Dan Neidle on X - "Thomas Piketty and a large team have just proposed a worldwide tax & economic revolution:
⦿ Cap rich-nation growth near zero
⦿ Cut work hours in half
⦿ Cut material consumption by 1/3
⦿ 10% of GDP going into a global fund
⦿ Tax wealth to essentially end it
It's potty."
Left wingers hate economic growth. If people's lives are getting better, they won't be interested in Revolution
Thomas Piketty's diabolical plan to impoverish every country on Earth | National Post - "Celebrity economist Thomas Piketty won fame with a claim that, in market economies, capital accumulates in the hands of the already wealthy, leading to increased inequality. The message found a receptive audience among people eager to believe economic success isn’t earned. Canada’s Prime Minister Mark Carney cited Piketty in his own 2021 book-length argument that economic activity should be managed by people like Carney. And now Piketty is back seeking new fans with a scheme for top-down central planning of the world’s economy. He is the co-director of the new Global Justice Report from the World Inequality Lab. Introducing the project, Piketty posted on X, “The world today is characterized by large-scale inequalities. And a climate crisis is looming over us. We urgently need a new vision for global progress in the 21st Century. One that grounds human development and equality in planetary habitability.” Piketty shoehorns an impressive number of buzz phrases into a few lines. He includes concerns about equality and inequality, climate change and progress that should send thrills through college campuses. But Piketty has a talent for tapping into the moment. In this case, at a time when Freedom House’s annual report finds that “Global freedom declined for the 20th consecutive year in 2025,” the economist and his colleagues propose authoritarian policies for shaping the entire planet to their liking. In his post, Piketty asks, “What would it take to achieve high prosperity and equality while remaining within planetary boundaries?” He answers that “energy transition” (meaning moving away from power sources that produce carbon) is necessary, as well as “labour hour reductions, growth caps in rich countries, less material consumption, and changes in food habits.” The report itself asserts, “The compression of global inequality is not only compatible with deep decarbonization; it is a necessary condition for shared prosperity on a finite planet.” To fight climate change and battle inequality, Piketty and company want “full income convergence across countries by 2100.” This requires, in part, limiting growth to “around 0-0.5% in today’s richest regions (North America/Oceania, Europe).” They argue that near-zero growth in rich countries “does not mean that their living standards stagnate” because people will benefit from flattened incomes. “Accounting for the value of additional leisure time and the avoided costs of climate damage relative to high-growth and high-warming scenarios, even today’s richest countries will enjoy a substantial rise in comprehensive well-being indicators,” they conclude. In other words, people will learn to like what Piketty and company think they should like. Restricting economic growth in developed countries would require an enormous amount of government intervention, but the report isn’t shy about calling for just that. It proposes limiting the power of individual shareholders in companies with more than 100 employees. “In the event such a system were in place, it is unclear whether this should still be described as ‘private property,’ ” they concede. “Our own preference would be to move as far as possible towards worker-managed organizations and participatory governance, within a broader process of decommodifying the economy.” We’ll also be forced to produce and eat much less meat. Not that people would have much money for beef or corporate shares. The authors insist that a “global wealth tax on top wealth holders is crucial for kickstarting the sustainable growth path envisaged by the Global Justice Platform.” The wealth tax would apply to all assets, including housing. It would be set so high that top earners would find that “the only way to pay the tax will be to sell assets” which will inevitably reduce their wealth year by year. It would also, incidentally, discourage investment and innovation, but that’s compatible with the authors’ desire to discourage economic growth in developed countries. The wealth tax would be in addition to a global income tax operating “alongside national tax systems.” For top earners, “the effective tax rate is stable at 90%.” Not many people might be left at higher rates, though, if the report’s proposals for salary scales and other tools for “income convergence” are implemented. Piketty and company concede that their plan is likely to be met with “significant political resistance.” They hope to address this with cultural changes in “the value we place on sufficiency, free time and planetary habitability themselves, and the end of ‘classless ecology.’ ” If this sounds unlikely to convince free and prosperous people that they should hobble their lives to promote the Global Justice Platform, the authors consider that likelihood, too. The report contemplates some countries — specifically the U.S. and China — refusing to co-operate. They suggest imposing “adequate sanctions to non-participants, in proportion to the damages they impose on participating countries.” The recommended sanctions are substantial enough to constitute economic warfare. The Global Justice Report’s proposed centralization of world political and economic power with penalties for those who opt out are so draconian that they require significant justification. So, it’s worth pointing out that the “climate crisis” the plan seeks to avert assumes “expected temperature rise of 4.8 C to 4.9 C above pre-industrial levels by the end of the century.” But climate scientists recently ditched that scenario as implausible and now expect much less dire outcomes. Piketty’s proposals make the unchallenged assumption that income inequality is inherently bad. But Hoover Institution economist David R. Henderson argues that “Most of what is framed as a problem of inequality is better conceived as either a problem of poverty or a problem of unjustly acquired wealth.” Capping economic growth, he adds, hurts lower-income people more than it harms the wealthy. Worse, in the American Institute for Economic Research journal, Phil Magness and Vincent Geloso wrote that Piketty’s work on income inequality contained “multiple accounting errors, data discrepancies, and even historical mistakes in how they dealt with changes to the tax code.” Concluding a review of Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century, economist Deirdre McCloskey wrote: “His social theme is a narrow ethic of envy. His politics assumes that governments can do anything they propose to do. And his economics is flawed from start to finish.” Thomas Piketty and his colleagues want to change the world to suit their preferences. It’s unlikely that many of us would enjoy the transformation, and there’s no reason to let them make the attempt."
The left wing agenda always involves bigger and more powerful government, because they want more power and control. But if you oppose this, you support "fascism"
Richard Hanania on X - "Piketty, Stiglitz, and many other left-wing economists are literal degrowthers. They want you to be poorer. This used to be an extreme exaggeration about the left. "They want you to be poor." It's never been true. Stalin, Marx, Lenin, Mao, FDR, whoever you wanted to call the left, no matter how misguided they were, they traditionally wanted people to be wealthier. Even if they're not advocating mass killing, there's something uniquely evil about this, because the ultimate goal is to make people worse off."
Slazac ๐ช๐บ๐บ๐ฆ๐น๐ผ๐ on X - "Nothing will make you lose faith in leftism more than arguing about rent control They simply refuse to learn about the consequences of the policies they support, they can’t conceive second order effects"
Chris ๐บ๐ฒ๐ฆ๐ on X - "I don't intend this as a slight to my lefty friends, but it obviously is: more than any other ideology, they have an incuriousness about what the economy is or how it functions. Which is rich considering Marx's magnum opus was a book on economics!"
Richard Hanania on X - "This is all of economic leftism! Nearly all their preferred policies create second order effects that are bad. Rent control is just one of the most obvious examples. But the whole thing is rotten."
Common Sense Extremists on X - "Person 1: works 90 hour week running an international company that employs millions
Person 2: works 25 hour week putting fries in a cup
Leftist: it’s a moral crime that these two don’t earn the same"
Disabled workers paid just pennies an hour – and it's legal - "One of the nation's best-known charities is paying disabled workers as little as 22 cents an hour, thanks to a 75-year-old legal loophole that critics say needs to be closed.Goodwill Industries, a multibillion-dollar company whose executives make six-figure salaries, is among the nonprofit groups permitted to pay thousands of disabled workers far less than minimum wage"
Ironic. Left wingers love non-profits and hate "slave labour" (i.e. voluntary prison labour)
Meme - "2 Thessalonians 3:10 and the 1936 Soviet Constitution both agree. So if Saint Paul and Vladimir Lenin agree, and the same principle built America maybe it's a universally good idea. We should try it in the United States.
ARTICLE 12 In the U.S.S.R. work is the obligation and a matter of honour of every able-bodied citizen, in accordance with the principle: ''He who does not work, neither shall he eat.'' In the the principle of socialism is realised: ''From each according to his ability, to each according to the work performed."'"
Time to condemn Christians who don't want unlimited welfare for people who don't want to work as not true Christians who have no idea what Christianity is about
Matthew Yglesias on X - "A Nordic-style tax structure would tax the rich much more heavily than the United States but also define “the rich” much more broadly."
Chris Pope on X - "Denmark actually raises slightly *less* in revenue from the rich than the United States, but substantially *more* from those with low incomes. See "The American Way of Welfare", p117-18:"
Gavin Newsom on X - "It's time for a national billionaires tax and a new social contract. 10% of Americans own two-thirds of the wealth. Wages have stagnated. The cost of living has skyrocketed. The system is fundamentally broken. The federal tax code, a corporate code, and an inheritance code were written for a different set of Americans. It’s time for an economic reset. http://substack.com/@gavinnewsom"
Peachy Keenan on X - ""an inheritance code" Look out - Gavin is planning to abolish the step-up in basis inheritance rule that allows you to inherit a parent's house without being forced to sell and give him all your money. All that boomer housing equity is about to be clawed out from under you by these communist dipshits"
Robert Sterling on X - "Three things:
1. “It’s time for an economic reset” is the most terrifying thing I’ve ever heard an American politician say. If you don’t get what those words portend, you don’t understand 20th century history.
2. Among Democrats, Newsom is considered a moderate, not a progressive. His endorsement of a wealth tax makes it an official part of the Democratic Party platform for moderates and progressives alike; the policy is now table stakes for any Democrat seeking office at any level and in any region. We are no longer going to be able to escape this by simply claiming it’s the fringe left advocating for it.
3. Notice that Newsom calls it a “billionaires tax” but references the wealth of the top 10%. If you think a tax such as this would be limited to billionaires, you are delusional (remember that the income tax originally applied to less than 1% of earners). Billionaires have an entire industry of wealth managers, lawyers, and tax advisors helping them shelter assets. When this “billionaires tax” fails to collect even a small percentage of what Democrats promise it will, they will quickly expand it to apply to anyone with even $5M of assets (which is a top 2% net worth). Ordinary people far below the level of the ultra-wealthy—main street small business owners, mom-and-pop real estate investors, farmers, anyone with a decent-size nest egg in their IRA or 401k account—will quickly feel the pain as well.
Pay attention. This is serious, it’s not going away, and it’s going to come for all of us, billionaire or not."
The Fall of the House of Obama - "the Democratic Party’s mindset and actions reflect a troubling reliance on government overreach, radical social policies, and financial manipulation, which have eroded its legitimacy in the United States, the world’s freest nation. The party’s decline is no accident; it is the inevitable result of dismantling the bloated infrastructure that has propped it up for decades. The defunding of questionable agencies and non-governmental organizations (NGOs), the reduction of bureaucratic excess, the elimination of ideologically driven programs like Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI), and the exposure of mainstream media as a propaganda tool have stripped away the party’s veneer of public support. I believe these developments reveal a party that has thrived not on genuine popular backing but on a carefully orchestrated system of coercion, financial largesse, and ideological control. I contend that the Democrats have imposed radical social policies through coercive tactics, forcing Americans to comply with agendas that lack broad appeal. These policies, often cloaked in the language of progress or inclusivity, are, in my opinion, disconnected from the needs and values of most citizens. Rather than persuading the public through open debate, the party has relied on institutional power - government agencies, corporate allies, and media narratives - to enforce compliance and silence opposition. This approach, to me, betrays a lack of confidence in the merit of their ideas and a preference for control over consensus. Financially, I see the Democratic Party as a beneficiary of a self-serving system that misuses taxpayer money. The party has, in my view, treated public funds like a personal piggy bank, doling out grants and “forgivable” loans to loyal groups - activist organizations, NGOs, and allied industries - with reckless abandon. I believe much of this money circles back to the party through opaque channels, enriching its leaders while burdening ordinary Americans. Similarly, the party’s lavish spending on foreign aid and international programs strikes me as a scheme to buy influence abroad, with benefits quietly funneled back to Democratic elites. This financial entanglement suggests to me that the party operates not as a servant of the people but as a parasitic entity dependent on public resources. In my opinion, the Democratic Party is defined by its symbiotic relationship with an overgrown government. It is a party, as I see it, “by the government, of the government, and for the government,” sustained by billions in taxpayer dollars over more than half a century. Its ideology thrives only within this artificial ecosystem, propped up by bureaucrats, activists, and media allies. When government spending is cut or programs are eliminated, the party’s infrastructure crumbles, exposing its lack of organic support. I believe the American people have been unwittingly funding this system for too long, and their growing awareness is driving a reckoning. The Democratic Party’s decline, in my view, is the natural consequence of its dependence on a government it has manipulated to serve its own ends, and its wounds are self-inflicted when that government is finally restrained. The American people have been funding the Democrat party for over half a century. When you cut government, the Democrat party bleeds. They are one and the same."
New York Post on X - "Meet the billionaire power couple advocating 'communism for landlords' and a global welfare state - from their $30M Hamptons McMansion"
Hon. Vickie Paladino on X - "These are the billionaires who are actually oppressing us. The ones who sit in their mansions and write checks to communist NGOs and the DSA, who then use that money to destroy our public safety and quality of life. This is the real enemy of the people."
So, since left wingers claim to hate billionaires and that they shouldn't exist...
Matthew Yglesias on X - "There’s been an interesting trajectory since Bernie’s 2015 era pitch that “democratic socialism” meant “policy like Denmark” to the current situation where left policy proposals look nothing like actual Danish tax policy."
Clearly, there is no left wing party in the US
dan on X - "The concept of private land is actually insane if you consider it for even a moment"
RAW EGG NATIONALIST on X - "I still laugh from time to time about a seminar I attended at Cambridge where anthropologists and moral philosophers were talking about morality in cross-cultural perspective and the subject of private property came up. After various know-it-alls suggested there was no deep basis for private property ("cultural construction"), an ethologist piped up, "Have you ever tried to take a banana from a gorilla?" and there was just dead silence for about a minute and then everyone pretended nothing had happened and just continued as they had been."
RJ Frazer on X - "The usual response from lefties is to start splitting hairs about "private property" and "personal property". No-one has yet explained to me why the leftist's new iPhone is personal property which he is allowed to keep but my house is "private property" which must be confiscated."
Reverend Jordan Wells on X - "๐จ DC Just Voted for Socialism — And It’s Spreading Fast ๐จ Janeese Lewis George — an avowed socialist and proud Democratic Socialists of America member — just cruised to a commanding lead in Washington D.C.’s Democratic primary. She’s now all but guaranteed to become the next mayor of the nation’s capital. This isn’t some outlier. Socialists already run the mayor’s offices in New York, Chicago, and Seattle. They’re on the verge of taking Los Angeles and Washington D.C. too. The Democratic Party has officially become the party of socialism. America, are we really okay with this? #Socialism #DCPrimary #DemocraticSocialists #WakeUpAmerica #BigCitiesFail #Election2026 #RadicalLeft #AmericaFirst #StopTheSocialistTakeover"
Alice Smith on X - "The socialist view of economics is based on a mixture of DuckTales and Monopoly."
The Aristocrats of Redistribution - "For me, the contradiction of the wealthy progressive is one of the strangest and most revealing phenomena in modern politics. It is a movement increasingly populated by people who denounce wealth while enjoying it, condemn privilege while benefiting from it, and romanticize collectivism while carefully insulating themselves from its consequences. The rich progressive is no longer an outlier on the modern Left. In many ways, he has become its defining symbol. Examples are constant. Millionaires publicly demanding “higher taxes on the rich” while employing armies of accountants to ensure they surrender no more than absolutely necessary. Celebrities preaching climate austerity while crossing oceans on private jets to attend conferences about reducing carbon footprints. Affluent activists proclaiming solidarity with “the oppressed” while living in neighborhoods protected from the very social disorder their policies encourage. Increasingly, the children of privilege — people raised with wealth, access, influence, and safety — attach themselves to radical redistributive causes they themselves never seem willing to experience personally. The paradox is impossible to ignore. If capitalism is fundamentally exploitative, if wealth itself is evidence of injustice, and if privilege is inherently immoral, then why do so many wealthy progressives continue to enjoy every benefit of the system they condemn? Why do they advocate redistribution while rarely redistributing their own wealth voluntarily? Why do they champion collectivism while maintaining lifestyles that would be impossible under the systems they romanticize? The answer is that most of them do not actually believe collectivism will ever apply to them... Every supposedly egalitarian revolution eventually creates a hierarchy because human nature refuses to disappear simply because slogans demand it. Yet modern wealthy progressives behave as though they would somehow remain among the protected class inside the utopia they advocate. Figures like Hasan Piker and Zohran Mamdani illustrate the phenomenon well. Both emerged from environments of significant privilege and access — neither from the industrial labor background that traditional Marxist rhetoric glorifies. Both found their audiences inside affluent activist culture, where ideological performance carries more social value than tangible productive achievement. That distinction matters because modern progressive activism increasingly resembles social theater more than material struggle. It functions as a moral performance through which affluent people demonstrate virtue and ideological purity. The cause itself often becomes secondary to the identity the cause provides. That is why so few ever meaningfully divest themselves of their own wealth. They advocate redistribution in theory while maintaining every practical protection capitalism affords them in reality. They denounce “late-stage capitalism” from luxury apartments, monetize anti-capitalist rhetoric on corporate-owned platforms, and build profitable careers criticizing the very system responsible for their influence. This is not hypocrisy in the ordinary sense. It is structural hypocrisy — the contradiction built directly into the worldview itself. The middle class often recognizes this instinctively. Middle-class people live closest to practical reality: they build businesses, pay mortgages, balance budgets, and absorb the direct consequences of economic decisions. They cannot afford to live entirely inside ideology because practical life punishes fantasy quickly. The lower class, meanwhile, can understandably become susceptible to collectivist promises because economic insecurity breeds desperation. That has always been the emotional engine behind collectivist politics. The wealthy progressive occupies an entirely different psychological category. While he rarely exhibits empathy, he is often driven by a mixture of guilt, boredom, narcissism, and existential emptiness. Material comfort alone rarely provides meaning. For affluent progressives raised without genuine hardship, radical politics becomes a substitute for earned purpose. Revolutionary rhetoric offers emotional intensity without requiring actual revolutionary sacrifice and it eventually becomes a form of aristocratic cosplay. That helps explain why so many affluent activists appear simultaneously angry and insulated. They rebel against systems from which they enormously benefit, but only within carefully controlled boundaries that never truly threaten their own status. They rarely advocate universal sacrifice. Instead, they advocate managed sacrifice imposed upon an abstract class of “others.” Higher taxes for “the rich” never seem to involve liquidating Hollywood fortunes, surrendering inherited wealth, or voluntarily abandoning luxury lifestyles. The sacrifices remain theoretical until they become personal. That is the central truth behind the paradox of the rich progressive. They do not believe the revolution applies equally to everyone... History suggests otherwise. Collectivist revolutions rarely spare the privileged allies who helped legitimize them. Useful idealists are often among the first casualties once power consolidates, because ideological movements eventually devour anyone insufficiently pure or no longer useful. Yet modern wealthy progressives largely ignore that lesson because their politics are less historical than emotional. What many of them seek is not equality at all. What they seek is moral absolution and social status disguised as compassion. The contradiction persists because progressivism, for many affluent advocates, is not a movement or a survival strategy, it is just a luxury belief."
The cope is the "we should improve society somewhat" meme
Maarten Boudry on X - "Remember when leftists still embraced material abundance and unlimited growth? I wonder what happened in the intervening years. "Only two generations ago, intelligent people in the West actually believed Nikita Khrushchev’s “we will bury you” boast—that the communist working class would overawe the free-market world economically by outproducing the West.""
Meme - Michael A. Arouet: "France has higher public spending as % of GDP than the Soviet Union, and now they seriously demand new taxes at the EU level to finance their absurd public spending? Germans were just told that they need to work much longer before retiring, why should the French retire so early?"
"France is not a real country
PUBLIC SPENDING AS % OF GDP (2024). A Comparative Analysis
Vietnam 20.0%
China 33.0%
USA 37.6%
EU (excl. France) 47.7%
USSR (1990) 50.6%
France 57.2%"
Left wingers won't be satisfied till it gets to 100%, then they will go hunting for kulaks sabotaging the Revolution, because first they came for the billionaires...
