Sunday, May 18, 2014

Thomas Piketty Wants Income Equality -- And the Hell With Growth
...The Manhattan Institute's Scott Winship points out that relying, as Piketty does, on tax returns for the U.S. statistics means omitting income from Social Security, food stamps, public housing, Medicare and Medicaid.

Tax returns count roommates and unmarried partners as separate units when they are part of a larger household.

They don't include employer-paid health insurance -- an increasing share of employee compensation in recent decades....

..."In perhaps the most revealing line of the book," Cowen writes, "the 42-year-old Piketty writes that since the age of 25, he has not left Paris, 'except for brief trips.'"

France, where a cozy elite runs government and large corporations, has a 75 percent top income tax rate and essentially zero economic growth. Is that the future American liberals want?