An Introduction to Thomas Piketty's Capital in the 21st Century- A Macat Economics Analysis
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- čas přidán 26. 04. 2015
- Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the 21st Century is the most influential recent work in the field of economics. This short video from Macat explains the key ideas in the work in only a few minutes.
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The people who disagree with this book have never read the book or any book for that. It is one of the best economics study books I've ever read.
Our first video upload! #GreatIdeasUnlocked
"An Introduction to Thomas Piketty's Capital in the 21st Century"
Macat A great ideia. Congratulations!
Recap:
Find a few million dollars to invest annually in the stock market.
Thanks! Really will help
Very good summary! Thank you.
I haven’t read the book, but if so, the author should’ve made it into parts lol
Ended up here after reading 200 pages of this book and not understanding a thing. I feel so dumb, it's probably because I just began economy classes.
Carolina Damasceno don't feel dumb, it can be a complicated issue. Keep with it, because a lot of those at the top bank on people like us losing interest on topics like these and apathetically walking away. Don't walk away, keep digging.
paidinteeth Thank you. Exactly! I prefer to feel dumb because I'm trying to understand something than feeling like an expert and actually knowing nothing.
Estaba en las mismas, la recomendación es que no avances sin estar segura de haber entendido cada porción, ya que las siguientes estás relacionadas, si no entendiste un concepto luego es difícil agarrar el contexto.
Acabo de terminarlo, buen libro, ilustrativo. Si bien siento que le faltan algunas apreciaciones en otros ámbitos morales y éticos te da una buena reseña de lo que puede pasar (o no).
Agora você se sente melhor?
Oh well done.....you have helped a simple chap understand this in a simple way.
thank you soosososososos much!!!!!!!!!
well done! Great video
The brilliant minds in the comments section would probably do best to actually study the issue before expressing an opinion.
The brilliant minds in this video are the only reason we don't have communism in America
+Bjswac they are also the reason China is eating our lunch
MAGA
thanks for the video
Thank you for this, I have been struggling through this book for some time. I want to make the best decision when voting and I think economic dynamics play a central role in many social issues.
+Jason Vignochi This book is so bad that another book debunking the ideas in it has also been written.
@@CarbonGlassMan literally every single academic has his ideological critics. Not a single right wing or left wing economist has been left "disproven" by other academics. Yes that includes your favourite economist who backs your ideology
@@lukethomeret-duran5273 What the hell are you talking about? Did you just say no economist has ever been proven wrong by another economist?
Interesting.
It's so obvious. It's like when psychologists prove what everyone intuitively knows.
And btw return has not been %5 REGARDLESS of whether the capital was invested in gold, stocks, bonds, real estate, etc, etc. It has been %5 (unadjusted for inflation) ONLY in stocks. The other assets returned a fraction of stocks.
Wrong. Piketty's data goes all the way back to 19th century feudal estates, which yielded 5% reliably.
So this guy wrote a book to tell us that if you make $100k a year but also have a $10 million inheritance invested in the stock market you will make more money than the other person who makes $100k per year but does not have a $10 million inheritance. Brilliant!
I'm gonna go ahead and say that most people are here because this book is so long and no one finished it. haha
guilty
Just finished, and yeah so long, Piketty could’ve explained the same with just 1/3 of pages.
Good book though
Finansla büyüyorsan gelir eşitsizliği artıyor, üretimle büyüyorsan azalıyor.
It is without a legend, put the legend in Portuguese in other languages
Nas configurações é possível trocar para legendas em português.
Ultima chance
So, Lecture Future Crisis No. 4: Bank Banking - What Will We Leave For Our Children? The collapse of the entire market economy and the financial system of the world. Devaluation - Dollar. Imagine Bankrupt of All Banks of the World - How Many People Will Affect Staff Investors, Customers.The scenario of the development of events and consequences. Introduction - All Data is Based on Figures and Naturally, On the Analysis of History. Having analyzed: All Crises In a row ,. Military Actions Around the World. To understand - what country at what time - quickly got up - on her feet financially, economically, psychologically.
World - All Countries of the World - Sorry! This is the Initial Model of the USSR from 1945 to 1970!
Beginning of the Future Crisis (Stone Age) - 1 Sign - Bank Collapse. 2 Cash Out. 3 Financial and Economic Institutions Nothing to Do - Could Not! Warren Buffett's words: "All the Banks - Played Over!" Yes exactly! Banks - Financial Needle! % Accrual System - Doesn’t Take into account Errors: From Inflation - Planet Resources, Natural Disaster, Human Factor, Elementary - Dollar Jumps on the Exchange Every Day - And% Accrual System - Same Stable - How ?, ... Hundreds, Thousands Factors!
In 2008, Spruce Economy Restrained by 1 Industry - Real Estate - Oversupply!
Friends Oversupply - In All Economic Financial Industries! List of Industries I will Provide later. After - Sorting and Selection - Strategically Important for the Country and Competent Redistribution of Current Resources Between Industries: Equipment, Production, Administrative, Squares, ...
All - The World is Tied to the End Currency (US Gold Reserve Relation to the Current Moment 1 Dollar = -10000 Dollars Lecture No. 3, I will leave it at the end).
What is happening now in the financial and banking sector of the world? This:
1 Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC) Assets: $ 4,009 billion. China.
2 China Construction Bank Corporation Assets: $ 3,400 billion. China.
3 Agricultural Bank of China Assets: $ 3,235 billion. China.
4 Bank of China ltd Assets: $ 2,991 billion. China.
5 Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group Assets: $ 2,780 billion in Japan.
6 JPMorgan Chase Assets: $ 2,533 billion.
7 HSBC Holdings plc Assets: $ 2,520 billion. UK (England)
8 BNP Pariba Assets: $ 2,357 billion France.
9 Bank of America (BoA) Assets: $ 2,281 billion.
10 Crédit Agricole Assets: $ 2,117 billion France.
11 Wells Fargo & Co. US $ 1951 billion
12 Japan Post Bank Japan $ 1,874 billion
13 Citigroup US $ 1842 billion
14 Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group Japan $ 1,775 billion
15 Deutsche Bank Germany $ 1,765 billion
16 Banko Santander Spain $ 1,736 billion
17 Mizuho Financial Group Japan $ 1,715 billion
18 Barclays Plc England $ 1,532 billion
19 Societe Generale France $ 1,531 billion
20 Groupe BPCE France $ 1512 Billion
Here you have the Countries by Rating - Disasters! SOS!
@, EuropeanUnion, Japan, UnitedKingdom, Germany, Spain, - Hands Shake When I Write This! China - Generally Calm! And here the USA - Will Hold - Until the Last. And lie!
A list of countries by the number of banks included in the “top 100 by total assets".
Rating Country Number of banks in the top 100
European Union 36
China 18
USA 12
Japan 8
France 6
Great Britain 6
Canada 5
Germany 5
Spain 5
Australia 4
Brazil 4
South Korea 4
Sweden 4
Italy 3
Netherlands 3
Singapore 3
Belgium 2
Switzerland 2
Austria 1
Denmark 1
India 1
Norway 1
Russia 1
Taiwan 1
Dear Ukraine! The Main Sign of Inflation - Remember This Date Forever - It's Already 6 Monetary Inflation - The Same Rake! - The National Bank of Ukraine from September 25, 2019 gave banks the right to round off cash transactions in connection with the withdrawal of cash of small denominations of 1, 2 and 5 cents from cash circulation. When Will We Learn To Correct Our Mistakes? So Souls Suffered! No - Greed, Pride, All In Its Mouth! Tear up Baby! Greed Fraera Destroy!
Decision:
1. Refusal of the Old Economic, Financial, Banking System of the World. Development - New Observing Interests of the Planet, Children, Animals, People! Considering the Latest and Planned Future Technologies.
2. Properly, Correctly, Distribute Existing Resources of Countries, Planets, Continents. Taking into account the Crisis!
3. Entering the Arena of 5 International Currencies - Not Subject to Inflation, Default, Crash!
4. The New System of State Enterprises - Strategic Industries - Property of Residents of the Country. 30% - DEVELOPMENT OF OWN PERSONNEL, 30% - NEEDS OWN PERSONNEL, 30% - PRODUCTION, 10% Management Board 40 people For managing this enterprise.
This is Only 1 Industry - Banks.
P.S. - May the Lord Protect you All! Save And Save You All May It Be So! In the Name of Our Lord Jesus Christ the Holy Spirit Amen 8 Times!
But the reason Jane inherited 10million is that the previous family members did not spend their entire income each year. why does the video say that Joe will never increase his saving unless he has a raise? then he would probably just keep spending all of that, instead of living on 50,000 and saving 50,000 so that he too could then make ROI each year and grow his savings. Which carried on over time would allow his family to pass on 10,000,000 to their daughter Jane
It is still an unfair system if Jane inherited 10 million from previous family members while Joe's family didn't. It is precisely this difference in starting in life that the left wants to correct.
@@LittleBigPoet haha not unfair because the people who gave jane the money had to earn it. even if they got given it if you go back far enough some one had to earn that money. It would be a horrendous savage society if you want redistribution of wealth to stop people from being born into wealth. Currently both have an equal opportunity to make a product or service and turn it into millions.
You say it is an "Unfair system" how is this? what alternative is there that would make it fair? tell me what possible system could be in place to have equality of OUTCOME which is what you want in everyone starting from the same exact place?
Yes, someone had to earn it, and they earned it at a time when it was easier to earn that much money when you didn't need to get a loan for education, to open a store or a mortgage on a house. Redistribution of wealth is good, and it already exists in America in the form of retirement pensions, food stamps, unemployment benefits and such.
The alternative is exactly what already exists in Scandinavia, and has existed for many decades now, where companies are actually forced to pay their fair share in taxes without passing through loopholes, the state provides free healthcare and education to its citizens, and there are rent controls and limits to how much banks can charge consumers in interest. These are just a few things that American could start with, and this requires us to acknowledge that people can't just keep all their money because it is in the interest of everyone that we redistribute our resources more evenly. I highly recommend you do some research on life in the Nordic nations and how they see taxes to get a perspective of what is really possible when you abandon the corporate US brainwashing that taxation is theft.
Missing the point, historically the 'capital was gained from:
a) gifts of kings, ( Ref; Who Owns England, a thoroughly well researched book))
b) theft,(ie enclosure acts in the UK of land over 300 years 3 million acres, this goes onto inheritance so the next generations need not work as is Jane Austen novels)Also only the landed of 10K acres could vote up and until 1914, so marking thier own homework so to speak. (Capital and Who owns England)
c) exploitation of labour, so that it can never save, via rentierism of land owned by...capital! To hoover up any excess income back to capital. ( this is the present situation via DAVOS who are now recommending Rentierism over individual ownership of product, land and patent, it pays more in the long run). ( Rentier Capitalism, Capital, and many books on the housing issue, my area of research)
d) in the 20-21st century hiding it via trust funds hidden offshore via brass plated companies. ( Ref; Moneyland, a bloody great read and well researched)
As for the new world, those who got in first were the lucky ones, Meritocracy as such is a myth and a tyranny, as the US is no longer a level playing field.
Nobody rises just through merit and hard work ( ref The Tyranny of Merit, The Rise of the Meritocracy).
From 1945-75 it was possible to be a 'super manager' and compete with the old capital ( as per your ideal reference, that had been wiped out from 1914-45 with two world wars and laissez faire policy between the wars that led to the crash), Piketty's point is that this has now reverted to the long term norm of if you want to be rich, marry into capital, as it was in Jane Austen's time. His argument is the 1945-75 period was a historic blip, thanks to the world wars, welfare state demands from returning armies and finally the threat of communism meaning compromise from Capital to keep Labour from revolution and a possible turn to Communism, thus Capital would lose everything as it would all be owned and controlled by the state. Once we had the collapse of communism and the new laissez faire governance of neoliberal ideology we would return to the Norm of Capital growth at 5% and Labour at 1%, which has compound interest annually, thus now 40+ years later the massive income gap, that did not exist in 1945-75.
Answers? The best system and societies ( and not perfect otherwise they would have to be authoritarian) are the Nordic Social democracies, of Finland, Sweden, Norway, Iceland, Denmark and the new boy Estonia and in the future, maybe Scotland (Viking Economics, The Nordics 1945-present)
Really just read/listen to the book if you can, not as academic as it looks,
Please note; a work like this can never be summarised up in a 2 min video.
@@jamesd5241 The point is they almost certainly did not 'earn it' . The real issue is that inheritance is no bad thing to help families progress, but large estates, often hidden create privilege that has not been earned, leads to rentierism and no further contribution to society, thus the landed gentry.
Both do not have an equal oppertunity, why? Because wealth gives you networks, time, Alumni privileges of parents, and no fear of destitution ( Ref; The Tyranny of Merit).The argument is not for an absolute 'equality', just a reduced wealth gap as per 1945-75 where you could gain by just Labour rather than having to have an asset based Capital income ( ref; Piketty) and as for where, the Nordic societies. ( recommend 'Viking Economics' for a history and 'The Nordics 1945-the present' for a more individual deconstruction of thier systems).
1:26 aye I see that you sly dogs
What
Like Marx, Piketty’s analysis of capital in the author’s respective era is accurate. And both authors’ critiques of the capitalist system are fair. However, Piketty’s solutions to the inherent problems of capitalism are lacking in any substantive way. He suggests patching up capitalism through taxation on wealth, and making the system more equitable for the majority of the population. This does nothing in addressing the fundamental, and underlying contradictions in the capitalist framework.
True. However, those contradictions may be fundamentally unresolvable.
@@tomtimelord7876 They are unresolvable within the context of capitalism. We need a different system.
@@HappyAccidentVideos They might be unresolvable under any system. I'm not defending capitalism here so much as I'm suggesting that there might be aspects of the human condition that are just permanently fucked.
I'm partial to the quote by economist Ha Joon Chang that "Capitalism is the worst economic system. Except for all the others."
I would label myself a socialist, I guess, but I'm a socialist in the same way that Sweden is socialist. Is that even socialism?
well he doesnt have to i mean one of his main ideas is that a country need a patrimonial capitalistic system (they forgot to mention it in the video btw)
WSU represent
0:33 where in the hell says that the purpose of capitalism is to reduce inequality??
I dont think anyone would say that's the purpose of capitalidm, but that it's a consequence of it (I don't agree with that sentiment, but that's another matter)
It's not uncommon to use strawmans againsts capitalism.
Usually what is actually said its that capitalism increases the standar of living of the poor, which iis true, but you are going to have a greater difference in inequality, which is fine by me but not for the people that have a boner for equality.
what makes the poor get a better living?
if it is inequality... then let's do that,
the rich thinks the poor is jealous of the rich's money. that may not be so. The moment your money is making my life more difficult would make me upset. you can invest your money in tons of thing, and the increase price can affect my life. you invest your money aboard and take away my job. with your money you can invest into a certain politician and help to elect him and change my life and get my country into wars and the poor will pay with their life, so maybe you a petroleum company. And help global warming , damage the wild life, the ocean life, and tons and tons of other reason someone can think of. this is when your life endanger the life of others. a workers income might change from 30K to 50K, but the rich could change from a billion to trillion. you do not see anything in the universe with no law, therefor, money has to bee given a law.
This seems like complete nonsense. How can the worth of capital increase unless there is a demand for the product and services upon which that capital is based (I.e the working and middle classes have economic power)? Unless there is a bubble or printing money, it can't. Piketty has made a huge error in ignoring property prices and drawing assumptions from pre-war economic management of artificially high interest rates.
You may not realize it, but you essentially just said that the wealth of the rich comes from insanely overinflated property prices that nobody but other rich people can afford.
Who says inequility is bad? Maybe inequility is the just and fair result of different economic choices? It's not Janes fault that Joe doesnt save or invest any of his money.
It might be Jane's fault that Joe doesn't have any money to invest if she's also his landlord. You ever heard of feudalism?
Its more of an analogy than anything. The point is that its much easier to get richer if youre already wealthy
In a system where you have to decide between reducing your short term quality of life so that you can save and invest for the future, or live better now and compromise the future of your kids or your older self, nobody really wins.
Germany abolished their wealth tax. As they found it couldn't be effective without being harshly confiscatory.
Thanks, captain obvious!
@@TheViportsPYN
He is asking for a global Zakaat.
I don't think there should be such taxes. People should be educated on how to invest and create assets that's all.
investment takes personal savings which many people working paycheck to paycheck or minimum wage jobs aren't able to accrue. Especially when there are surprise expenses like hospital visits that require separate emergency savings.
@@daniels5853 I agree with your statement. Wage growth in the USA for the middle and lower classes has been stagnant. Cost of living has dramatically gone up. So personal investment and asset creation can prove to be difficult.
I recommend a total reform of the system. Instead of interest rates being regulated by the federal reserve ( which is bias in its policy ) the market should regulate interest rates. Furthermore the USA should adopt a system similar to Australia pension system.
A lot of these people who amassed fortunes did so when life was relatively affordable. By the time they were 23 the average family would have a house, a car, a stable (and well paid) job and a family. A 23-year-old today is not even finished with his education which he needs to get a shitty paid job and already starts life with 10s of thousands of $ in debt, which makes it really hard for people to ever be able to have disposable income in the first place, let alone invest it.
Sadly, Piketty's tax will do nothing but go into the pockets of the people that are supposed to distribute it to the poor.
Well, the problem isn't with Piketty's tax tho but with the ethic of the people in charge to distribute it. The idea of the tax isn't bad
what you describe is a corrupt system
Of course Jane does better as she is accessing the power of compound interest. Joe needs to reevaluate his living expenses so he can save. I can't believe find this convincing at all.
I want someone to explain to me how Jane making money from investments hurts Joe? Now forget the inheritance. Pretend Jane makes 50% more in 10 years and Joe makes 20% more in 10 years. Their income gap has grown, but they both make more. How is Joe hurt by this? It would seem Joe is actually doing better after 10 years. Not as well as Jane, but that in no way means he is not still doing better than he was. If I'm wrong, I'd like it explained to me.
Well such a metaphor is simplistic to the point of absurdity. Make it more complex and maybe it could be addressed. The empirical fact of the matter is that the SHARE of the whole economies wealth in the hands of the top 1%, and specifically the top 0.01%, has increased enormously since the Thatcher/Reagan deregulation etc, and the share of the whole economies wealth in the hands of the bottom 90% has decreased enormously.
NeptuneNexus That doesn't mean anything though. It's not even a bad thing. If a rich guy and a poor guy see a 50% and 20% increase in their wealth, you could say the rich guy has more of a share of their total than he had before, but both guys are better off. You didn't tell me how Jane making money from investments hurts Joe? You just complained about something that is completely harmless and meaningless. You seem to only focus on your envy for the rich. If the rich and the poor do better I say that's great. You only seem to be happy that the poor does better if it hurts the rich.
You also seem to think the top 1% and the bottom 90% are the same people from year to year. They're not the same flesh and blood people. You're talking about income or wealth categories. A category will always exist, but the people in it will be different.
+GunsNpolitics
+GunsNpolitics I had suspected you were an economically illiterate moron, and I thankyou for confirming my suspicion. It's getting depressing now, the sheer stupidity. Why do people like you bother to even think about anything other than Cars and Football?
I never said Jane's investment hurts Joe. If you knew anything about economics, you wouldn't need to ask that question.
You simply don't even understand basic mathematics.
"both increase their wealth by 50%, you could say the rich guy has more of a share of the total than he had before"
Erm... no you couldn't. Perhaps you should learn some first-year mathematics. It pains me to actually have to explain this. If both people increase their wealth by 50%, the proportion remains exactly the same. The Rich person would not have increased their % share of the total.
Trust me dude, whilst Guns might well be, Politics certainly isn't your thing.
+GunsNpolitics Good for you. You realised that social mobility exists. Great insight.
Social mobility is almost always inversely proportional to the level of income and wealth inequality. Hence, social mobility is at the lowest it's been for decades.
Please, just dedicate your thought to something else. The last thing the world needs is you, another uninformed person with confident, strongly-held political opinions, who has absolutely no grasp whatsoever of economics, mathematics or politics.
NeptuneNexus I dont' know what I was thinking. I meant to type that out like I did originally as 50% and 20% increase. I know how to do math. I'm actually pretty good at it. Why you leftists always have to behave like children and start calling people names is beyond me. I guess that if you just never mature beyond the average 14 year old, then you grow up to be a leftist.
I'm not an economic illiterate either. You have still not answered my question. How does Jane making money from investments hurt Joe? I didn't say you said it did. The video says it did and I started out this thread by asking someone to explain to me how it hurts Joe. You responded, but did not answer the question. You just went on about a wealth gap, which is meaningless. Whining about the "1%" as if the people in the 1% of wealth or income are the same people from year to year.
I was hoping to find a mature adult to discuss this with. Instead I found a brat who gets frustrated like a monkey and starts flinging shit. Can you calm down and try to convince me? Or do you think the way to bring people to your side is to call them names if they dont' already see things your way?
The central issue that the video misses out is what is done with the tax. Presumably, it is invested by the government. In which case, the result is almost the same, you just have to ascertain who is better at investing. Given that the governments who suggest these policies often leave us with trillions in national debt, and the 'rich' often have accumulated more wealth by investing, I'd say that the latter is more competent in doing so. It also misses the point of inflation. Inheritance can only have an effect over a certain amount of generations. I can't get wealthy from the inheritance my grandfather got from my great grandfather because prices have risen considerably since that period in time. The only way that I could inherit money is if my family succeeding him successfully invested that money, in which they would be contributing to economic growth by investing in promising firms, which helps the poor by making them better off than they were X amount of years ago.
This happened because at some point governments had the idea of getting a huge loan from banks to invest it, and well it kinda worked, historically it was a solution to almost every nation (including 1929 crisis), but now governments are in huge debt to bankers, because even though we resolved unemployment, governments weren't so efficient and banks were still demanding back money + taxes. What now? Are we supposed to just accept that we should never have an entity to 'redistribute' money anymore because in the past it wasn't so efficient? I gotta say that I think inefficiency is paying HUGE taxes to bankers that doesn't do any kind of work or progress instead of just having, well, a bunch of money
Non stop talk about racial inequality without ever mentioning capitalism. It grinds my gears. This is ignoring the elephant in the room. I belive its by design.
This doesn't explain what the problem with inequality is, or why it is moral to steal from one group of people to give to another. Why should people envy others? Why does a group of people gain the right to steal that an individual would not?
***** Im wondering if that was even the point of this book?
Because, its not an even playing field and a group of people maybe at a disadvantage due to any particular circumstances, not say that you can't excel in life through hard work and determination, however, the little guy; so to speak, would always be playing catch up with a person born with a silver spoon in there mouth. The only possible other way, would be some extreme tactic or stroke of luck such as winning the lotto or some big invention you could capatilize from. Idealy, it would be nice if we could collectively acknowledge that not everything in this world is in black and white. Globalization is an example of innequality and how different nations interact with each other.I'm always up for a good clean debate. I like status quo. Not bad, aye, for a community college student. Pardon my grammar as it's 1am and I'm half asleep lol.
Laura Toribio
***** That depends. If they claim the resource and work the resource and mix their labor with the resource, then yes, it is moral. If they claim a resource without ever having touched, seen, nor been near the resource, then no, it is not moral. /watch?v=fasTSY-dB-s #YouCanAlwaysLeave
+starrychloe Read the book it explains how large economic inequality will slow economic growth.
well duh
No not duh. Some people don't understand this
My god this video is ridiculous. So to help the poor, a world body should take money away from rich people? How exactly does that help the poor? Why would rich people do the things that they do in order to make themselves rich if a world government body is just going to take what they earn over a certain amount? Who in their right mind would trust a government to take your money and do anything with it other than enrich themselves and blow it on stupid crap? Why is it that people think business people are evil thieves but politicians are angels?
It is odd seeing Saudi Royals, at LA Lakers games, while much of their countrymen live in the desert. You give money to the government of a poor country, the government officials might decide to take an annual trip to a Nordstrom's retail outlet in America. Give a million dollars to a starving Ethiopian child - what is he supposed to do with that cash, seeing he cannot get to an airport to fly to a McDonald's Restaurant (assuming there is not one at the airport there). The point being, the Wealth of a Nation is determined by what it can create. And the Living Standard of the People living there is determined by what they can buy. So, how to "democratize wealth"? How to get people to make clothes, grow food, and seek "higher order desires" - spiritual desires ... movies, music, et cetera, often take a "back seat" for they who are attempting to fill their bellies... Sociologists refer to this as Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs.... First, you attempt to simply stay alive -- writing poems, solving equations, that, is way down there on the priority list. How to trap a rabbit, may not be, however. I think rabbit stew is still considered a delicacy in Ireland. See, John 6:35, kjv.
The Appian Way, built during the Roman Empire - amazing how much of it still exists. Whereas modern highways, are usually in need of repair EVERY year. Capital, is that stuff which is useful, from generation unto generation : Build it well, so you do not have to build it again. And then build other stuff. "That's how capitalism is done". But now, many politicians merely advocate for perpetual work ("putting America back to work") - because their attraction is towards the dirt, and not to the stars above, is one possibility... Leisure - it is what man struggles to achieve, is it not?... Yet, interestingly, Lamech, the father of Noah, looked at his son, and said, This one shall comfort US, ... as if a child can comfort a father, and his countrymen, ..rather than the other way around.... See, Genesis 5:29, kjv... I guess, because work, and suffering, is inevitable, at least men can build ... baseball diamonds for their sons, so it seems not that they toil in vain, for survival only.... "I did something useful with my time on earth...." Noah, he built an Ark, and saw the First World perish....
GunsNpolitics the government invests in poor people all the time to enrich society. The benefit to society of, for example, funding education for lower income communities, outweighs the cost of lost income for billionaires, who often spend it on unnecessary luxuries.
Autodidactus Communitati The government invests in public education so they can skim money off the top, pass it out to their friends and donors, and control education which allows them to control the people. Billionaires spend their money on whatever they want. Who are you to decide what is unnecessary? You also seem to forget that whatever it is the rich spend their money on, a non rich person produces that product or service. Jobs are created making things for the rich. I made good money for years installing very expensive carpet in homes that cost several million dollars.
"Getting rich" is a hugely overrated explanation for motivation. So much innovation and wealth creation today is driven by the impulse to "make a difference" or "find a better way", not to pad a pocket. And if it were the case that only more wealth motivates hard work and innovation, then we should quickly sweep away all the mega-wealthy executives that helm companies, as their marginal utility for more wealth is fairly low.
You don't need massive bureaucracies to "allocate" proceeds from the progressive taxes proposed. It's not quantum physics. Start by directing the proceeds to where it will have the largest overall multiplying effect on the society - namely education at all levels. Then infrastructure. Then who knows? Maybe a base living wage - all the better to encourage more consumption, leading to more new businesses, more entrepreneurs, etc. We need more entrepreneurs and less mahogany row types.
Why no communism in us
Because it sucks
The assumptions in the example case provided are totally absurd. First, if I inherited $10mill, and especially if I was earning $500k/year on it, I certainly wouldn't bother with getting a job when I could live quite comfortably on that $500k/year income! And I suspect that I am far from the only person who would choose not to work for a living if I didn't have to because I had such a hefty inheritance to live off of. Do a survey of the people who work as store clerks, waitresses, or fast food joint cashiers. I suspect that you will get an overwhelming preference for quitting their jobs and living on the inheritance. Second, it takes a special kind of idiot to make $100k/year and spend all of it saving nothing for retirement. But that is typical leftist thinking--feeling sorry for someone who makes $100k/year and who doesn't have the good sense to save a dime of it for retirement, while people who make a fraction of that do scrimp and save a significant portion of their income for their retirement with litttle difficulty. lol.
Actually, many people like to work. And when you are rich you have more opportunities to do work that you like. Your second argument does not make sense either. Someone who makes less money may be able to save, but he will never accumulate as much unearned income as the one with the inheritance. Also there are mechanisms that keep hard working people poor: high rents, low wages, lack of social capital, information asymmetry.
"Second, it takes a special kind of idiot to make $100k/year and spend all of it saving nothing for retirement." You obviously don't live in a city.
Piketty addresses your first opinion... He says that europe has transformed from the feudalistic systems and a society which you described right now, a rentier society, to a super manager society where the unfair distribution lays in distribution of work incomes, because super managers accumulate everything. But as said in the video he mentions inheritence makes inequality. So how he explained the circumstances of humans accumulating money through work and not staying in feudalistic traditions is because of the wars. Europe is on the rise economically again after having to endure many economic crashes including borse crashes like the wallstreet crash ( this has not particularly something to do with my following statement) so people had to work to safe up money because of the lack of income. But since parts could already accumulate something theres again capital to inherit. But a thing which didnt change is the mindset. The mindset that you have to work for your money and the mindset that you have your money because of work. And also working is a natural thing which comes to people (which has already been explained by people like Hannah arendt greatly)
@@pietervoogt No, not that many people LIKE to work. Experiments with UBI's have found that out time and again. They have to abandon the UBI because too many people discovered they could live on it and no longer had to work. So few people remained working that the economy began to fail, due to labor and skills shortage, and the UBI had to be abandoned to get people back to work to keep the economy from completely collapsing.
We've been experiencing the same phenomenon here in the US with the stimulus money given out by the govt during the Covid pandemic. So many people found they could get by on it and no longer wanted to go back to work that we had a labor and skills shortage and the economy suffered. Now that the stimulus money flow has stopped, people are finally having to get back to work again as they run out of money, whether they want to or not.
@@mlemsmr7551 No, working is NOT such a natural thing which comes to people. In my decades of experience having to work for a living before I retired I had a lot of co-workers who felt like I did--if we were only independently wealthy we wouldn't have to do this. And my occupation was one that I liked--computer programmer. I liked programming computers, but I hated having to go to work every day and be bossed around. Many of my co-workers were of the same mindset. In my off work hours I would tinker with computers to my heart's content. But then I was just doing what I wanted to do with them rather than what my employer wanted me to do with them. I also had the freedom to watch TV, read books, play golf, party, travel, and many other activities that I enjoyed a lot more than working for a living.
Experiments with UBI's support this. Time and again UBI's have to be abandoned because too many people find they can live on it and therefore no longer have to work for a living. The resulting labor and skills shortage threatens to make the economy fail.
3:13. Who’s stopping Joe from learning how to invest? Who’s stopping Joe from turning his ideas into a business? Who’s stopping Joe from selling his ideas to an investor to grow his business? Answer: JOE!!!!! Capitalism is an opportunity Joe choose to ignore. Capitalism encourages innovation, imagination and solutions.
Piketty does actually note that *some* inequality can be beneficial for this innovation. He is not saying if capitalism is "good" or "bad", after all he is a scientist. What he does not is that there is a massively growing rate of inequality, which is not good for innovation and solutions.
@@victimedelamode1 your comment does not address my solution
@@Mabeylater293 you’re assuming you have a tested solution to a growing issue of inequity
@@victimedelamode1 I just presented the solutions Joe chose to ignore.
@@Mabeylater293 you’re right, all of world inequality would be solved with your solution. Can’t believe nobody thought of it before.
Picketty's insight was widely panned by scholars for
A. Not describing why inequality is a bad thing
B. Ignoring the fact that 1.6 billion people have moved from poverty to the middle class in the last 40 years from moving from socialism to market economies
C. His model when applied to his data doesn't even predict the 1950s -1980s.
D. He ignores the data that is in his addendum and online (that he used to build his model) shows wealth as unstable! There is churn in capital maintainable that he just eliminates (cherry-picking the data.
Not sure why MACAT or anyone would be praising this book?
Can't speak to the book, 1000 pages is just too long for me.
I just watched the movie 'Capital in the 21st Century' based on the book and it was pretty good (even though quite specific),
A. It gives examples of catastrophic inequality from the rise of Nazis when Germany was left with nothing after WWI to the Great Depression when stock markets and bankers had little to no regulation.
B. There's a super interesting statistic that since the 70s the average Chinese person's income went up 800% which was the creation of the middle-class (so you're right there), but at the same time the top 1% saw their income go up 2000% which is... mind blowing, and to think that it only 'begins' to make wealth inequality becoming as bad as a it used to be when the aristocracy ruled.
C. No clue, in the film when it went over the 50s - 80s what stuck out to me was the video of Reagan saying 'Make America Great Again' and the video of Margaret Thatcher saying she never think there will be a female prime minister in her lifetime.
D. Wealth is unstable? Can you explain more of this Uber Genie?
02:22 Sorry "Joe", but how can you earn 100K a year and have no savings or only get a raise of 100 USD over 10 years (02:55) on such an income? You must be bleeding thousands on OF thots 😂
what is the problem with rich people?
the fact that they are rich is not the cause of the poor. the enonomy in not that simple.
There is so much wrong with this analysis that it hurts:
1. There is no consensus from economist that think capitalism reduces inequality over time. That is a made up claim
2. Why is Jane and Joe not saving? Inheritance are rare even among the middle upper class to higher upper class. The illustration assumes that both of them are financial idiots. I'm surprised Jane didn't spend her inheritance, which is almost always the case for those who inherited the wealth.
3. Return on capital is included into a country's economic growth depending on how you did the measurement. This is a problem with Piketty's research because he tend to exclude many factors that would have otherwise be apart of what constitute "economic growth."
Old news Marx knew it all along.
It doesn't go far enough to account for the uniquely extravagant qualities of wealth which have come about only recently as a result of technology. While I have not delved deep into this particular argument, it seems that most discussion of anything tangential to this focuses solely on the fact that inequality exists without attempting to explain any of the immense intricacies of the resulting system.
This all reads like pseudo intellectual gobbley-goop, but the point I am making is that a certain naivety of the effects of wealth seems to be some sort of social mandate.
capitalism is unfair for those people who are on the average to poor status, they cant climb mountains, comparing to those rich capitalist, they can move mountains.
+michael edilou Zalsos Poor people become rich all the time. Rich people become poor or middle class all the time. Capitalism is the best system ever devised.
***** I don't know how you can possibly believe that capitalism only works for the top 1% of income earners. That is absurd. The poor in America are some of the richest people on Earth. Capitalism has done more to lift the masses out of poverty than any other system devised by man. If you think that unless you're a millionaire, capitalism has failed you, then you couldn't be more wrong. The poor in America have cars, air conditioning, cell phones, cable TV, etc. These are things reserved for the middle and upper classes in other parts of the world.
Minorities are not oppressed in America. That is total and complete nonsense. Minorities have the same opportunities as everyone else in America and lots of them do very well. The problems that plague the black families have more to do with the government helping them than anything. Broken homes and single parents cause most of the problems. The government offering to help pay the bills as long as there is not a working man in the house is a way of keeping these families down. One minority that is often never talked about are Asians. That's because even though they use to be killed and oppressed in America, they perform better than the white majority in America. They have higher incomes, better graduation rates, fewer criminals, more home ownership, and more 2 parent homes than whites or any other race.
+GunsNpolitics You are falsely attributing the productivity of a nation to the success of capitalism. A larger society will always produce more, so a poor American is obviously going to be better off than an indigenous African. The most common argument among economist in favor of capitalism would be that it fosters innovation which in turn may increase productivity. However, Piketty shows in his book, which I recommend that you read, real world data that refutes that idea entirely.
***** A larger society will always produce more, leaving the poor of that nation better off? What happened to China then? I mean, that is just absurd. Capitalism IS the reason America is so rich and the poor are so well off here. China has always had a large (much larger than America's) population, but it wasn't until free market capitalism came to Hong Kong did they begin to see their standards of living increase. Piketty uses statistical tricks to support his theories. But as we all have heard, there are lies, damn lies and statistics. The man is a propagandist and no real economist takes his book seriously.
+GunsNpolitics Tell me again what happened in China during its industrialization? Are you referring to its 400% increase in GDP over the last 50 years or the fact that they turned a rural landscape into an industrial superpower? Yes, a Chinese worker is not offered the same luxuries as a modern day American, but neither was an American prior to the 1930s. That is a problem of social reform, not inherent to the enomic policy put into place by a nation.
Return on Capital has been around %5. The growth of the economy has been around %3. What on earth may account for the %2 difference that Piketty's premise is founded on??? Well, what do ya know? Turns out the rate of inflation over the same time period was about %2 :)) Pikkety does not adjust for inflation when he states that ROC has been %5 but does so when he points out that Growth has been %3. Can you say sleight of hand
Economic theory always seems to over-complicate what happens in our everyday lives in terms of our financial well-being. It is refreshing to see Thomas Piketty in his book, "Capital in The Twenty-First Century," reversing that trend in an audacious attempt at equality by over-simplifying.
Simpletons around the world thank you for this easy to understand correction. Oh by the way wonder why Piketty didn't taken into account where jobs come from in his model if not "r"?
Wonder why Piketty didn't account for redistribution to poor via taxes?
Wonder why he didn't baseline against say Russia or any socialist countries data in terms of his model.
Wonder why he only looked at equality? Instead of total lifestyle impact. Still Hollywood types, media elite,man those who have never had a macro econ course will find Piketty's Propaganda a welcome addition to the regular fair provided by Paul Krugman.
Even once you take into account entitlements etc, the trend still exists. Piketty isn't arguing for socialism. He's merely pointing out the problems with capitalism. If you care about capitalism then maybe you should listen and try to fix it.
Russia?
Look at China. They managed to make USSR model better, global. But they are not true communist.
I think communism is good after capitalism. As a natural result of reforms.
Yes but what is better? Socialism, Communism? No. Those are far worse and have far bigger divides between rich and poor. Also it is a bad example to say, one person has 10 million, other person has nothing.. obviously money makes money.
Exactly on what are you basing these assumptions? Let me guess, Venezuela, Russia, Cuba, China? Why not for once look closer to home and see what Europe is doing, who due to socialist policies have widely affordable or even free (depending on the country) high-quality healthcare, education, rent controls, great infrastructure, and overall better life quality and equality than Americans enjoy. Maybe then we can stop scapegoating the entire socialist movement for the failures of a few third world countries.
@@LittleBigPoet There are no Socialist countries in Europe you fool.
@@darrenporter1850 I never mentioned socialist countries I said socialist policies, which happens to be what this book is talking about.
@@LittleBigPoet Give me example of a Country it has worked? Please don't say Sweden.
@@darrenporter1850 what do you mean by "it worked"? If you're talking about countries where social policies worked then yes Sweden is included, as are Norway, Denmark, Finland, and the Netherlands. To a lesser degree, all other EU countries have much more affordable education, healthcare or housing, all of which are funded by higher taxation (including on the rich) and all of which have much better life quality than the USA on multiple levels.
You can look at Vienna social housing, one of the most amazing housing projects ever taken by the government which became such a success that the rest of the cities in Austria are copying it, with about 25% of the Vienna population living in these luxurious yet affordable government-owned houses. Or how Finland revolutionized education, causing them to have one of the highest qualified people in the world, most of which are going to public schools/universities.
You seem to believe that the only systems we can have are either unaffordable, for-profit private healthcare, education and housing, or Stalinism. While the real balance is somewhere in between (but it's gonna cost everyone, particularly the rich, some higher taxes and wages).
@3:00 funny how Jane has all the money when you should assume Joe does. Jane divorces Joe and gets half of everything. This vid is divorced from reality.
That’s a straw man if I’ve ever seen one .-.
So capitalism increases financial inequality. So what? As long as everybody's prosperity rises (even in the lower income classes), what's the problem with rising inequality? The only answer that I can think of is: jealousy.
"Poor" people nowadays have higher standards of living than the richest man on the planet had 2000 years ago. Even the emperor of Rome didn't have what we have today, in terms of communication, information, medicine, or transportation. It's capitalism that fueled much of this progress.
Personally the problem I see with capitalism, and it's also a point highlighted in the book is that we are moving into a state of patrimonial capitalism. This being a state in which the most of the elite have attained their wealth from inheritance, instead of through entrepreneurship. My question to you is, would you rather live in a society in which the rich have amassed their wealth through their hard work, or through sheer luck of being born in the right family?
First of all, I don't think it's true that most of rich people's wealth is simply inherited. People who inherit a lot of money will have to keep investing successfully in order to maintain their wealth. And as they say: easy come, easy go. Kids of rich people are big spenders. Perhaps because they are spoiled, or perhaps just because they are used to luxurious lifestyles. There is a lot of mobility with regard to income classes. People are moving up and down the wealth ladder all the time.
Secondly, even if it were true that we're having patrimonial capitalism, it doesn't really matter. How does it affect me whether your wealth is earned or inherited? Once again, only if I were a jealous person would I really be bothered by your unearned wealth.
Look, inheritance inequality is just a fact of life. My genetics is different from yours. Some people are born healthy, strong, and attractive. Others are not so lucky. Also some people are born with stronger business skills than others. Is that fair? Well, perhaps not, but that doesn't mean we should aim to smooth out all those differences.
I think this debate boils down to a fundamental ideological position. If your worldview tells you that every individual should be equal in terms of having exactly the same starting point, well then you have a lot of work to do in balancing everything out. But I'm afraid that you'd move towards totalitarianism.
Not true at all. Look at the Trump family. You have a relatively wealthy father and two sons. One becomes an alcoholic, squanders his wealth, and dies early, broke. The other takes the amount he is given and through cut-throat measures increases it 1,000 fold. Money doesn't just sit around.
yeah guys just give it to the goverment he knows to use money wisely and for the poor's benefit.
Ruperdepuup says:
"So what? As long as everybody's prosperity rises "
==
The truth is it never happened.
It's an utopian idea that advocated by the proponent of capitalism.(aka neo-liberalism)
They don't really use data to make a point.
The make a point by assumption.
This is such nonsense. At the very beginning with the graphic, it shows that they think the economy is a zero sum game, which it's not. Then Jane gets 10 million in an inheritance, which is really rare and unusual to begin with. Then it assumes that her investments are all perfect which is also rare and unusual. Bad investments happen all the time and people lose the money they invested. Then it also never says how Jane making money from investments hurts Joe. It doesn't. It just tries to make you feel sorry for Joe just because Jane had a rich family member die and she inherited money. First, shouldn't we feel sorry for Jane? She is the one with the dead family member that apparently she loved enough that they left her 10 million dollars. Second, its' not Jane's fault that Joe doesn't save or invest his money. He can live on less than 100K and save or invest his money. Because he is bad with money, we're supposed to feel sorry for him? Jane may very well have invested in Joe's company, saving his job. This entire premise is absurd.
"Because he is bad with money, we are supposed to feel sorry for him?"
How do you know he's bad with money? How do you know Jane's good with money? Investing in companies very rarely saves jobs. Lack of demand is what causes job loss.
NeptuneNexus Investing in a company and it saving jobs is probably not as rare as inheriting 10 million dollars and never losing money that you invested. Investing in a company is a good way for that company to grow. How can it grow or survive if no money is ever invested in it? But it's not just lack of demand that causes job loss. Competition causes it. Poor management causes it. Company A and Company B both make the same product by hand and sell for pretty much the same price, making 5% profit after everything is paid for. Some investors invest in Company A and they buy a machine that can make the same product 100 times faster and for 50% cheaper. Company B will go out of business unless they invest in the same machine because they can't keep up with Company A's production and they cant' sell the product for as little as Company A now can. So it's not always lack of demand that causes job loss.
I say he is bad with money because you can save money when you make far less than 100k/yr. That's what the video says isn't it? He makes 100k/yr and after 10 years he still has little to nothing? He's earned a million dollars in that decade. How can he have no money saved and be considered good with money? That's the point of this video as I seen it. Poor Joe has nothing and Jane is rolling in cash.
+GunsNpolitics It is indeed just lack of demand which causes job losses. Competition causes lack of demand. Mismanagement leads to lack of demand.
NeptuneNexus No. If there is a demand of 1 million products a year and 5 companies supply those products, but 1 company automates, meaning they can sell the product at a lower cost than what the other 4 companies can produce it for, those other 4 companies will either automate as well (job loss to an extent) or they will go out of business because they can't sell their product at the higher price. The employees of those 4 companies will lose jobs. There was never a lack of demand for the product. Applying another basic economic principle, the demand should actually go up, since the price of the product is lower, meaning more people can now afford it.
Lack of demand can and does cause job loss, but it is by no means the only factor in job loss. I think what you're calling a lack of demand would be if a pencil company raised the price of a pencil to $100, since no one would pay $100 for a pencil. But that's not lack of demand. There would still be a demand for pencils, just not at that price.
GunsNpolitics? are you a joke? Cause you just made me laugh :D
Interesting data, but who cares if income inequality gets worse, Joe doesn't lose any money. Jane never took anything from Joe. Everybody's better off
Piketty is good at critiquing capitalism but not at a solution. Read Marx, Engels and Lenin for the way forward. Socialism is the natural progression of Capitalism.
My four grandparents were all first generation Americans. Only one had a college degree. All were poor. All were able to achieve middle-class by age 40, by hard work. All of their children went to college. All started in middle class and all my cousins and my siblings and I have a higher standard of living than our parents. My children are all college educated, all have homes by age 30, 2 are working on advanced degrees. Nothing complex here. Hard work and education have led to the accumulation of wealth.
No one is leaving America to live in Europe. No one is leaving America to go to Russia or Venezuela. One can argue that through nationalization and socialism these countries have maximized "Equality!"
So why again do I want equality? Why would I inflict equality on my children? Work hard, make good choices in terms of who you marry, how many children you have and when (wait until 30) to think about having kids and you will decrease your chances of divorce and increase your lifetime earning potential.
Work hard!
I knew people growing up who didn't work hard. They played hard. When the government handed them welfare money they were incented not to work hard.
America has become the greatest place for personal advancement in the world as a result of freedom of opportunity, not freedom of outcome!
Piketty needs to explain a lot more than his model. He needs to justify the confiscation of personal property in the form of wealth tax. This has been tried numerous times and ends up driving out the most innovative and positive aspects of an economy, namely the entrepreneur (don't think the French have a word for that).
IKEA is a Swedish company right? Wrong, they left Sweden when Sweden implemented similar ideas to Piketty's but back in the 1960s and 1970s. Companies exited the US at record pace under Obama for similar reasons. Wealth doesn't have barriers to leaving the country and taking 100s of thousands of jobs with that wealth.
Joe and Jane is a terrible example. Since it does not take into account the intelligence of the 2 parties or their ability to process new information or to adapt to it. If Joe is earning a £100 grand he must have some intelligence and if you have intelligence then you are going to be looking at ways to increase your advantage in the world not just through the income stream of getting a raise. If you are intelligent you will begin to ask the question why. Why is this happening to me and what can I do to change it. Joe will probably look at ways of increasing his wealth and standing not just through his job but other means as well either property, investments , marriage .Also the stock market can go up and down so Jane may lose money as well as gain from it. Joe has the most to gain here since if he is motivated he will be able to learn and adapt to new things that perhaps Jane might not be aware of. If you fast forward 10 years many things will have changed. This example assumes that neither party has curiosity or intelligence to look at or change their position or point of view over time
The point of the video is not that one could be smarter and save more, it's that investments outpace labour. If the poor person with good income can be smarter and save money to invest, so can the person that has the same income but also 10 million in savings. The truth is, both have the same job (income) and you could argue the same intelligence if I go by your example. A smart person with a lot of money will increase his money much faster than a smart person without money. All things being equal in terms of job and intelligence, the person that has capital at the beginning will constantly increase the gap in wealth between himself and the other party that starts with no capital.
Anyone negating the power of Capitalism in creating prosperity is a foolish
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