The Reason Why We Should be Depressed About Bernie Sanders' Success
The key and devastating idea in Thomas
Piketty's masterpiece Capital in the
Twenty-First Century, an idea that many missed or failed to
appreciate, is that there is no law-like link between democracy and capitalism.
As he points out at the beginning of the book, there was after the Second World
War great belief in the Kuznets Curve.
The economist Simon Kuznets devised this hypothesis, which was eagerly accepted
by those on the right and the left of his time (the 1950s). By using tax
records, he saw a movement in the history of capitalism that began with things
being very unequal and brutal for the poor to, step by step, things being more
equal and democratic. It was therefore a law of capitalism that, as it
accumulated more wealth, more of this wealth was distributed downward.
But what did Piketty show? This curve was not a law but the result of a
historical accident.
http://www.thestranger.com/blogs/slog/2016/02/09/23547230/the-reason-why-should-be-depressed-about-bernie-sanders-success
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