Historical analysis of the distribution of wealth over the long term: the facts!

This book is quite depressing, so it was necessary. It will allow you to exceed lécume days and understand that the world of yesterday is already gone and that tomorrow will likely resemble that davant yesterday.

Indeed the old curse invoked by Karl Marx and many others on the capital seemed infinite laccroissement navoir been naughty quune own story to scare the Poor People. They Nont thirty glorious rehabilitated the man not at the expense of capital?

Or are we not all in lattente the return of the war boom, the state considered normal and natural for the European economy?

How it turned-author therefore managed to break down these beliefs? Well, at The reverse of too déconomistes, he initiated a scientific approach (I assure you, this is extremely rare) and attempted to measure the accumulated capital of the late eighteenth century to the present through the available archives.

It turned out that this is dailleurs France, which has the most comprehensive data in the world, with other European countries just behind. This will be LEUROPE to be long at the heart of this book, and this is normal, this is where capital flows have been the most violent.

The first chapters of the book are devoted to the then capital daccumulation normal process in which the author enters with many, too, pedagogy and dinterminables explanations. The author just shows that when the return on capital exceeds the economic growth, capital / income naturally moves in favor of capital.

Or the historical series considered by the author show a surprising stability of the net return (before tax) of capital to about 5%, then the author is historian or literary critic by making us go back to the nineteenth century.

Why this century there? Well because this is perhaps the horizon of our present societies, certainly this is a society where the concentration of capital has reached absurd values ​​(10% of the population concentrating 90% of the capital, let alone the last percentile) and which the employee does not work sélever significantly in the society. Location illustrated by the characters and situations of Father Goriot Balzac in which lun of them concluded that it is better to aim for a good marriage to live comfortably for the dowry of his "beloved" rather than risk the hazards of low-paid wage labor.

But what it turned so happened that we all have the impression of living in a meritocratic company employees (author shows us throughout the book that he dailleurs past are nowadays illusion)?
Simple: two world wars centered on Europe, a terrible economic crisis in 1929 and thirty years of strong growth.

These tragic events have made incredible purge of "historical" capital, while the strong growth that followed World War II slowed the progression of capital in national income ALL OPERATING.
Quen is it today? For we must be wary of economists who are admirers of the Present, remember limposture 2000s when many claimed that the nature of the economy has changed, growth never séteindrait = crap.

Human Well crap, DONT not we all instinctively assume that tomorrow will be like today (dailleurs in weather it works 60% of the time!).
Today, therefore, Thomas Pikkety shows, consolidated figures supporting that total accumulation of Kapital has almost reached the extreme values ​​observed historically (of the order of 6 times the national income), and this is normal!

What is not normal, this is quen Europe we live with the hope of finding a crazy lépoque blessed day war boom. Illusion again, this crazy growth was the result of the period of reconstruction and upgrading the productivity of the most advanced countries in loccurrence the United States. Dailleurs This is the same thing happened later to Japan / Korea and now China.

So we joined concentrations Capital early nineteenth, you know this blessed time (see Downton Abbey - Season 1) filled with idle rich served by servants of armies. Yet we have not actually BE income impression at that time that sest happened, then?

It sappelle democratization of capital, that for the first time in history, a non-negligible percentage of the population manages to accumulate a little capital, plus the fact that large fortunes Nont not reached previous highs. A small scratch for the occasion to the fact quune Much of this wealth is real, so in France partly artificial because after the building restriction due to the Mayors and unstable and complex regulations.

Another difference is even newer, ultra-cadres that capture a portion of increasingly significant remuneration in companies without real performance benefits nen (again, the author brings measurable elements), forming a makeshift beginning which competes old money.
Finally, limpôt an extremely punitive tax (90% in lAmérique pre-Reagan and 98% on the last installment for the legacy in lAngleterre pre-tatchérienne and) that has long limited léventail revenue increases since become almost useless. The United States have thus been significantly more egalitarian than France in the years 60-70 when samples did not exceed 30% of GDP.

But the path is today very disturbing, all the more that the author informs us that the use of tax optimization practices by very large fortunes from reaching enables real average rates of the order of 10% (source: Wealth Management US universities), exacerbating yet the gap between poor and rich and super-rich.

At the end of the book, the author comes out somewhat from his coat distributor of measured facts and questions the justification limpôt, the service provided in exchange of impossibility to go much further in terms of tax burden, combined with massive tax evasion which is much talk today.

To measure this, this is fun, it finds that the planet Earth has a highly negative balance of payments, which means that the Earth is probably owned by a distant planet?
Unless money disappears heavily in tax havens that do not declare anything, further exacerbating the misunderstanding of the reality of capital in the world.

At the end of lessai, the author finally addresses the impediments to this accumulation, outside the elements that it has already addressed, that is to say primarily and essentially lImpôt, well weaker tax doctrinally speaking by the Conservative Revolution of the last 30 years.

And anyway limpôt income is powerless to limit the accumulation of capital once it engaged, it is hardly ny why limpôt on capital. But on this point, the Anglo-Saxon world which had also invented limpôt punitive inheritance has completely turned its cuti.

Everything remains to be done, so come finally the proposals which the author offers us a recipe inapplicable short in the medium term: a Utopia what. But a useful utopia, for already the simple approach identify existing assets would drop daffirmations small number or interested about the real inequalities and their consequences.
The author then discusses the technical details of this case, which are far from being obvious and I leave you to read!

A book that puts things in their places, which gives a scratch through the Anglo-Saxon economists who benefit financially from their own opinions and raises a fundamental question for our democracies: what level dinégalité are we willing to endure before everything explodes?
We bet that France will explode first, she does not na already shown the example?