Thomas Piketty has been a big name among progressives since his first book hit the bestseller lists, so the release of his latest work calls for some consideration from Theodore Dalrymple:
Piketty still writes clearly, though without much imaginative verve, and he has obviously consulted a lot of data. He is intelligent, knowledgeable, and decent, with a very firm grasp of unreality. He believes in a world in which economic levers act frictionlessly, or to borrow the description a doctor of my acquaintance has used with regard to his own medico-legal reports: “You turn the handle and the sausage comes out.”
There is no difference in his world between investment and expenditure. Thus, when he correctly ascribes low productivity in Britain to the low educational level of the general population (such that, in a predominantly service economy, much of it is unable even to answer the telephone properly or with reasonable courtesy), he ascribes it to lack of expenditure on education. If only this were the case! But lack of expenditure cannot possibly explain why about a fifth of children leave school barely literate. Incidentally, France seems to be progressing, if that is quite the word, in this direction.
We read that “Research in the social sciences, of which economics is an integral part, whatever some may think, is and always will be hesitant and imperfect. It is not designed to produce ready-made certainties … we have to examine patiently to endeavour to draw some provisional and uncertain lessons.” Amen to that! But modesty or tentativeness is not Professor Piketty’s main characteristic, nor does prudence once enter into his proposals.
There is no awareness that deterioration is possible as well as improvement, or of the fragility of things. Nothing counts for him but equality. He is to taxation policy what Le Corbusier was to architecture: he wants to prescribe (and proscribe) for the whole world. Above all, no variation! He would tell us how much we may possess, how much we may leave to our descendants or receive from our ancestors, how much we may earn in a year.
As an egalitarian and firm anti-nationalist, he does not explain why redistribution should stop at national borders. But try telling the average Frenchman that from now on he must forgo half his wealth in order to raise up Somalia or South Sudan! The book sometimes reads as if it were written by an electoral propagandist for Éric Zemmour, acting as an agent provocateur.
Uniformity is for him the price of unity (his countryman, Frédéric Bastiat, did not make the same mistake). He has little regard for, or even awareness of, the potential political consequences of some of his proposals. In his European Assembly, for example, which would have real power (unlike the current European Parliament), France, Spain, and Italy could and probably would outvote Germany with regard to economic policy. It does not occur to him that there could be few better ways of arousing dormant German nationalism than this. Nothing is certain, but much is possible; and while he mentions the internationalism of Jean-Luc Mélanchon, the left-wing French politician, he might also have mentioned that M. Mélenchon wrote a book about Germany and Germans that could easily have been written by a patriotic Frenchman in 1916.
Piketty is a strong believer in taxes as tools to make people more equal, and objects to the elimination of the wealth tax by the French government recently. Were he given the power, he would not only re-implement it, but vastly expand the taxes demanded of the wealthy.
[…] To all this, Professor Piketty has one sovereign remedy: tax the rich.
He thinks this is democratic because many, perhaps a majority, would vote for it. He has no problems with majoritarian democracy (provided the majority agrees with him): How can democracy be tyrannous? Thus, he sees no drawbacks in Senator Warren’s proposal to set a wealth tax and to provide — provide! — “an exit tax equal to 40% of total wealth for those who choose to leave the country and relinquish American citizenship.” Moreover, “the tax would apply to all assets, with no exemptions, with dissuasive sanctions for persons and governments who do not transmit appropriate information on assets held abroad.” Not only is this tyrannous with regard to individuals, but it is tyrannous with regard to international relations, providing a justification for American jurisdiction over the whole world. Needless to say, China, Russia, and India would never accept this, and might find allies. Conflict could become endless.
The answer to this little problem is obvious to Professor Piketty: a wealth tax worldwide, such that there would be nowhere for anyone to hide. There might be a few little teething problems with implementation — for example, who is to oversee it all — but think of the benefits: lie back and think of England! Professor Piketty has found the elixir of life, and it is taxation.
