I think if you look back through time, the history of income, wealth and taxation is full of surprise. So I am not terribly impressed by those who know in advance what will or will not happen.
Interpretation
The unpredictability of economic trends makes it difficult to confidently predict wealth and taxation outcomes.
In this quote, Thomas Piketty highlights the historical unpredictability of income, wealth, and taxation. He suggests that those who claim to have definitive knowledge about future economic events may not grasp the complexities and surprises that history reveals, indicating that the past has shown us that certainty in economics is often an illusion.
In practice
During a debate on fiscal policies, one might quote this to emphasize the unpredictability of economic forecasting.
Contrary to a tenacious myth, France is not owned by California pension funds or the Bank of China, any more than the United States belongs to Japanese and German investors. The fear of getting into such a predicament is so strong today that fantasy often outstrips reality. The reality is that inequality with respect to capital is a far greater domestic issue than it is an international one.
The main force pushing toward reduction in inequality has always been the diffusion of knowledge and the diffusion of education.
Over a long period of time, the main force in favor of greater equality has been the diffusion of knowledge and skills.
There is one great advantage to being an academic economist in France: here, economists are not highly respected in the academic and intellectual world or by political and financial elites. Hence they must set aside their contempt for other disciplines and their absurd claim to greater scientific legitimacy, despite the fact that they know almost nothing about anything.
When the rate of return on capital exceeds the rate of growth of output and income, as it did in the nineteenth century and seems quite likely to do again in the twenty-first, capitalism automatically generates arbitrary and unsustainable inequalities that radically undermine the meritocratic values on which democratic societies are based.
Having a decent share of the national wealth for the middle class is not bad for growth. It is actually useful both for equity and efficiency reasons.
There's no reason to think that_x000D_ markets always drive people to_x000D_ what's good for them.
When a nation is over-reliant on one or two commodities like oil or precious minerals, corrupt government ministers and their dodgy associates hoard profits and taxes instead of properly allocating them to schools and hospitals.
Nor should the argument seem strange that taxation may be so high as to defeat its object, and that, given sufficient time to gather the fruits, a reduction of taxation will run a better chance than an increase of balancing the budget.
In the 1930s, unemployed working people could anticipate that their jobs would come back.
Speculation is only a word covering the making of money out of the manipulation of prices, instead of supplying goods and services.
Instead of abandoning competition and giving banks protected monopolies once again, the public would be better served by making it easier to close banks when they get into trouble. Instead of making banking boring, let us make it a normal industry, susceptible to destruction in the face of creativity.
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