Protecting wealth vs. promoting growth

There’s no single principle that explains everything, but there is great explanatory power inn the French economist Thomas Piketty’s idea that inequality always increases whenever the rate of return on investment exceeds the rate of growth of the economy, that is, when r > g.

This is not something that results from impersonal economic forces.  During the past 30 years, the policy of the U.S. government, and of governments that follow the U.S. lead, has been to prioritize return on investment over economic growth.

The U.S. Congress and many state governments are in the process of cutting back scientific research, education, maintenance of public works and other things that are needed for our nation’s economic future, in order to keep tax rates low for corporations and upper bracket taxpayers.

These are the same “austerity” policies being enforced by the World Trade Organization, International Monetary Fund and European Central Government on vulnerable governments, which are forced to sacrifice the well-being of their citizens in order to satisfy powerful financial institutions.   In both cases, there is a tradeoff to sacrifice economic growth in order to maintain returns on investment.

One part of austerity is to sell off government property at bargain rates and delegate public services to corporations.  Most of the time this amounts to a transfer of wealth from taxpayers to well-connected business owners, who have no financial incentive to maximize service.

Some other ways that government policy fosters investor income at the expense of economic growth are (1) bailing out banks that have failed due to reckless financial speculation, (2) refusal to prosecute financial fraud by the “too big to fail” banks or claw back profits due to fraud, (3) expansion of patent and copyright monopolies, (4) failure to regulate cable and telecommunications laws, (5) failure to enforce antitrust laws, (6) the ban on student loan refinancing or bankruptcy …. The list goes on.

Increasingly corporate management seeks profit not by increasing the size of the economic pie, but by giving investors and executives a larger part of the pie — through financial manipulation and excess fees in the case of banks, through driving down wages and increasing executive compensation in the case of corporations in general.  I don’t say all corporate managers behave in this way.  I say that this has become common and acceptable.

The result has been a concentration of wealth and income in a tiny minority of the population, and economic stagnation for everybody else.   So the first step in reducing inequality is to stop promoting it.

Piketty’s preferred solution to undue concentration of wealth is a progressive tax on capital, sufficient to prevent the wealth of the economic elite from expanding at a faster rate than the economy as a whole, along with progressive taxes on income and inheritance.  I don’t object to any of these, but higher taxes on the rich do not, in and of themselves, benefit the middle class, wage-earners or the poor.   I think it is more important to  strengthen labor unions, raise the minimum wage, maintain essential public services and invest in the future.

LINKS

Capital in the 21st Century: Still Mired in the 19th by Dean Baker of the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities.

More Effective Remedies for Inequality Than Piketty’s by Geoff Davies on Sam Keen’s DebtWatch blog.

Corrupting Piketty in the 21st century by “Rumpelstatskin” for MacroBusiness.

The Top of the World by Doug Henwood of Left Business Review.

Studying the Rich by Mike Konczal for Boston Review.

Capital in the Twenty-First Century: Introduction by Thomas Piketty.

Why the rich will probably get richer, my synopsis of Piketty’s book.

Tags: Capital in the Twenty-First Century, Distribution of Wealth, Economic Austerity, Economic growth, Income inequality, Thomas Piketty, Wealth