a latter-day jacobin with data reflections on piketty’s capital professor hannes h. gissurarson...
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A Latter-Day Jacobin With DataReflections on Piketty’s Capital
Professor Hannes H. GissurarsonEuropean Students for Liberty, Reykjavik
15 November 2014: 16.15–17.00
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Piketty Replacing Rawls as Prophet
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Rawls, and the Poor
• Main proposition: Income distribution just if poor are as well off as they can be: maximum of minimum (maximin)
• Let us look at Index of economic freedom, with data from long time and many places
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Four Worlds of Freedom
Free
Semi-Free
Semi-Unfree
Unfree
$0 $10,000 $20,000 $30,000 $40,000
Average GDP/capita 2010
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Lowest Incomes in Four Worlds
Free
Semi-Unfree
Semi-Free
Unfree
$.000
$2000.000
$4000.000
$6000.000
$8000.000
$10000.000
$12000.000
Average Income of Bottom 10% in 2010
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Parting Ways: Australia and Argentina
19301935
19401945
19501955
19601965
19701975
19801985
19901995
20002005
20100
5,000
10,000
15,000
20,000
25,000
30,000
GDP/capita $1990
AustraliaArgentina
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Parting Ways: Jamaica and Singapore
19601963
19661969
19721975
19781981
19841987
19901993
19961999
20022005
20080
5,000
10,000
15,000
20,000
25,000
30,000
35,000
GDP/capita $1990
JamaicaSingapore
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Seven Nordic economies 2010
Minnesota
South Dakota
Manitoba
Sweden
Iceland
Denmark
Finland
0 10000 20000 30000 40000 50000 60000
GDP/capita $
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Swedes in Different Economies
Swedes in Sweden
Average US
Swedish-Americans
0 10000 20000 30000 40000 50000 60000
GDP/capita 2008 $
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Piketty, and the Rich
• Main proposition: inequality rising, poor do not gain from capitalism
• Capital accumulated by rich, because r > g
• Need for confiscatory international taxes on wealth and top income
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Piketty’s Income Share of 1% Top
19031910191719241931193819451952195919661973198019871994200120080
5
10
15
20
25
30
Sweden United Kingdom United StatesFrance Germany
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US: Country of Immigrants
• US subject to waves of immigrants, first from Europe and Asia, now from Mexico and Central America
• Brings down US averages, even if only temporarily
• Creates a statistical illusion
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Problems with Piketty’s Numbers
• Financial Times: Errors in calculations of wealth distribution in the UK
• French economists: inflated real estate prices cause overestimate of wealth
• Neither criticism very relevant to Piketty’s income distribution
• However: no correlation between the redistributive welfare state and income inequality
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Problems with Piketty’s Method
• Underestimates bottom income: uses income before transfers
• Overestimates top income: ignores changes brought about by changed taxation, top income becoming more visible
• Method suffers from same problems as Gini coefficient as measurement of inequality: relative share of top increases if more people study longer or live longer
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Impact of Globalisation
• Piketty possibly right that bottom income stagnant or even slightly decreasing
• Competition from China and India: Massive migration into middle class
• Global income distribution become more equal, while income distribution in West less equal
• West only 1 of 7 billion people on earth
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Income Share of 90% Bottom, China
0
2000
4000
6000
8000
10000
12000
Average income in ¥2000
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Why the Super-Rich?
• People with special, non-replicable skills (i.e. earning rent from abilities), innovators, entrepreneurs, entertainers, athletes
• By definition, supply (almost) fixed, while demand flexible
• Suddenly find demand, the market for their services, going from 300 million people to perhaps 3 billion, impact of globalisation
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What’s Wrong With Inequality?
• Country with an income distribution D1
• Milton Friedman comes to give a lecture• 1,000 attend, each paying $50• Friedman $50,000 richer, 1,000 people each
$50 poorer: less equal distribution D2
• No problem: everybody is happy• Distribution by choice: from each as she
chooses, to each as she is chosen
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More Problems with Piketty’s Ideas
• Rate of return of capital not always higher than economic growth
• Capital not immobile and unbreakable• Capital not in hands of rentiers, landowners
and bondholders, also innovators, entrepreneurs, investors, funds, third sector organisations
• Dispersed by children, divorces, risks, uncertainties
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Challenge to Retain Wealth
Barbara Hutton Charles Koch
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Reading Balzac
• Piketty quotes Balzac, Old Goriot
• Story of fragile wealth• Goriot penniless• Anastasie’s lover with
gambling debts• Delphine’s husband
failed speculations
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Economic Growth
• Piketty’s confiscatory taxes would become a self-fulfilling prophecy
• Immense creative powers of capitalism• Almost unlimited possibilities of economic
growth• Capitalism needs innovators, entrepreneurs
and investors• Welfare state needs taxpayers
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Sustaining the Welfare State
Lowest Quintile
Next-lowest Quintile
Mid-Quintile
Next-highest Quintile
Highest Quintile
0.0
10.0
20.0
30.0
40.0
50.0
60.0
70.0
Proportion of US Total Tax Payments in 2000
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Rand’s Thought Experiment
• The rich contribute most of tax revenue
• What happens if they emigrate (as they sometimes do)?
• What happens if they choose to disappear: Theme of Rand’s Atlas Shrugged
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Further Benefits of the Rich
• Pay for experimental process to turn luxuries into necessities
• Provide risk capital; 1,000 experiments instead of 10
• Have means to fight bureaucratic aggression and government oppression
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The Challenge of the Red Queen
19921994
19961998
20002002
20042006
20082010
20122014
20160
5
10
15
20
25
30
Proportion of Gross International Product
EUUSChina and India
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