Karl Marx By A Different Name

[PoliticalChic]

Two days ago, in 'History,' the review of the life of Karl Marx, If Only It Were Groucho. He was truly 'the most dangerous intellectual.

His significance in economics and in politics proves George Orwell's dictum,
'Some ideas are so stupid that only intellectuals believe them.'


To this day, his acolytes abound, and his views echo in academia.

Thomas Piketty, (born May 7, 1971, Clichy, France), French economist who was best known for Le Capital au XXIe siècle (2013; Capital in the Twenty-first Century).


Piketty was born to militant Trotskyite parents and was later politically affiliated with the French Socialist Party.
In 1993 he was awarded a Ph.D. in economics from the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS) and the London School of Economics European doctoral program for a dissertation on the theory of the redistribution of wealth.

In 2014 Piketty gained international celebrity with the English publication of Capital in the Twenty-first Century. The previously little-known author and his nearly 700-page unexpected best seller also became the subject of a lively debate between liberals and conservatives over economic inequality, the distribution of wealth, and the future of capitalism. "
Britannica.com

"...inherited wealth will grow faster than earned wealth, leading to unsustainable levels of economic inequality that could threaten democracy.

Piketty’s prescription for the crisis of inequality was a change in taxation policies, including an annual progressive global tax on financial assets...

Because he realized that this goal was “utopian,” he recommended regional wealth taxes, a tax of 80 percent on incomes above $500,000 (or, alternatively, $1 million), and a 50–60 percent tax on incomes of $200,000 or more. The purpose of the income tax would be not to raise revenue but rather to eliminate such high incomes."



The main protagonists of Marx, and Piketty, today....are government school grads and leaders of the Democrat Party.

Vote Democrat if you support Mark and his lap-dog, Piketty.



But...it is a cute name for a lap-dog.

 

[PoliticalChic]

"Arguments for these retaliatory tax penalties invariably begin with estimates by economists Thomas Piketty of the Paris School of Economics and Emmanuel Saez of U.C. Berkeley that the wealthiest 1% of U.S. households now take home more than 20% of all household income.

This estimate suffers two obvious and fatal flaws. The first is that the "more than 20%" figure does not refer to "take home" income at all. It refers to income before taxes (including capital gains) as a share of income before transfers. Such figures tell us nothing about whether the top percentile pays too much or too little in income taxes.

In The Journal of Economic Perspectives (Winter 2007), Messrs. Piketty and Saez estimated that "the upper 1% of the income distribution earned 19.6% of total income before tax [in 2004], and paid 41% of the individual federal income tax." No other major country is so dependent on so few taxpayers.

A 2008 study of 24 leading economies by the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) concludes that, "Taxation is most progressively distributed in the United States, probably reflecting the greater role played there by refundable tax credits, such as the Earned Income Tax Credit and the Child Tax Credit. . . . Taxes tend to be least progressive in the Nordic countries (notably, Sweden), France and Switzerland."

Reynolds: Taxes and the Top Percentile Myth

In The Wall Street Journal, the Cato Institute's Alan Reynolds writes that a 2008 OECD study of leading economies found that 'taxation is most progressively distributed in the United States.' More so than Sweden or France.

online.wsj.com

 

[theHawk]

These little Bolsheviks need to be expelled from Western nations to China or Cuba and forced to live their ideals.

 

[PoliticalChic]

These little Bolsheviks need to be expelled from Western nations to China or Cuba and forced to live their ideals.

If only!


Sadly, they have taken over the schools and the media, and represent the current culture.

 

[PoliticalChic]

Boudreaux on Piketty

Each day, Donald Boudreaux, professor of economics at George Mason University, writes a letter to the editor of a major American publication. Often, he writes in response to an absurdity offered up by a columnist or politician, or an eye-catching factoid misleadingly taken out of context. This guy is da' bomb!



Here's another of his exposés. In this one he destroys the Obama/Piketty Axis.





1. "Dear Ms. Farrar: Thanks for e-mailing to me your thoughts on Thomas Piketty’s “Capital in the Twenty-First Century.” I have indeed read the book carefully. I do not, however, share your impression that Piketty has “proved that increasingly the riches [of the super-wealthy] are unmerited and dangerous” to society at large.

2. I’m now writing a review of Piketty’s volume. .... I’ll cover many of my objections more fully....But to make here one substantive point, let me ask you to look at the most recent (September 2013)Forbes list of the 400 wealthiest Americans.* From Bill Gates at the top to Nicholas Woodman at the bottom, all are billionaires. Yet 261 of these people are self-made.

3. ... nearly two-thirds earned their fortunes through creative entrepreneurial effort and risk-taking — people such as Amazon.com’s Jeff Bezos, Google’s Sergey Brin and Larry Page, Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, eBay’s Pierre Omidyar, and entertainer Oprah Winfrey.

4. These people’s efforts enrich not only themselves but also you, me, and hundreds of millions of other people. I’m aware that Piketty dismisses such claims as being crude apologetics, but I challenge you — and him — to explain how, say, Chick-fil-A founder S. Truett Cathy amassed a large fortune if the countless people who voluntarily dine at his restaurants do not benefit from doing so.

5. ... note that many of the superrich who aren’t self-made — many who began with lots of wealth — nevertheless continue, like Charles Koch, to work hard to further enhance their wealth through entrepreneurial creativity, effort, and risk-taking.

6. ... Forbes list supplies powerful evidence against Piketty’s notions that large fortunes in market economies overwhelmingly generate themselves automatically and that today’s superrich are parasitic and idle rentiers." Competition, Job One



Wondering....are the Obama/Piketty 'you didn't build that' folks merely misguided....or simply out to steal what others have earned?



BTW....the Soviet communist elite all had their own dachas in the worker's paradise.....

 

[PoliticalChic]

Piketty: Cargo Cult Economics

​

The latest hero for the Left is French economist Thomas Piketty.
"...Obama White House Rolled Out The Red Carpet For Him..."
Who Is Thomas Piketty And Why Has The Obama White House Rolled Out The Red Carpet For Him? - Hunter Lewis - Page 1

The reason for said the Left's 'crush' is that Mr. Piketty has handed liberals a "coherent framework that justifies the discomfort that they probably already felt about the wealth gap."
Thomas Piketty Capital: How America?s liberals fell for a French economist.



What do they mean?
They mean that Piketty gives the Obamunists some sort of basis for their attack on the free-market, "income inequality."

Of course, the more astute realize that "income inequality" is really just an outcome of freedom, of liberty, of allowing
individual human beings to make individual life style and economic decisions, some of which provide a better outcome than others.
The lie of the Left is that they can assure all that no matter their choices.....all will end up materially equal.



An outcome that never was, and never will be.

 

[PoliticalChic]

" The book that is all the rage on the left is a dense economic tome called Capital in the 21st Century by a French and Marxist economics professor called Thomas Piketty. It epitomizes cargo cult economics well blended with the vice of greed and a disregard for the whole “thou shalt not covet” thing....

Piketty purports to trace the history of the concentration of wealth since the 18th century, which really can’t be done for lack of data and rational points of comparison, and claims that capitalism inevitably produces a divide between those who have capital (capitalists) and those who work for wages (the proletariat)… stop me if you’ve heard this one before.

a. .... he also sees anyone with property or savings as a threat to democracy. "
Thomas Piketty, Wealth Inequality and Cargo Cult Economics | RedState

...after all, "You didn't build, save, earn that......"




This is what Historian Paul Johnson writes about JJ Rousseau:

“When society evolves from its primitive state of nature to urban sophistication, he argued, man is corrupted: his natural selfishness… is transformed into a far more pernicious instinct, …which combines vanity and self- esteem, each man rating himself by what others think of him and thus seeking to impress them by his money, strength, brains and moral superiority. His natural selfishness becomes competitive and acquisitive, and so he becomes alienated not only from other men, whom he sees as competitors and not brothers, but from himself. Alienation induces a psychological sickness …

The evil of competition, as he saw it, which destroys man’s inborn communal sense and encourages all his most evil traits, including his desire to exploit others, led Rousseau to distrust private property, as the source of social crime.” Johnson, "Intellectuals"



There you have it: the curse of civilization is private property, ownership, material inequality.

 

[PoliticalChic]

These folks hate any who earn their money.....no matter the level at which that earning is done.

And watch the punishments he suggests be visited on workers and earners!

".... corporate executives are his special bête noire, Mr. Piketty is also deeply troubled by the tens of millions of working people—a group he disparagingly calls “petits rentiers”—whose income puts them nowhere near the “one percent” but who still have savings, retirement accounts and other assets. That this very large demographic group will get larger, grow wealthier and pass on assets via inheritance is “a fairly disturbing form of inequality.” He laments that it is difficult to “correct” because it involves a broad segment of the population, not a small elite that is easily demonized.



.... Piketty urges an 80% tax rate on incomes starting at “$500,000 or $1 million.” This is not to raise money for education or to increase unemployment benefits... he does not expect such a tax to bring in much revenue, because its purpose is simply “to put an end to such incomes.”
It will also be necessary to impose a 50%-60% tax rate on incomes as low as $200,000 to develop “the meager US social state.”

... an annual wealth tax as high as 10% on the largest fortunes and a one-time assessment as high as 20% on much lower levels of existing wealth. He breezily assures us that none of this would reduce economic growth, productivity, entrepreneurship or innovation." Thomas Piketty Revives Marx for the 21st Century





It is clear now, what another Marxist meant by "You didn't build that!"

It means "I can take it away from you."

 

[PoliticalChic]

It certainly is easy to see why Democrats/Liberals/Progressives would find affinity with the Marxist economics professor, Thomas Piketty, as I will show here.



But it is even more significant as proof of what Whittaker Chambers wrote in his book "WITNESS," that liberals are/were incapable of ever effectively fighting Communism because they did not see anything in Communism that was antithetical to their own beliefs. In short, Liberals are Communists and Communists are Liberals.



"The book ' Capital in the 21st Century' by the French and Marxist economics professor Thomas Piketty..... rests on several mutually supporting principles:
§ Social and economic mobility do not exist.
§ Economic expansion does not exist.
§ You are allowed to have money and property in the type and the amount the state is willing to allow.
§ Being paid according to the values you bring to an organization is unfair.
§ People will work just as hard for very little money as a lot of money.
Thomas Piketty, Wealth Inequality and Cargo Cult Economics | RedState



The Democrat Party folks love, love, love Piketty's thesis!



See what Chambers was getting at?

 

[PoliticalChic]

6. Well, how does Professor Piketty suggest that the Democrats/Socialists of his ilk battle the earners, and savers, and those who accumulated assets?
And what, if anything, is wrong with the Piketty analysis?

"....Piketty proposes, among other things, a far-fetched plan for the global taxation of wealth -- a call to radically redistribute the fruits of capitalism to ensure the system’s survival.

..... In nineteenth-century France, the flow of inheritances represented about 20–25 percent of national income during a typical year. According to Piketty’s calculations, the Western world is headed toward a roughly comparable situation. The relatively thrifty and wealthy baby boomers will soon begin to die off in greater numbers, and inheritance as a source of income disproportionately benefits the families of the very wealthy.


... Piketty’s concern about inherited wealth also seems misplaced. Far from creating a stagnant class of rentiers, growing capital wealth has allowed for the fairly dynamic circulation of financial elites. Today, the Rockefeller, Carnegie, and Ford family fortunes are quite dispersed, and the benefactors of those estates hardly run the United States,...

.... the success of certain immigrant groups suggests that cultural factors play a more significant role in mobility than does the capital-to-income ratio,...."

Capital Punishment

Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-first Century is a truly important book, a groundbreaking work of analysis of economic inequality. It is frequently brilliant, but also flawed, and its policy recommendations are wildly impractical.

www.foreignaffairs.com

But....how accurate is Piketty's view of America's income inequality, i.e., lack of social and economic mobility, etc.?

"Far from having the 21st-century equivalent of an Edwardian class system, the United States is characterized by a great deal of variation in income: More than half of all adult Americans will be at or near the poverty line at some point over the course of their lives; 73 percent will also find themselves in the top 20 percent, and 39 percent will make it into the top 5 percent for at least one year. Perhaps most remarkable, 12 percent of Americans will be in the top 1 percent for at least one year of their working lives.

The top 1 percent,,.... is such an unstable group that it makes no sense to write, as so many progressives do, about what has happened to its income over the past ten year or twenty years, because it does not contain the same group of people from year to year.
... the turnover among the super-rich (the top 400 taxpayers in any given year) is 98 percent over a decade — that is, just 2 percent of that elusive group remain there for ten years in a row.

Data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics finds that among the allegedly privileged 1 percent, inherited wealth accounts for only 15 percent of household holdings, a smaller share than it does among middle-class families."

Print On Demand | National Review

I am contemplating another P.O.D. venture. (That is, “print on demand”–the modern form of vanity publishing.) I did one before via the P.O.D. firm Xlibris . It wasn’t a sensationally bad experience…

www.nationalreview.com

What??? How could a Marxist possibly be wrong???



Uh, oh.....Somebody better tell the Obamunists that maybe those folks did build that.

 

[PoliticalChic]

"Pikettymania has gotten out of control. Thomas Piketty, of course, is the French economist whose book, Capital in the Twenty First Century, has become an international sensation. The American left is treating it like gospel, accepting it uncritically. "

Pikettymania Must Stop: A Plea for Calm in the Debate Over 'Capital'

The book is neither gospel nor garbage.

newrepublic.com

Wow......if the so-brilliant Leftists are in love with Piketty's thesis.....well.....it must be perfect, as well as supporting the Left's economic policies....



But......

"In May 2014 the Financial Times published the results of an investigation into Piketty’s data. The British newspaper claimed that there were discrepancies between Piketty’s data and official sources, and it charged that in some cases Piketty had modified the data from the original sources (some of the data appeared to have been constructed or cherry-picked) and, most important, that when these errors were corrected, the data did not support Piketty’s conclusions. Piketty wrote a long response in which he defended his book, although he also conceded that “available data sources on wealth inequality are much less systematic than what we have for income inequality.”

Britannica Money

Thomas Piketty French economist who was best known for Le Capital au XXIe siècle (2013; Capital in the Twenty-first Century). Piketty was born to militant Trotskyite parents and was later politically affiliated with the French Socialist Party. After he took the baccalauréat examination, he spent

www.britannica.com

OH......NOOOOZZZZZZZZ!!!

 

[alang1216]

Two days ago, in 'History,' the review of the life of Karl Marx, If Only It Were Groucho. He was truly 'the most dangerous intellectual.

His significance in economics and in politics proves George Orwell's dictum,
'Some ideas are so stupid that only intellectuals believe them.'


To this day, his acolytes abound, and his views echo in academia.


View attachment 333100

Thomas Piketty, (born May 7, 1971, Clichy, France), French economist who was best known for Le Capital au XXIe siècle (2013; Capital in the Twenty-first Century).


Piketty was born to militant Trotskyite parents and was later politically affiliated with the French Socialist Party.
In 1993 he was awarded a Ph.D. in economics from the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS) and the London School of Economics European doctoral program for a dissertation on the theory of the redistribution of wealth.

In 2014 Piketty gained international celebrity with the English publication of Capital in the Twenty-first Century. The previously little-known author and his nearly 700-page unexpected best seller also became the subject of a lively debate between liberals and conservatives over economic inequality, the distribution of wealth, and the future of capitalism. "
Britannica.com

"...inherited wealth will grow faster than earned wealth, leading to unsustainable levels of economic inequality that could threaten democracy.

Piketty’s prescription for the crisis of inequality was a change in taxation policies, including an annual progressive global tax on financial assets...

Because he realized that this goal was “utopian,” he recommended regional wealth taxes, a tax of 80 percent on incomes above $500,000 (or, alternatively, $1 million), and a 50–60 percent tax on incomes of $200,000 or more. The purpose of the income tax would be not to raise revenue but rather to eliminate such high incomes."



The main protagonists of Marx, and Piketty, today....are government school grads and leaders of the Democrat Party.

Vote Democrat if you support Mark and his lap-dog, Piketty.



But...it is a cute name for a lap-dog.

He was right about one thing: "...inherited wealth will grow faster than earned wealth, leading to unsustainable levels of economic inequality that could threaten democracy".

 

[alang1216]

These folks hate any who earn their money.....no matter the level at which that earning is done.

And watch the punishments he suggests be visited on workers and earners!

".... corporate executives are his special bête noire, Mr. Piketty is also deeply troubled by the tens of millions of working people—a group he disparagingly calls “petits rentiers”—whose income puts them nowhere near the “one percent” but who still have savings, retirement accounts and other assets. That this very large demographic group will get larger, grow wealthier and pass on assets via inheritance is “a fairly disturbing form of inequality.” He laments that it is difficult to “correct” because it involves a broad segment of the population, not a small elite that is easily demonized.



.... Piketty urges an 80% tax rate on incomes starting at “$500,000 or $1 million.” This is not to raise money for education or to increase unemployment benefits... he does not expect such a tax to bring in much revenue, because its purpose is simply “to put an end to such incomes.”
It will also be necessary to impose a 50%-60% tax rate on incomes as low as $200,000 to develop “the meager US social state.”

... an annual wealth tax as high as 10% on the largest fortunes and a one-time assessment as high as 20% on much lower levels of existing wealth. He breezily assures us that none of this would reduce economic growth, productivity, entrepreneurship or innovation." Thomas Piketty Revives Marx for the 21st Century





It is clear now, what another Marxist meant by "You didn't build that!"

It means "I can take it away from you."

"These folks hate any who earn their money.....no matter the level at which that earning is done."

"...inherited wealth will grow faster than earned wealth, leading to unsustainable levels of economic inequality that could threaten democracy"

These are two of your quotes that appear to contradict each other?

 

[PoliticalChic]

These folks hate any who earn their money.....no matter the level at which that earning is done.

And watch the punishments he suggests be visited on workers and earners!

".... corporate executives are his special bête noire, Mr. Piketty is also deeply troubled by the tens of millions of working people—a group he disparagingly calls “petits rentiers”—whose income puts them nowhere near the “one percent” but who still have savings, retirement accounts and other assets. That this very large demographic group will get larger, grow wealthier and pass on assets via inheritance is “a fairly disturbing form of inequality.” He laments that it is difficult to “correct” because it involves a broad segment of the population, not a small elite that is easily demonized.



.... Piketty urges an 80% tax rate on incomes starting at “$500,000 or $1 million.” This is not to raise money for education or to increase unemployment benefits... he does not expect such a tax to bring in much revenue, because its purpose is simply “to put an end to such incomes.”
It will also be necessary to impose a 50%-60% tax rate on incomes as low as $200,000 to develop “the meager US social state.”

... an annual wealth tax as high as 10% on the largest fortunes and a one-time assessment as high as 20% on much lower levels of existing wealth. He breezily assures us that none of this would reduce economic growth, productivity, entrepreneurship or innovation." Thomas Piketty Revives Marx for the 21st Century





It is clear now, what another Marxist meant by "You didn't build that!"

It means "I can take it away from you."

"These folks hate any who earn their money.....no matter the level at which that earning is done."

"...inherited wealth will grow faster than earned wealth, leading to unsustainable levels of economic inequality that could threaten democracy"

These are two of your quotes that appear to contradict each other?

Can you truly be this stupid????

The first is my statement......the second Piketty's.


Actually, you support one of my suspicions.....I always believed that there is a certain affinity between stupid people, and lying....perhaps a necessity in that precinct.

 

[Sun Devil 92]

I've seen some of Piketty's writings.

Truly stupid and arrogant in my opinion.

 

[initforme]

Most all wealthy is inherited. The pursuit of immense wealth had no place in a Christian society. Let us not forget that.

 

[PoliticalChic]

Most all wealthy is inherited. The pursuit of immense wealth had no place in a Christian society. Let us not forget that.

I have never seen anyone as consecutively inaccurate as you are.

It must be some sort of inverse gift.

New figures from Smart Money show that only 3% of millionaires inherited their wealth. That means 97% earned their vast fortune themselves. Smart Money also reports that 80% of millionaires are extra thrifty shoppers. Many of them even clip coupons! "

Millionaires clip coupons and other secrets of the rich! on clarkhoward.com

Clark.com

Our mission is to help you save more and spend less. From paying down debt, to making major purchases, to saving for retirement, and every money moment in between, our money experts are committed to offering practical ways to walk you through every step of your financial journey.

www.clarkhoward.com

"In the Millionaire Next Door," Stanley and Danko tell us that "most of America's millionaires are first-generation rich." They earned their money themselves. Not through inheritances or dad's teachings. "Most people who become millionaires have confidence in their own abilities. They do not spend time worrying about whether or not their parents were wealthy."
The Millionaire Next Door: The Surprising Secrets of America's Wealthy
byThomas J. Stanley,

William D. Danko


" 80% of U. S. millionaires are first generation affluent. Contrary to popular belief, most people are not born into wealth. They earn their money the old fashioned way, they work for it."

Making money: The path to becoming a millionaire - by Terry Marsh - Helium

"The vast majority of today's millionaires did not inherit their money -- they're self-made."
Richistan


According to a study by Prince & Associates, less than 10% of today’s multi-millionaires cited “inheritance” as their source of wealth.
The Decline of Inherited Money - The Wealth Report - WSJ
The Decline of Inherited Money


Most of America's millionaires are first-generation rich. How is it possible for people from modest backgrounds to become millionaires in one generation? Why is it that so many people with similar socioeconomic backgrounds never accumulate even modest amounts of wealth?
washingtonpost.com: The Millionaire Next Door

 

[PoliticalChic]

I've seen some of Piketty's writings.

Truly stupid and arrogant in my opinion.

Did you see post #11....he made up his data.


BTW.....the same is true of Karl Marx.

"In short, all the first part of Marx’s scientific examination of working conditions under capitalism in the mid-1860s is based upon a single work, Engels’s Condition of the Working Class in England, published twenty years before. And what scientific value, in turn, can be attached to this single source? Marx cannot have been unaware of the weaknesses, indeed dishonesties, of Engels’s book since many of them were exposed in detail as early as 1848 by the German economist Bruno Hildebrand, in a publi- cation with which Marx was familiar.²⁵ Moreover Marx himself compounds Engels’s misrepresentations knowingly by omitting to tell the reader of the enormous improvements brought about by enforcement of the Factory Acts and other remedial legislation since the book was published and which affected precisely the type of conditions he had high- lighted. In any case, Marx brought to the use of primary and secondary written sources the same spirit of gross carelessness, tendentious distortion and downright dishonesty which marked Engels’s work."
Paul Johnson, "Intellectuals."

 

[initforme]

Well I do know that the current young generation of workers is amongst the greatest this nation has ever seen. Their work ethic and productivity are unmatched in this nations history. There will be more millionaires than ever.

 

[PoliticalChic]

Well I do know that the current young generation of workers is amongst the greatest this nation has ever seen. Their work ethic and productivity are unmatched in this nations history. There will be more millionaires than ever.

Did you get that from the Magic 8-Ball????