You forgot Blair and Brown.
I don’t think there are many on the left over here who actually liked their policies - look at Ed Miliband attempt to distance himself from their legacy with superficially centre left policies.
(yes, ISWYDT too. I think you have made a good point as well.)
It really is a bittersweet image.
I’m about 1/3 of the way through, too, and read Kevin Drum’s ‘My Kinda Sorta Non-Review of Thomas Piketty’s “Capital in the 21st Century”’ at Mother Jones yesterday. http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2014/04/my-kinda-sorta-non-review-thomas-pikettys-capital-21st-century
In this article, Drum says, “Basically, Piketty says that historically r has been greater than g,
and there’s no reason to think this won’t be true in the future. That’s
really about it. Oh, he addresses some technical issues, like the fact
that a glut of capital should reduce the return on capital, but
basically that’s his argument. In the past r has almost always been greater than g, and we’d be foolish to think that’s likely to change.”
Interestingly enough, Piketty has the same criticism of the work Simon Kuznets did in the 1950’s, where he predicted that income inequality would continue at the then low rate into the forseeable future.
Wealth Distribution is only a symptom.
The real issue is wealth creation.
Money is no different than aluminum or paper, Every time you cycle it around again, you lose some of it. You never quite end up recycling all of it. Some is lost, no matter how meticulous you are. Each time you go around the circle, you have to add some new material.
As long as there is enough new material to cover the losses each time around the system works, when there isn’t it gradually unravels.
Government policy has DIRECT and short and long term impact on wealth CREATION!! It has only indirect, and long term impact on wealth distribution.
Right now, we are letting so much petty politics, and so many outdated preconceptions stand in our way we are not generating any substantial new wealth. If we keep playing politics in such a way as to keep it a zero-sum game we will go the way of the Roman Empire.
If we go back to actually generating new wealth, especially by entrepreneurs, EVERYONE, no matter what the political stripe will be surprised at how quick even an unequal distribution still improves the situation enormously
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