The French Aristocracy Didn't See It Coming Either

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The French Aristocracy Didn't See It Coming Either

Post by Amskeptic » Fri Apr 25, 2014 4:13 am

Time Magazine

Here’s Why This Best-Selling Book Is Freaking Out the Super-Wealthy
Rana Foroohar
April 23, 2014

There are many reasons why French academic Thomas Piketty’s 685-page tome, “Capital in the 21st Century,” has vaulted to the top of the Amazon.com best seller list and is being discussed with equal fervor by the world’s top economic policy makers and middle class Americans who wonder why they haven’t gotten a raise in years. The main reason is that it proves, irrefutably and clearly, what we’ve all suspected for some time now—the rich ARE getting richer compared to everyone else, and their wealth isn’t trickling down. In fact, it’s trickling up.

Piketty’s 15 years of painstaking data collection—he poured over centuries worth of tax records in places like France, the U.S., Germany, Japan and the U.K—provides clear proof that in lieu of major events like World Wars or government interventions like the New Deal, the rich take a greater and greater share of the world’s economic pie. That’s because the gains on capital (meaning, investments) outpace those on GDP. Result: people with lots of investments take a bigger chunk of the world’s wealth, relative to everyone else, with every passing year. The only time that really changes is when the rich lose a bundle (as they often do in times of global conflict) or growth gets jump started via rebuilding (as it sometimes does after wars).

This is particularly true in times of slow growth like what we’ve seen over the last few years. I’ve written any number of columns and blogs about how quantitative easing has buoyed the stock market, but not really provided the kind of kick that we needed to boost wage growth in the real economy, because it mostly benefits people who hold stocks–that’s the wealthiest 25 % of us. Meanwhile, consumption and wage growth remain stagnant. And as Piketty’s book makes so uncomfortably clear, it’s likely to get worse before it gets better. No wonder I saw an advertisement for a storage company on the subway the other day that read, “The French aristocracy didn’t see it coming, either.”

That’s one of Piketty’s biggest messages–inequality will slowly but surely undermine the population’s faith in the system. He doesn’t believe, as Marx did, that capitalism would simply burn itself out over time. In fact, he says that the more perfect and advanced markets become (at least, in economic terms), the better they work and the more fully they serve the rich. But he does believe that rising inequality leads to a less perfect union, and a likelihood of major social unrest that mirrors the sort that his native France went through in the late 1700s. Indeed, the subsequent detailed collection of wealth data in the form of elaborate income and tax records made France a particularly rich data collection ground for his book. (Bureaucracy is good for something!)

My feeling about this book is similar to that of New York Times’ columnist Paul Krugman. It’s going to be remembered as the economic tome of our era. Basically, Piketty has finally put to death, with data, the fallacies of trickle down economics and the Laffer curve, as well as the increasingly fantastical notion that we can all just bootstrap our way to the Forbes 400 list. It’s telling and important that Piketty credits his work to the fact that he didn’t forge his economic career in the States, as so many top thinkers do, because he was put off by the profession’s obsession with unrealistic mathematical models, which blossomed in the 1980s to the exclusion of almost all other ideas and disciplines, and the false ideologies that they were used to justify. “The truth is that economics should ever have sought to divorce itself from the other social sciences and can only advance in conjunction with them,” he argues.

Indeed, had more top economists followed the lead of other social scientists and ditched their black box models in favor of spending time in the field—meaning on Main Street, where trickle down theory hasn’t ever really worked—they might have come to the same conclusions that Piketty has. We can only hope that the politicians crafting today’s economic programs will take this book to heart.
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Re: The French Aristocracy Didn't See It Coming Either

Post by Bleyseng » Fri Apr 25, 2014 7:31 am

" We can only hope that the politicians crafting today’s economic programs will take this book to heart."

Haha, this is a joke right? Most of the politicians are owed by big business/The Rich so they have no interest in changing the Bullshit they spout. "Trickle Down Economics" "Big Government" are slogans to fool the masses so the Rich continue to amass more Wealth.
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Re: The French Aristocracy Didn't See It Coming Either

Post by glasseye » Fri Apr 25, 2014 7:49 am

Bleyseng wrote: Haha, this is a joke right? Most of the politicians are owed by big business/The Rich so they have no interest in changing the Bullshit they spout.
A few years ago when I first met Colin, we hung around in a parking lot in Sandpoint, ID for about three hours, discussing the ills of the world in general and of the US in particular.

In the end, the solution to all the problems came down to just three words:

"Campaign Finance Reform"
"This war will pay for itself."
Paul Wolfowitz, speaking of Iraq.

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Re: The French Aristocracy Didn't See It Coming Either

Post by yondermtn » Fri Apr 25, 2014 10:17 am

"Campaign Finance Reform"

and whatta know? we seem to be going in the opposite direction. ugh
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Re: The French Aristocracy Didn't See It Coming Either

Post by Amskeptic » Sat Apr 26, 2014 7:55 pm

yondermtn wrote:"Campaign Finance Reform"

and whatta know? we seem to be going in the opposite direction. ugh
Do something. DO something! Do SOME thing? We do know that the gabillions blown in the last election did not work for Rove and Adelson and Kochs, so maybe there is a diminishing return.
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Re: The French Aristocracy Didn't See It Coming Either

Post by Bleyseng » Sun Apr 27, 2014 2:04 am

I personally think that the FoxNews/KochBros/Tea Party cabal have read and believe in Joseph Goebbels on political lies:

“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.”

The power of Big Money to influence elections will have to be balanced by the Truth being spread by the Internet (word of mouth).
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Re: The French Aristocracy Didn't See It Coming Either

Post by glasseye » Sun Apr 27, 2014 7:28 am

Bleyseng wrote: “If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.
Worse, if you keep repeating it long enough, you will eventually come to believe it.

For example: "Citizens United".
To invoke this law, precisely which citizens united?
"This war will pay for itself."
Paul Wolfowitz, speaking of Iraq.

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Re: The French Aristocracy Didn't See It Coming Either

Post by Bleyseng » Sun Apr 27, 2014 10:01 am

I want to shoot the guy that comes up with these names, "Citizens United". Are you kidding me?
Geoff
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Re: The French Aristocracy Didn't See It Coming Either

Post by Amskeptic » Wed Apr 30, 2014 4:37 pm

Bleyseng wrote:I want to shoot the guy that comes up with these names, "Citizens United". Are you kidding me?
It is Orwellian double-speak:
War is peace.
Freedom is slavery.
Ignorance is strength.

Florida Citizens For Clean Water

Colin
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Re: The French Aristocracy Didn't See It Coming Either

Post by hippiewannabe » Wed Apr 30, 2014 8:23 pm

Amskeptic wrote:Time Magazine

Here’s Why This Best-Selling Book Is Freaking Out the Super-Wealthy
Rana Foroohar
April 23, 2014

There are many reasons why French academic Thomas Piketty’s 685-page tome, “Capital in the 21st Century,” has vaulted to the top of the Amazon.com best seller list and is being discussed with equal fervor by the world’s top economic policy makers and middle class Americans who wonder why they haven’t gotten a raise in years. The main reason is that it proves, irrefutably and clearly, what we’ve all suspected for some time now—the rich ARE getting richer compared to everyone else, and their wealth isn’t trickling down. In fact, it’s trickling up.

Piketty’s 15 years of painstaking data collection—he poured over centuries worth of tax records in places like France, the U.S., Germany, Japan and the U.K—provides clear proof that in lieu of major events like World Wars or government interventions like the New Deal, the rich take a greater and greater share of the world’s economic pie. That’s because the gains on capital (meaning, investments) outpace those on GDP. Result: people with lots of investments take a bigger chunk of the world’s wealth, relative to everyone else, with every passing year. The only time that really changes is when the rich lose a bundle (as they often do in times of global conflict) or growth gets jump started via rebuilding (as it sometimes does after wars).

This is particularly true in times of slow growth like what we’ve seen over the last few years. I’ve written any number of columns and blogs about how quantitative easing has buoyed the stock market, but not really provided the kind of kick that we needed to boost wage growth in the real economy, because it mostly benefits people who hold stocks–that’s the wealthiest 25 % of us. Meanwhile, consumption and wage growth remain stagnant. And as Piketty’s book makes so uncomfortably clear, it’s likely to get worse before it gets better. No wonder I saw an advertisement for a storage company on the subway the other day that read, “The French aristocracy didn’t see it coming, either.”

That’s one of Piketty’s biggest messages–inequality will slowly but surely undermine the population’s faith in the system. He doesn’t believe, as Marx did, that capitalism would simply burn itself out over time. In fact, he says that the more perfect and advanced markets become (at least, in economic terms), the better they work and the more fully they serve the rich. But he does believe that rising inequality leads to a less perfect union, and a likelihood of major social unrest that mirrors the sort that his native France went through in the late 1700s. Indeed, the subsequent detailed collection of wealth data in the form of elaborate income and tax records made France a particularly rich data collection ground for his book. (Bureaucracy is good for something!)

My feeling about this book is similar to that of New York Times’ columnist Paul Krugman. It’s going to be remembered as the economic tome of our era. Basically, Piketty has finally put to death, with data, the fallacies of trickle down economics and the Laffer curve, as well as the increasingly fantastical notion that we can all just bootstrap our way to the Forbes 400 list. It’s telling and important that Piketty credits his work to the fact that he didn’t forge his economic career in the States, as so many top thinkers do, because he was put off by the profession’s obsession with unrealistic mathematical models, which blossomed in the 1980s to the exclusion of almost all other ideas and disciplines, and the false ideologies that they were used to justify. “The truth is that economics should ever have sought to divorce itself from the other social sciences and can only advance in conjunction with them,” he argues.

Indeed, had more top economists followed the lead of other social scientists and ditched their black box models in favor of spending time in the field—meaning on Main Street, where trickle down theory hasn’t ever really worked—they might have come to the same conclusions that Piketty has. We can only hope that the politicians crafting today’s economic programs will take this book to heart.
And here's somebody else's opinion back at ya:
So a better suggestion than confiscating wealth through taxes would be to equalize the policies that currently encourage businesses to substitute capital in place of labor. Allow interest rates to rise; reduce payroll taxes, invest in vocational training and increased human capital; do whatever you can to boost labor productivity. Rather than punishing the successful, we could instead simply stop helping them and try to level the playing field; perhaps, even tilt the playing field a little in labor's favor.
http://www.realclearmarkets.com/article ... 01002.html


Just started the book, but so far I like him.
Intellectual and political debate about the distribution of wealth has long been based on an abundance of prejudice and a paucity of fact.
Even those who vociferously disagree with his conclusions seem to respect the contribution of his historical data.

I'm anxious to see if he actually addresses the Laffer Curve, which I find to be theoretically unassailable and empirically proven.

Of course, it remains to be seen if my attention span can hold up through a 700 page book.
Truth is like poetry.
And most people fucking hate poetry.

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Re: The French Aristocracy Didn't See It Coming Either

Post by Amskeptic » Thu May 01, 2014 5:20 am

hippiewannabe wrote: Of course, it remains to be seen if my attention span can hold up through a 700 page book.
You can do it! We're rooting for you! We need more well-thought arguments from you! We need an informed debate partner here!
(I need to read the book, too. :blackeye: )
Colin
(how 'bout them Senate Republicans voting down the minimum wage, haH??)
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Re: The French Aristocracy Didn't See It Coming Either

Post by Bleyseng » Thu May 01, 2014 9:19 am

Amskeptic wrote:
hippiewannabe wrote:
(how 'bout them Senate Republicans voting down the minimum wage, haH??)
Well, what did you expect as the GOP has the Koch Bros gun to their heads!
Geoff
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Re: The French Aristocracy Didn't See It Coming Either

Post by Amskeptic » Mon May 05, 2014 6:22 am

Bleyseng wrote:
Amskeptic wrote:
hippiewannabe wrote:
(how 'bout them Senate Republicans voting down the minimum wage, haH??)
Well, what did you expect as the GOP has the Koch Bros gun to their heads!
I like the favorite hallucination of the Very Rich . . . that we are "punishing" them. They are doing better than they ever ever ever had, they have more money than they ever ever ever had, but we are "punishing" them with "confiscatory" taxes and really "onerous" regulations. You know, whiners. Like they ever had to negotiate the paperwork to apply for housing assistance or food stamps or mortgage relief . . . Payroll taxes? Did payroll taxes (which eat the employee's paycheck too) ever bankrupt Northrop or Halliburton? It is the employee that pays into a social security system that the rich want to dismantle even as they don't have to pay into it above $104,000.00 as they "earn" their (2013 average) $13,000,000.00 annual income + capital dividends at 15%. Those poor poor rich people.
Colin :blackeye:
(let me remind the resident Republican Representative, I have no problem whatsoever with people hitting the big time with entrepreneurial genius . . . as long as they pay their taxes and quit chiseling our representative democracy and bitching and moaning and denigrating the people who do their work for them)
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Re: The French Aristocracy Didn't See It Coming Either

Post by Bleyseng » Mon May 05, 2014 8:31 am

I can't stand the way most of my "Rich" friends and relatives bitch about paying too high of taxes and say "It's my money why should I have to share it via too high of taxes". Yes, they are victims of having to pay taxes like the rest of us who are paying anywhere from 25-39% Federal income taxes after paying employee payroll taxes about 9%.

Cry me a river next time when you are staying at that 5 star resort and the water pressure in the shower wasn't too your liking and you left to go to a better hotel. :pukeright: I actually wanted to punch you in the face as you complained to really shut you up!
Geoff
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Re: The French Aristocracy Didn't See It Coming Either

Post by Amskeptic » Wed May 07, 2014 5:43 am

Bleyseng wrote:I actually wanted to punch you in the face as you complained to really shut you up!
Easy fella . . . it ain't worth the assault and battery not to mention the adrenaline damage to your own body.

I can listen to them bitch about the water pressure, the too-fast salt shakers, the pillow cases turned the wrong way out, the poorly wrapped mint, the interminable wait for the Eggs Benedict, and somehow feel lucky to have escaped living that life.
ColinStupidCardboardIsSoddenUnderThisBridge
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