Picketty kind of reminds me of Yuval Noah Harari in that they both have stunning insight and perspective on the past, but get quite bland once the present comes

Picketty kind of reminds me of Yuval Noah Harari in that they both have stunning insight and perspective on the past, but get quite bland once the present comes up. For YNH, his key points in history really changed my perspective, on people history and progress. I'm totally sold on the central thesis: human progress is fundamentally the ability too cooperate in increasingly large groups, and the quality of that cooperation. The whole thing is mediated by our arsenal of collective fictions. But when we get to the present, what we have is fairly generic. He's certainly an intelligent commenter, but the historical thesis doesn't seem to play into his current affairs opinions at all, or his futurism. Picketty is similar (but a lot less readable). He makes a pretty compelling empirical case for his thesis, growing inequality is a long term trend during capital accumulatui periods. Wealth disparities are mitigated by big capital destruction events like big wars. There's a theoretical case but it's simple and the evidence is in the data, not the theory (r<g). Convincing. What does this mean for the present? Apparently, something approximating the current French tax system. Income tax isn't new. We've had higher and lower high marginal rates than suggested in this article. The problems within those system are the problems. Maybe im being harsh.