

Why We’re in a New Gilded Age - siavosh
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2014/may/08/thomas-piketty-new-gilded-age/

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eliyak
The problem with redistribution of wealth is that if the very wealthy have,
say, 50% of their income taken away, they have 50% less reason to earn it in
the first place, by creating goods and services that other people want to buy.
And when they do, they necessarily must transfer wealth to other people, in
the form of wages, payment for goods and services, and eventually selling the
final product (which the purchaser views as a net benefit, and which he
necessarily can afford to purchase). That is why the US, which has high wealth
inequality, also has high standards of living overall.

A million people with $300 each will not be able to create a million washing
machines, but one man with $300 million can make 2 million of them, and when
he sells them they will improve the lives of the purchasers in a way they
could not do by themselves. If 50% of his profits were to be taken away, he
will make a decision such as moving his business to another country or state,
which has less taxes. This will result in less income to workers and
businesses in the original location, and less taxes for that government.

If wealth inequality is an evil, it is an evil of the most necessary kind.

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zzalpha
"That is why the US, which has high wealth inequality, also has high standards
of living overall."

I see. So countries with more redistributive policies, like Canada, obviously
have lower standards of living than the US.

Right?

It couldn't be that your ideology doesn't actually match reality, could it?

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Animats
_Why didn’t the universally enfranchised citizens of France vote in
politicians who would take on the rentier class? Well, then as now great
wealth purchased great influence—not just over policies, but over public
discourse. Upton Sinclair famously declared that “it is difficult to get a man
to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”
Piketty, looking at his own nation’s history, arrives at a similar
observation: “The experience of France in the Belle Époque proves, if proof
were needed, that no hypocrisy is too great when economic and financial elites
are obliged to defend their interest.”_

This is why Ronald Reagan is referred to as "The Great Communicator" by the
right. He turned "greed is good, greed works" into something that could be
sold to the white working class.

