Piketty. It's All About the Coming Wealth Tax
There are alot of great critiques of Thomas Piketty's book that lefties are fawning all over as the greatest thing since ever (here is just the latest, from Martin Feldstein, who says that Piketty's numbers don't add up), but this one reveals the book to be what it really is...intellectual cover for the coming wealth tax.
Lefties have ALWAYS wanted to simply take wealth from the wealthy. From raw, bald expropriation to more subtle, seemingly innocuous re-distributionist schemes, the goal is always the same. They want to do it for its own sake, but in the current time they need to do it because everything they've built faces collapse. The liberal state is insolvent, everything they've worked for and built up over the decades is at risk. Walter Russell Mead puts a fine point on when he posits the collapse of the "blue model." From the fiscal follies exemplified by Detroit and Illinois to the inevitable demographic wreckage of Social Security, progressive governance is facing its end days, unless it can come up with gobs of money to keep itself going.
And where is it going to get this money? They already tax pretty much everything. The only arrow left in the quiver and the only arrow big enough to be of any use is a wealth tax. They've pined for it for decades, but now it is urgent. Life as most lefties know it cannot go on unless they start grabbing huge chunks of private wealth. Everything they do is focused on bringing this policy achievement home.
And I mean EVERYTHING. For example, much under the radar, one of the first things the Obama administration did was to neuter the offshore tax havens. Lightworker has spent six years grinding the Swiss banks and other offshore banking centers into dust to prepare the battlefield for the coming wealth tax, so that wealth can't just sneak away from the taxing authorities.
Then there is the beyond-profligate explosion of federal spending, which I have highlighted as "the plan behind having no plan."
And now there is Piketty's book - the intellectual cover. A small piece, but a necessary one to be sure. You can't pull off something this big unless you have all the pieces of the puzzle together...you need the Crisis, the Demon, the Case and the Leader.
- The Leader - the presidency of Barack Obama is the unique set of circumstances, politically and culturally, to do this, from his enormously effective cult of personality to the handy-dandy ability to label opposition to him as racist. (Fortunately, this moment is cratering fast, but it wasn't supposed to be this way, and still, the progressives will fight and scratch to keep the moment alive until it undeniably has no pulse)
- The Bad Guy - The demonization of "the 1%" didn't just come out of nowhere, and why do you think Harry Reid keeps harping about the Koch Brothers?
- The Crisis - you need as dire a fiscal situation as you can get, and they are engineering it
- The Case - this is where Piketty comes in
All of this is part of the Big Push for the wealth tax. It is so close the lefties can taste it. Let's hope the American people don't buy it and the moment passes.
Lefties have ALWAYS wanted to simply take wealth from the wealthy. From raw, bald expropriation to more subtle, seemingly innocuous re-distributionist schemes, the goal is always the same. They want to do it for its own sake, but in the current time they need to do it because everything they've built faces collapse. The liberal state is insolvent, everything they've worked for and built up over the decades is at risk. Walter Russell Mead puts a fine point on when he posits the collapse of the "blue model." From the fiscal follies exemplified by Detroit and Illinois to the inevitable demographic wreckage of Social Security, progressive governance is facing its end days, unless it can come up with gobs of money to keep itself going.
And where is it going to get this money? They already tax pretty much everything. The only arrow left in the quiver and the only arrow big enough to be of any use is a wealth tax. They've pined for it for decades, but now it is urgent. Life as most lefties know it cannot go on unless they start grabbing huge chunks of private wealth. Everything they do is focused on bringing this policy achievement home.
And I mean EVERYTHING. For example, much under the radar, one of the first things the Obama administration did was to neuter the offshore tax havens. Lightworker has spent six years grinding the Swiss banks and other offshore banking centers into dust to prepare the battlefield for the coming wealth tax, so that wealth can't just sneak away from the taxing authorities.
Then there is the beyond-profligate explosion of federal spending, which I have highlighted as "the plan behind having no plan."
And now there is Piketty's book - the intellectual cover. A small piece, but a necessary one to be sure. You can't pull off something this big unless you have all the pieces of the puzzle together...you need the Crisis, the Demon, the Case and the Leader.
- The Leader - the presidency of Barack Obama is the unique set of circumstances, politically and culturally, to do this, from his enormously effective cult of personality to the handy-dandy ability to label opposition to him as racist. (Fortunately, this moment is cratering fast, but it wasn't supposed to be this way, and still, the progressives will fight and scratch to keep the moment alive until it undeniably has no pulse)
- The Bad Guy - The demonization of "the 1%" didn't just come out of nowhere, and why do you think Harry Reid keeps harping about the Koch Brothers?
- The Crisis - you need as dire a fiscal situation as you can get, and they are engineering it
- The Case - this is where Piketty comes in
All of this is part of the Big Push for the wealth tax. It is so close the lefties can taste it. Let's hope the American people don't buy it and the moment passes.
posted by Donny Baseball at 1:13 PM
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