The 1% "disproves" Piketty's book about Capital

[eridani]

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/04/28/1295399/-The-1-disproves-Piketty-s-book-about-Capital

You had to know this was coming.

When Thomas Piketty's book about capital and inequality became a best-seller the shills for the 1% recognized the danger.

The soft Marxism in Capital, if unchallenged, will spread among the clerisy and reshape the political economic landscape on which all future policy battles will be waged. We’ve seen this movie before.

So in the same spirit that brought us physician tested and approved cigarettes, I present to you the official response from the "serious" economists of the 1%.

The Boston University economist Christophe Chamley and the Stanford economist Kenneth Judd came up independently with what we might call the Chamley-Judd Redistribution Impossibility Theorem: Any tax on capital is a bad idea in the long run, and that the overwhelming effect of a capital tax is to lower wages. A capital tax is such a bad idea that even if workers and capitalists really were two entirely separate groups of people—if workers could only eat their wages and capitalists just lived off of their interest like a bunch of trust-funders—it would still be impossible to permanently tax capitalists, hand the tax revenues to workers, and make the workers better off.

And the thing about this is that it’s a rather well known finding too. Which is why optimal taxation theory insists that the correct rate of taxation of returns to capital is zero.

ZERO! That's what "real" economists know for a "fact".

The article goes on to tell us that the only possible reason why anyone would want to tax capital, earned or unearned, is for reasons of jealousy. It's all science.

Right.

Who could possibly be such a leftist wacko as to suggest that capital should ever be taxed?

Jefferson cited Adam Smith, the hero of free market capitalists everywhere, as the source of his conviction that (as Smith wrote, and Jefferson closely echoed in his own words), "A power to dispose of estates for ever is manifestly absurd. The earth and the fulness of it belongs to every generation, and the preceding one can have no right to bind it up from posterity. Such extension of property is quite unnatural." Smith said: "There is no point more difficult to account for than the right we conceive men to have to dispose of their goods after death."

[Gothmog]

1. Trickle down economics do not work

The 1% rely on the public being ignorant of the facts and the history of trickle down economics. Trickle down economics has never worked.

[Warpy]

2. This book is crap! It doesn't agree with the hogwash that made me rich!

That's about what the arguments will all boil down to.

Calling him a Marxist is just the cherry on top.

No one who's read the first chapter of that book could call him Marxist.

[KauaiK]

3. Well du`uh that the 1% would disapprove of the Piketty's book.

It goes without saying....

[PatrickforO]

4. This post reminds me of the corporate reactions to cigarettes, fracking and climate change

When study after study found cigarettes cause cancer, fracking endangers the water table and has other environmental implications, and we are accelerating climate change, the power elites sought only to create a legitimate-seeming controversy. That's it. They knew they could never overturn the facts, so instead they put out lies that then became part of a controversy, which was then duly accepted as such by the people.

In the end, the cigarette 'controversy' stopped because it was just so obvious.

The fracking controversy is still alive and well, and we still worry if those we are talking to 'believe' in global warming.

So, hey, how can we be surprised that the power elites found some 'experts' that would say what they wanted. Now we can offend our neighbors who don't 'believe' in taxing the wealthy...

[golfguru]

5. The amazing city state of Singapore

Every 1 out of 6 Singapore citizens is a millionaire.
(highest concentration of rich in the world).
Population 3.5 million citizens.
Unemployment -40% (way more jobs than citizens)
2 million foreign workers are currently there on 2 year work permits.
There is no Unemployment compensation program.
(not needed)
There is no food stamp program.
(not needed)
No social security program.
Seniors get subsidy for renting apartment.
Corporate taxes are lower than USA.
Most of the tax revenue is spent on infrastructure and military.
Drug problem is largely gone after Singapore passed death penalty to drug traffickers.


The several miles long underground highway from the cruise terminal
to the airport is well lighted, has 4 lanes, and looks world class. My taxi
sped through at posted speed limits.
The airport has dozens of PC's in various sections for use by passengers.
Free internet on all of them. The cruise terminal is the best I have seen.
I have cruised all over Caribbean, Mexico both coasts, Alaska, and
Europe cruise terminals in of Spain, Italy, Portugal, France and UK.
The cleanest large city I have seen in Asia. Heavy fines for littering.
Restaurant's are numerous serving Chinese, Indian, Arab & Western cuisine.
Very good public transportation system.

Note: First paragraph info garnered from tourist guides.
Second paragraph is my observations from visit in 2014.