Joe Conason — Now We Know: Economic Inequality Is a Malady—and Not a Cure

It has been a long, long time since Americans accepted the advice of a French intellectual about anything important, let alone the future of democracy and the economy. But the furor over Thomas Piketty’s stunning best-seller, “Capital in the 21st Century”—and especially the outraged reaction from the Republican right—suggests that this fresh import from la belle France has struck an exposed nerve.

What Piketty proves, with his massive data set and complex analytical tools, is something that many of us—including Pope Francis—have understood both intuitively and intellectually: namely, that human society, both here and globally, has long been grossly inequitable and is steadily becoming more so, to our moral detriment.

What Piketty strongly suggests is that the structures of capitalism not only regenerate worsening inequality, but now drive us toward a system of economic peonage and political autocracy.... 

He has done America and the world a profound service by demolishing an enormous shibboleth that has long stood as an obstacle to almost every attempt at economic reform, from raising the minimum wage to restoring progressive taxation: Only if we coddle the very wealthy—and protect them from taxation and regulation—can we hope to restore growth, employment and prosperity. Only if we meekly accept the revolting displays of power and consumption by the very fortunate few can we expect them to bestow any blessing, however small, on the toiling many.

If you read Piketty—whose translation into English by Arthur Goldhammer makes macroeconomics a literary pleasure—you will quickly realize that we’ve been told a big lie about this most basic social bargain. The stratospheric accumulation of rewards accruing to the top 0.01 percent of owners, at the expense of society and everyone else, is not only unnecessary to promote growth; in fact, that unfair dispensation retards growth.

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Now We Know: Economic Inequality Is a Malady—and Not a Cure
Joe Conason | editor in chief of NationalMemo.com