Too Indirect to Be Effective: Comments on Piketty
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Fact-finding efforts are always welcome so long as their costs are not disproportionately gigantic. In this sense, Piketty’s book seems like a good addition to the list of ‘facts’. I would, however, like to criticize Piketty’s (2014) policy recommendation, first by arguing that his progressive tax system is neither practical, nor effective. His solution is not practical simply because the proposed tax system is hard to implement, and the system is, even if installed, not effective because the rich know how to avoid tax, more so in the global context. Thus, I propose ‘my’ direct method to realize this, i.e., by raising the real wage rate. Second, Piketty’s appeal concerning his tax system is weak in terms of moral force. This weakness derives from the absence of a labour theory of value: all statistical analyses employ prices to aggregate assets, and thus no room is found for the concept of exploitation. Nowhere can one also find the concept of just distribution: inequalities are simply to be avoided because they make economies unstable. Faced with more urgent problems of the inequality in the distributions of incomes and wealth among countries, his tax system has a still weaker power of appeal. Third, we show some ‘theoretical’ shallowness in Piketty’s arguments, especially those involving neoclassical concepts: more concretely, marginal productivity and the elasticity of substitution between capital and labour. We also discuss how Piketty contradicts his own stance when he declares that Marx is quite wrong in his theme of the falling rate of profit.
Abstract
Fact-finding efforts are always welcome so long as their costs are not disproportionately gigantic. In this sense, Piketty’s book seems like a good addition to the list of ‘facts’. I would, however, like to criticize Piketty’s (2014) policy recommendation, first by arguing that his progressive tax system is neither practical, nor effective. His solution is not practical simply because the proposed tax system is hard to implement, and the system is, even if installed, not effective because the rich know how to avoid tax, more so in the global context. Thus, I propose ‘my’ direct method to realize this, i.e., by raising the real wage rate. Second, Piketty’s appeal concerning his tax system is weak in terms of moral force. This weakness derives from the absence of a labour theory of value: all statistical analyses employ prices to aggregate assets, and thus no room is found for the concept of exploitation. Nowhere can one also find the concept of just distribution: inequalities are simply to be avoided because they make economies unstable. Faced with more urgent problems of the inequality in the distributions of incomes and wealth among countries, his tax system has a still weaker power of appeal. Third, we show some ‘theoretical’ shallowness in Piketty’s arguments, especially those involving neoclassical concepts: more concretely, marginal productivity and the elasticity of substitution between capital and labour. We also discuss how Piketty contradicts his own stance when he declares that Marx is quite wrong in his theme of the falling rate of profit.
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