from Hacker News

Piketty's Terrifying Dystopia

by jamesbritt on 8/8/14, 10:05 PM with 5 comments

  • by blackhole on 8/9/14, 7:34 AM

    After reading this, I am more convinced than ever that macroeconomics has no bloody idea what the hell is going on. We have a bunch of fancy models and then argue over whose model is the least broken.

  • by GorgeRonde on 8/9/14, 9:17 AM

    I feel lost when it comes to economics. Yet, I think something of broader importance is at play in the state of economy which is overshadowed by social/cultural/political views. As I see it, the climax of the capitalism/inequality dilemma lies in the fact income follow a long tail distribution. As I said I know pretty much nothing about economics (or maths), but my programming-oriented mind tells me what's really relevant about long tail distributions independently of their current size (for instance the total amount of wealth) is that the head, the peak of the distribution grows exponentially faster than the tail in terms of what percentage of the cake you have in your plate. I'm talking in terms of ratios, not absolute wealth. It is indeed important to distinguish between the two : wealth is redistributed (in terms of percentages) AS wealth (in terms of dollars) increases.

    Everybody agrees everyone should be wealthy enough to live decently. To me, figuring out what that bottom income is concentrates most of what is argued about here. If you consider our economic system as a way to level up human condition from the bottom, an algorithm that takes that bottom income and try to reach it, then it seems the root of our economic system (capitalism, shady behaviors commanded by our reptilian cortex, whatever) has a terrific wealth complexity.

    Frankly I don't know if this complexity is exponential (seems like it to me, but again, I'm just a programmer), but you get the idea : is income inequality really a political or economic problem ? Or is it just mostly about maths ?

  • by digitalengineer on 8/9/14, 8:32 AM

    Of course the higher tax would only be for the middle and upper class. Real wealh is easily 'hidden' using perfectly legal offshore bank accounts or constructions like the 'Dutch Sandwich' http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_Irish_arrangement#Dutch_...