[andrepd]

>I guess you must know better than Picketty

>(he doesn't exactly say what i said, but does promote very aggressive taxation of capital, which is the same goal more gently said).

Well true, he doesn't say exactly what you said, because he doesn't anything like what you're saying. Taxing wealth above the relatively low ceiling of 1M USD at 100% would be ridiculous. He is, though, in favour of a progressive tax system that, crucially, reduces inequality below “tolerable” levels, where an “intolerable level” is a level which results in imbalances of power which undermine or destroy democratic rule and oppress those without wealth.

So his practicable suggestion is a global coordinated effort to tax wealth and reduce inequality, which his utopian suggestion is a trans-national socialist economy with true democratic control over the economy.

[lapinot]

How would you reduce wealth inequality without directly or indirectly limiting the maximum amount of wealth? I believe the citation of Picketty is appropriate given that. I believe that the main solution is indeed limiting indirectly, but that there should additionally be a hard cap on the wealth an individual is able to control. 1M, 100M, i could've said any number, it's not the point (i said 1M because that's probably a level above which your lifestyle doesn't meaningfully improve, you're just having more luxuous luxury). One deep problem with current capitalism imho is the implicit goal of unending growth. Putting a hard cap would break that down. It's the same thing for corporation: they always want/need to get larger. It's not useful for anybody but the owners and actually it creates wrong incentives: optimizing for relative efficiency (result/resources) with no regard for constants instead of minimizing absolute resources for a given fixed production goal.

Also i'm not really sure what's so "ridiculous" about it. I'm not saying the next president of random country should do that. But after sufficient transitioning, in a state of the economy where we have "tolerable" inquality, we should lock it with a hard cap.

To make it even clearer, i believe most "things" should have a cap on how much you're able to posess (perhaps with exceptional derogations, or additional taxation): the number of houses, cars, land, gas, plane travels, eletronics, clothes. For most people it wouldn't be a constraint as the cap would be on the level at which you can realisticaly use it personally, but i think achieving that would prove a deep shift in mentality.