People love to talk about ideology, but is what what economics should be about? Every major economy on the planet is a mixed economy. In China, government expen

People love to talk about ideology, but is what what economics should be about? Every major economy on the planet is a mixed economy. In China, government expenditure and revenue are 33.1% and 25.5% of GDP respectively. In the US, the corresponding percentages are 38.5% and 32.9%. Neither totally free markets nor planned economies seem to work, and empirical research obliges economists to look at the economies we actually have. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_government_spending_as_percentage_of_GDP https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_governmen... I think Piketty does kind of do what you're talking about -- and though he makes a good case, I think when he argues for concepts like universal inheritance, that's more an act of political advocacy than economic scholarship. It's for the economist qua economist to study/analyze the conditions under which the rich get richer, or where class mobility decreases, etc -- but it's up to people and governments to choose what they want society to look like.