably no coincidence that Americans see Piketty — a professor at École des hautes études en sciences sociales — as more left-wing than he sees himself. The French political debate is considerably broader than the American one (I recall a dinner a few years back at which a senior member of what's considered the moderate wing of France's currently-in-power Socialist Party told the room that the problem with American Democrats is they don't see the need to "transcend capitalism entirely.") So the view that capitalism should be tempered by a top tax rate of 80 percent on wage income supplemented by a modest tax on net wealth is not necessarily a radical viewpoint there. During our conversation he expressed admiration for the "responsible" attitude of German labor unions toward the needs of the firms they work for, presumably in contrast to the counterproductively militant attitudes of French labor.
Indeed, he is at pains to stress that he's not even really a madcap tax raiser or an enemy of wealth accumulation. "My point," he says, "is not to increase taxation of wealth. It's actually to reduce taxation of wealth for most people."
I gotta hand it to the French to have an avowed Marxist really telling us what he thinks will fix the economy. "The market economy is a system that has a lot of merit" and "capitalism should be tempered by a top tax rate of 80%" and a wealth tax. Not for revenue per se, but we gotta blast the wealthy or inequality overtakes us all!
Good, you didnt actually read a single word of it. Wanne try that again?
Mince words if you want, call him a socialist. With semantics we can loop all the way back around that true communism was never realized etc etc. I do know he advocates a 80% top tax rate i.e. a very high rate on high incomes. He claims to be favorably disposed towards the concept of a market economy. His confiscatory regime is exactly antagonistic to a market economy and that's what I find so laughable. Buy and sell goods on the market and earn your profit, but don't be too successful at it, otherwise we're going to get ya!
It's been plastered over the news for quite a while now. He was feted by White House advisers. He wants to put an end to those high incomes in service of inequality. Now Gorsameth, unless your primary academic understandings are in your profession of insult comic, perhaps you'd like to comment on Pikkety and America's economic or political situation?
Except the entire point of his book is that those that have done nothing to earn their wealth (by inheritance or sheer luck) are able to keep it. Even in the case that they do earn it, however, they still pose a risk to the system by holding the power to influence the government (local, state, and federal) and communities to give them an unfair advantage and maintain their wealth.
How common is it to be rich just from inheritance? It seems like a lot of rich people got that way by working like Bill Gates and Warren Buffett. I know that's anecdotal, which is partly why I'm asking.
Apparently, 6 of the top 10 wealthiest Americans inherited their wealth. Source
Obviously, this isn't an extremely fair sample, but, if you take a look Piketty's work, this would look like the start of a return to oligarchy instead of an overall anomaly. Maybe we'll see some data for inherited wealth since 1950s in the near future, but I can't think of a situation where the wealth of the super elite won't be passed down to their "heirs," except in extraordinary circumstances like Bill Gates...
Thomas Piketty is not the anti-capitalist radical that his critics fear.
"The market economy," he tells me at the bar of the St Regis Hotel in downtown Washington, DC, "is a system that has a lot of merit." (The location was chosen by the publicist for the English edition of his book; she admitted to me that perhaps it was a little too "top one percent," but it fit everyone's schedule nicely.)
Piketty is very French, with several buttons on his shirt undone, a fairly thick accent, and a Bourdieu reference ready to drop in response to a question about whether economists overemphasize mathematical models over empirical analysis. His book, Capital in the 21st Century (see our short guide), is being widely hailed as the most important economics volume of the decade and this week became the top-selling book on Amazon. It provides intellectual heft for some of the activist energy around Occupy Wall Street and other efforts to advance a post-Obama left-wing politics. Its core thesis is that capitalism, if left untamed, suffers from a fundamental flaw and will inevitably lead to a growing concentration of economic power into the hands of those lucky enough to inherit large sums of wealth from their parents, a state Piketty calls "patrimonial capitalism."
National Review and The Nation rarely agree on much, but both the right-wing and the left-wing magazines have reviewed Piketty as part of a revival of Marxist thinking.
It's probably no coincidence that Americans see Piketty — a professor at École des hautes études en sciences sociales — as more left-wing than he sees himself. The French political debate is considerably broader than the American one (I recall a dinner a few years back at which a senior member of what's considered the moderate wing of France's currently-in-power Socialist Party told the room that the problem with American Democrats is they don't see the need to "transcend capitalism entirely.") So the view that capitalism should be tempered by a top tax rate of 80 percent on wage income supplemented by a modest tax on net wealth is not necessarily a radical viewpoint there. During our conversation he expressed admiration for the "responsible" attitude of German labor unions toward the needs of the firms they work for, presumably in contrast to the counterproductively militant attitudes of French labor.
Indeed, he is at pains to stress that he's not even really a madcap tax raiser or an enemy of wealth accumulation. "My point," he says, "is not to increase taxation of wealth. It's actually to reduce taxation of wealth for most people."
I gotta hand it to the French to have an avowed Marxist really telling us what he thinks will fix the economy. "The market economy is a system that has a lot of merit" and "capitalism should be tempered by a top tax rate of 80%" and a wealth tax. Not for revenue per se, but we gotta blast the wealthy or inequality overtakes us all!
Good, you didnt actually read a single word of it. Wanne try that again?
Mince words if you want, call him a socialist. With semantics we can loop all the way back around that true communism was never realized etc etc. I do know he advocates a 80% top tax rate i.e. a very high rate on high incomes. He claims to be favorably disposed towards the concept of a market economy. His confiscatory regime is exactly antagonistic to a market economy and that's what I find so laughable. Buy and sell goods on the market and earn your profit, but don't be too successful at it, otherwise we're going to get ya!
It's been plastered over the news for quite a while now. He was feted by White House advisers. He wants to put an end to those high incomes in service of inequality. Now Gorsameth, unless your primary academic understandings are in your profession of insult comic, perhaps you'd like to comment on Pikkety and America's economic or political situation?
Except the entire point of his book is that those that have done nothing to earn their wealth (by inheritance or sheer luck) are able to keep it. Even in the case that they do earn it, however, they still pose a risk to the system by holding the power to influence the government (local, state, and federal) and communities to give them an unfair advantage and maintain their wealth.
How common is it to be rich just from inheritance? It seems like a lot of rich people got that way by working like Bill Gates and Warren Buffett. I know that's anecdotal, which is partly why I'm asking.
Those two also being the prime examples of super rich who pass on their wealth to charity rather than their children.
EPT
