A, uh, new post about, of course, Piketty. QOTD - Mike Konczal.

In the mode of YAPP (Yet Another Piketty Post), we'd like to quote Mike Konczal reviewing Piketty:  

"In an especially revealing passage on French rentiers at the turn of the last century, Piketty writes that “universal suffrage and the end of property qualifications for voting…ended the legal domination of politics by the wealthy. But it did not abolish the economic forces capable of producing a society of rentiers.”

This is a remarkable provocation for liberals. Piketty is, in a way, saying: go ahead and make whatever reforms you want. Break up the banks. Pass the campaign finance package of your dreams. Reach deep into the bag and pass all the non-reformist reforms that you can think of. All your reforms can’t guarantee that you are safe from the logic of r > g. Reforms won’t change the nature of capital: to accumulate, eat up a larger share of the economy, and let the past dominate the future. What then?"