The real problem with Piketty's taxation/social welfare solution to wealth inequality is that it does nothing to change the source of systemic inequality, debt-based neofeudalism and neocolonialism.Best critique I've encountered so far.
oftwominds
A Critique of Piketty's Solution to Widening Wealth Inequality
Charles Hugh Smith
2 comments:
If you owned $100 million, and were earning $5 million in rentier income annually, wouldn't you agree to a $1 million tax to fund social welfare programs that kept the rabble sedated with bread and circuses? It's a no-brainer.
Sure, it's a no-brainer, but that's not what will happen. They will give no quarter. Ever. This is the "unconditional surrender" crowd. What we'll get from the .01% will be more like this:
"Denmark elected his nephew, Christopher of Bavaria, King; Sweden elected him in 1440, Norway in 1442. Though he was crowned separately in each kingdom, the Kalmar Union was thus renewed. He repressed peasant risings in Jutland with severity, and the Danish peasantry gradually sank into a kind of villenage or serfdom, the "Vornedskab," for the oppression grew worse after every rising. He was known in Sweden as the "Bark King," for the peasantry were compelled to mix birch bark in their bread during a famine in his reign. He made Copenhagen the permanent royal residence after 1443. To complaints of the piracy of Eric in Gotland he answered, "My uncle must live, too." "
Although the global wealth tax is the headline proposal in Piketty, he goes on to make more interesting, but discreet suggestions about "new forms of democratic control of capital".
Post a Comment