Thomas Piketty's radical economic proposal Capital has already sold 200,000 copies and is an early contender for unlikely beach read of the summer. But not everyone agrees with the French professor's numbers: MP Kwasi Kwarteng, author of War and Gold, offers a robust response to his proposals:
Thomas Piketty's book is very long. It is clearly written, and is quite easy to read. Even in French, it is the sort of thing that a solid O level student from 30 years ago wouldn't have much difficulty with.
The idea behind it is also quite simple as well. In a nutshell, Piketty says that the rich get richer, while the poor get poorer, because the return on capital is bigger than the GDP growth rate. This is the famous r > g, where r is the return on capital and g is the GDP growth rate. Over time, this means that rich people get proportionally richer than the rest of us.
OK. So then what's all the fuss about?
For a start, it captures the moment. After the crash of 2008 and the recession, the left are screaming for scapegoats. Bankers, politicians, fat cat corporate leaders - rich people basically - are the objects of fury. And now a clever French professor - a relatively photogenic 43 year old - has come up with a big book justifying all the resentment.
The book is quite good on history. Piketty talks about the 20th century in which inequality narrowed. He talks about the 19th century, which he fears we are going back to, when rich people really did have enormous fortunes compared to everybody else.
I have a couple of problems with some of this. Firstly, it's clear to me that rich people really were a lot richer a hundred years ago. In America, people like Rockefeller and Carnegie didn't pay income tax. They could reinvest all the profits back into their business and make even more money, which wasn't taxed.
Federal income tax was only introduced in the US in 1914, and Carnegie and Rockefeller were well into their seventies before they paid a cent to the federal government. At the other end of the scale, there wasn't much of a welfare state safety net. The Britain of Downton Abbey wasn't that different.
I also have a problem with some of his crazy policies. Piketty wants to tax inheritance at 100 per cent, which kills any incentive to work hard and save. High tax rates have the same effect. Piketty's plan is simply to cut the throat of the golden goose.
I would recommend against trying to read Piketty from cover to cover in one go. It's really a book to dip into. It looks good on your bookshelf, and reading it will make you feel intelligent.
Simply written, it has simple ideas and its timing could not have been better. It is not necessarily going to revolutionise your view of the world, but it is interesting and easy to understand - and when is the last time you said that about a French economist's work?
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