Piketty: <"What I find particularly incredible in this policy is that, OK, we need to cut the deficit, we don't have money, we need a surplus," he said. "But we have money to cut the tax of the higher-income groups, so I think it's a complete contradiction, and I think that's very hard to understand for the general public.
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"I think you have some people in this country who have benefited from growth much more than others in the past decade, and you cannot just give more and more to those who already have more," Piketty said.>
He's in luck. I can help him understand. His problem is that he thinks the money starts off in government coffers and the job of government is to be a big Santa Claus doling it out to the deserving.
In fact, money that government gets comes from people who do things that other people want them to do. People who get lots of money have to do very valuable things or less valuable things but for hordes of people as can be done these days via Cyberspace.
What the English government is doing is cutting down the loot they give to the impecunious and leaving more of the loot with the people who earned it. Not robbing the people who produced the value is not giving more to them.
Yes, some people benefit from economic growth much more than other people do, because they actually produce that growth. Let's say we have 100 people lying on a beach. One of them gets up and digs up some pipis [a kind of shellfish] to eat and to sell. That's economic growth "Hey, share that economic growth out" means the others hold an election and vote to take nearly all the pipis away from him and give them to themselves. He says "I'm going to stop digging pipis if you don't stop taking so many from me. I'll swim to that other island and dig there." So they decide to not take so many pipis from him.
"Hey, that's not fair" says Piketty. He already has more pipis than the rest of us. Why should we give him more than he's getting already? Meanwhile, another 20 people arrived as "immigrants" from Jihadistan. They wanted him to give more pipis. They also hacked off his head because he didn't agree that Moslems are really peaceful. But UKIP decided that there were enough people employed as head-hackers and dole bludgers so they wanted to stop the swarms heading for England from Jihadiland.
Piketty should understand that.
Mqurice |
