It’s really aggravating when someone can cogently express points that one has gnawed at inchoately for weeks. John Kay’s column in the Financial Times – The capitalists sold the mills and bought all our futures – is one such aggravation, and is superb.
Kay deals elegantly with Thomas Piketty’s analysis and the definition and calculation of wealth, or patrimoineas defined in the French edition of his book, Capital in the 21st Century. I have felt convinced that Piketty, like a good accountant, has underestimated the vast wealth of today’s capitalists, while he has conscientiously (“heroically” writes Kay) totted up all the tangible wealth that there is to count. But wealth, surely, is far more than just the ownership of tangible assets. It sure is, explains Kay: Continue reading
Apart from assuring us that the government’s main objective was economic stability – the stability of the graveyard it seems in this government’s case – the only other significant things in the Queen’s Speech were what it didn’t contain, not anything it did contain. Nothing about housebuilding, an infrastructure bank, reviving manufacturing, boosting capital investment, QE to bolster youth employment rather than the banks, or anything that really needs doing. And nothing about 1% versus the 99%. The inequality in wealth in Britain today is on a staggering scale, and it’s not even mentioned. So let’s start with the facts, grace of the Sunday Times Rich List rather than Treasury data – even the evidence of the distribution of wealth has been privatised. 