A SDRM must begin by defining “odious” credits and borrowings. Also, when should capital receive anonymous asylum?

The world no doubt needs a Sovereign Debt Restructuring Mechanism but, if that is going to help the citizens of the world, which it primarily should do, that must begin by making very clear the difference between bona-fide normal credits and borrowings, and odious credits and borrowings.

And at what moment should somebody's capital classify to receive anonymous asylum? For instance would someone escaping from North Korea be able to do so?

When writing about “Capital”, like Piketty, can you just use data about it, without ever having seen it at work?

The real importance of capital is when it marries risk… meaning when it is willing to burn itself up in order to multiply enormously or reach something much higher.

And that angle is entirely absent in Piketty´s “Capital”.

The closest he gets is when on page 115 he writes “Capital is never quiet: it is always risk-oriented and entrepreneurial, at least at its inception”. 

Indeed… but then? What happens after its inception? Truth is that from being muscle creating capital, most of it turns into obesity creating capital… and dies out over time.

Look for instance at those many trillions invested in the debt of the “infallible sovereigns”. Is that capital? No way! In fact all that has already been condemned to disappear through financial repression.

Frankly… the more I read the book (I am almost through it) the more upset I get... at least with its too capitalistic publisher's campaign.

From reading Thomas Piketty’s Wikepedia biography it becomes absolutely clear that he has never ever seen capital put to work… and yet he dares to write about capital.

Is this an expert to follow? No way Jose! He is just another Bill Easterly tyrant!

PS. Avoid the merchants of poverty!

Professor Thomas Piketty. What’s better, to live in your own inequality, or in somebody else’s equality?

Is Thomas Piketty, with his “Capital” unwittingly working for the big time Oligarchs and Plutocrats?

In the absence of QEs and TARP, would Piketty have written the same “Capital in the Twenty-First Century”?

When and if taxing the wealthy, because of inequality, remember that governments are a big part of the problem.

Professor Piketty. Would you tax wealth if that only benefited even more some few oligarchs?

Avoid the merchants of poverty

“Don't be so defeatist, it is so middle class.”

Could Thomas Piketty´s tax on 1% wealth, be a Trojan horse for Chrystia Freeland’s 0.01% Plutocrats to capture more wealth?

If the last man sitting in the last chair having all the wealth had something sustainable… would that not mean he was worth it? 

Professor Piketty is exaggerating the sustainability of wealth… too much of it degenerates… but I also understand that most of us would probably like to be wealthy, even if degenerated.

Let us avoid the merchants of poverty

I admire those who help the poor. Not so those who use the poor to help themselves.

Even though there has been a considerable reduction in the number of poor in the world (not necessarily sustainable), inequality, in terms of differences in income and wealth between the richest and the poorest has increased considerably during the last decades ... and that's not healthy, to say the least.

And accordingly, opportunistically, those who argue that everything is solved redistributing, meaning taking from the rich and giving it to the poor, now appear on the scene. How easy it would be if everything was just that easy. It is not. It is our duty to make sure that merchants of poverty, with their insidious sowing of envy and hatred, makes it even more difficult to help solve the poor’s already sufficient precarious situation.

The proposed solution is based on the illusion that it is possible to take away purchasing power from the rich and hand it over to the poor; and that the poor can then go with that purchasing power to the grocery store. False!

First, the rich have their wealth invested in assets, houses, stocks, paintings, yachts, etc. And so, to transform those assets into money, you have to sell them. To whom? Without wealthy buyers around, the sale would only translates into a reduction in the value of the assets ...resulting in a lower amount than estimated to be delivered to the poor. How does it help the poor that a Picasso valued at $50 million, is then only worth $1 million? 

Second, assuming you could sell the assets and give the money to the poor, will there be sufficient supply to satisfy the needs of the poor? No! The unexpected new demand will result in much inflation.

Does this mean that there is nothing to do? Not at all! What is clear is that instead of attacking the results of the inequitable distribution of income and wealth, we must concentrate on attacking its causes ... especially the artificial ones, those not based on the natural reality that we are not all equal.

What are these artificial causes? Each economy has them, in different degrees, but their most frequent common denominator is state interference. Licenses leading to monopolies (intellectual property rights?), foreign exchange controls, transparent and non-transparent subsidies, corruption, discriminatory regulations, etc. For example, in Venezuela, how much more could you have benefited the poorest if the government had not insisted on giving away gasoline at US$ 4 cents a liter... or selling foreign exchange cheaply to those vacationing abroad?

A seemingly easy way out like re-distribution, is simply not enough, nor is it sustainable, and it is the poor who most need to know that. It cannot be that the final result of the redistribution of wealth and income in Venezuela would be to concentrate even more income and wealth in the hands of our Boligarchs of turn… whatever political color they wear. 

But Kurowski! Have you not for years insisted in distributing all of Venezuela´s net oil revenues to the citizens­? Yes! But with that, much more than a redistribution of purchasing power, I mean the redistribution of powers and opportunities... from petrocrats to citizens.

And if the rich want to help, welcome, but perhaps they better deliver that help directly to the poor, instead of going through the politicians who so often are only acting as the merchants of poverty.

In other countries, where for the .01% plutocrats what the 99% holds seems not to suffice they are now looking for the other 0.99 %. Tax the wealth and, at the end of the day, without further changes, most of it will come back to fewer and fewer Plutocrats.

Translated from El Universal, Caracas Note: You will not find the link. I was censored in my homeland Venezuela 

PS. Legend holds it that when Otelo Saraiva de Carvalho, chief strategist of the 1974’s Carnation Revolution in Lisbon, told Sweden’s Olof Palme: “In Portugal we want to get rid of the rich”, Palme replied, “how curious, in Sweden we only aspire to get rid of the poor” 

Below some follow ups on the theme

http://perkurowski.blogspot.com/2014/07/what-does-it-matter-whether-picasso.html

http://perkurowski.blogspot.com/2016/10/i-tweeted-how-do-you-morph-200-million.html

http://perkurowski.blogspot.com/2016/01/the-wealth-of-62-richest-equals-that-of.html

http://perkurowski.blogspot.com/2015/03/the-myth-of-unused-wealth.html

Universal Basic Income: The way to free us from the redistribution profiteers.

Taxing Wealth 101

Thomas Piketty. Would you tax wealth if this only benefited even more some few oligarchs?

We begin to hear proposals about taxing wealth, like that presented by Thomas Piketty in “Capital in the Twenty First Century”

Taxing wealth might reduce the fever of inequality, but it does not attack its causes. In fact, forcing the sale of assets, which is where wealth is stored, in order to increase the consumption of the less well off, might direction the funds away from those who have earned their wealth naturally, to those who earn it thanks to market imperfections, or to outright crony capitalism. An in such a way it could undermine even more the meritocratic values on which democratic societies are based, something that Piketty himself would seem to abhor.

In other words, if in Russia, would you tax wealth if that benefited the oligarchs?

I believe it would be better to concentrate on what is causing unjust artificial inequality and in this respect I could mention the following possibilities.

Like to eliminate the concept of risk weighted capital requirements for banks which channels bank credit away from “the risky”, in much a proxy for the poor, to “the infallible”, in much a proxy for the wealthy.

Like to increase the tax on all those profits which have originated under the protection of intellectual property rights. There is no reason for these to be taxed at the same rate as profits obtained from competing naked in the markets.

Finally, let´s give it a thought to what would have happened to all that unequally accumulated wealth, had not TARP and Quantitative Easing come to its rescue.

Just the fact that, except for religious considerations, when in the grave, we’re all equal, and the Gini coefficient is zero, should not mean we should hurry to get there... I think.