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Thomas Piketty's Capital in the Twenty-First Century advocates for a wealth tax of up to 2%. This is the only remedy to combat the structural rising inequality
by gabaix 6y ago
Thomas Piketty's Capital in the Twenty-First Century advocates for a wealth tax of up to 2%. This is the only remedy to combat the structural rising inequality in capitalism.
He also admits the tax would be difficult to implement. He should know. France wealth tax has existed for more than 30 years. It was not a success, in part because the wealthy found ways to avoid it. It was as simple as moving residence to Belgium. The tax has now been turned into a property tax.
- thoughtstheseus 6y agoHe also recommended a very small wealth tax to understand what wealth there was to begin with.
- aidenn0 6y agoDid piketty explore unifying capital gains with a progressive income tax? Inflation is already a tax on wealth, but the wealthy beat it by the large return on investment. If you reduce the return on investments to below the rise of wages, then doesn't that solve the problem he describes in his book?
- carlob 6y agoHis newest book goes much further, if you read Capital in the XXI Century you should give it a try. My takeaway from this blog post and his book is that: 1. we should have way more transparency on who owns what: currently information about who owns what stock is in the hands of private companies and it's not disclosed to the public. One of the effects of having an income tax is that we have very detailed information about income. I would argue that measuring inequality is a good thing for a society. 2. we really really need to stop fiscal dumping and fiscal competition among countries. There are a number of ways to do that: stronger transnational organizations, more transparency and collaboration among countries (like what the US imposed to Switzerland), exit taxes (proposed by the US) Overall pg's post ignores the fact that 1950-1980 saw the largest growth and the highest income and succession taxes in the US (also in Western Europe, but one might argue that reconstruction might have played a role in this)
- defnotashton2 6y agoExit taxes decrease competition among state entities themselves, who have the largest monopolies of anyone.
- carlob 6y agoI was trying to make a point about decreasing fiscal competition. So, yeah, good!