Krugman, Piketty, etc

What a good post from Krugman, talking about the much discussed new book by Piketty on the intensifying inequality in the US and globally, in which he notes that the history of taxation in the US is entirely different from what Tea Party drips (ha, a pun) think it is. (And incidentally, the Piketty argument as explained at that last link sounds extremely convincing.  It looks like it is being received as a death knell for the Right wing economic orthodoxy and philosophy of the last few decades.)

And here's a second Krugman post, arguing that dissing the Koch Brothers is entirely legitimate.

Amusingly, I see that Catallaxy is running one of its "Gee, aren't rich people great?" posts about the Koch Brothers at the same time.

It's a feature of the Ayn Rand shadow on libertarianism that they rarely make any differentiation  between the rich who earn it in an admirable and positive way - innovation, hard work, meeting a market for a product that genuinely benefits everyone with limited harm to society or the environment - and those who earn or use their gains in a positively harmful way, or did not actually earn it at all but simply were born into the right family.    In fact, they argue strongly against any attempt to bring morality to the issue of how money is made - Sinclair Davidson thinks campaigns against Apartheid South Africa didn't work, couldn't care less that tobacco companies sell a carcinogen when considering whether they should have unfettered marketing via trade mark, and has taken to complaining regularly about new divestment campaigns against fossil fuel mining companies.   He dismisses as essentially unworthy any attempt to remove the scandalous use of tax havens by the likes of Apple and other multinationals.   He'll soon be making a teary video "Leave Capital alone! You are lucky it even performed for you.  Leave it alone!"


But going back to Piketty:  I see that John Cassidy in the New Yorker has a series of charts that illustrate the argument.  I'll copy just this one, showing that Australia really has been better in the inequality stakes: