[chongli]

Fortunately (or unfortunately) inequality and poverty have significant, damaging effects on the voting public. It's easy to buy into the idea that global warming is a conspiracy when you walk outside on a cool day. It's not so easy to accept the lies about inequality when you and all your friends and relatives start losing their jobs and have their homes foreclosed.

[Florin_Andrei]

> It's not so easy to accept the lies about inequality when you and all your friends and relatives start losing their jobs and have their homes foreclosed.

Except when the man on the talk radio blames it on "inept Big Government" or "excessive taxation". Then it's super-easy.

[SoftwareMaven]

Given the amount we spend on government, the inefficient way it's run, and the value the taxpayer gets for the dollar (compared to e.g. Sweden), it's a huge, brightly painted target. It is not all of the problem, but it is a problem.

[Florin_Andrei]

This is a bit like blaming the murder on the bullet, not on the criminal who pulled the trigger.

The US government would be in a very different shape indeed, if it wasn't owned by the highest bidder. It might be inefficiently run for you; but for the special interests who own all the lobbyists in D.C., and who pay all the politicians - for them it's just fine as-is, thank you.

[econghiy]

Several Asian countries like Singapore and Hong Kong have extremely high inequality rates yet far lower unemployment rates than the US. Where is your proof that inequality causes job losses?

[chongli]

I never said inequality causes job losses. On the contrary, job losses cause inequality.

[om2]

Job losses as the mechanism of inequality would very little nothing to do with Piketty's claims, which are about concentration of wealth at the very top due to intrinsic properties of returns on capital. Piketty's theory doesn't involve this either causing or being caused by job losses. So seeing unemployed people and taking it as confirmation of his work would be incorrect.

(In any case if you are correct about direction of causation, then surely we should worry about how to reduce job losses than how to take wealth away from the rich.)

[econghiy]

But countries like France and Spain have persistently high unemployment rates yet much lower inequality than countries like Singapore and Hong Kong.

How do you explain that?

[EdwardDiego]

Deliberate government policy to prevent inequality.