# French economist Thomas Piketty is raising a ruckus **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [April 22, 2014, 3:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/french-economist-thomas-piketty-is-raising-a-ruckus/686690 "2014-04-22T15:37:54Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 14
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [May 13, 2014, 5:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/french-economist-thomas-piketty-is-raising-a-ruckus/686690/261 "2014-05-13T05:09:49Z")
> [@adaher](#): > > Sure, but with a billion people emerging from poverty in the last ten years, I’m not sure that is a bad result. > > I see that many Westerners think that’s a bad result . . . No, you don’t. ---
**Author:** ![Evil\_Captor](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/f17d59/32.png) [@Evil\_Captor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Evil_Captor)\ **Post date:** [May 13, 2014, 5:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/french-economist-thomas-piketty-is-raising-a-ruckus/686690/262 "2014-05-13T05:14:50Z")
> [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > Another factor that Piketty doesn’t consider is the law of marginal utility, or the law of diminishing returns. > > Let’s say everyone grows in wealth by 1 sandwich. Who derives the bigger benefit from that? The guy who doesn’t have a sandwich at all, or the guy who has ten? What if the amount of sandwiches doubles, so the guy who has ten now has twenty, but the guy who had one now has two? Who is better off? > > The improvement in products follows a curve of diminishing returns. If I want a product twice as good, I have to pay twice as much. But if it want it twice as good again, I may have to pay four times as much. Then eight times. Every unit of increase in quality or value requires more than a unit of wealth increase. So even if the rich become ten times wealthier, that does not mean their lives will be ten times better. It’s entirely possible that if we looked at the gap between the rich and poor in terms of utility instead of absolute dollars, we’d see the gap actually shrinking because the increase in income inequality is not great enough to overcome the much higher utility of the income increases on the low end. > > So why should we be measuring income inequality instead of utility inequality? Isn’t the second a more important measurement when it comes to the lifestyle gap between the rich and poor? You’re talking STRICTLY in terms of consumer goods, and of course that’s not the ONLY place that money matters, does it? The wealthy can buy much more advanced medical care than the poor. Universal health insurance … which I note, conservatives, Republicans and libertarians are fighting tooth and claw … might reduce that gap, but we don’t have that in America, do we? Our current system helps a lot, but still, the wealthy will always be able to buy into the most advanced treatments and care. And every indication is that we are verging one some REALLY big advances in medicine soon … who do you suppose will see the benefit of those FIRST … things that might extend life greatly, end debilitating illnesses … that’s where money REALLY comes in handy. Not in buying a bigger, better TV screen. ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [May 13, 2014, 8:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/french-economist-thomas-piketty-is-raising-a-ruckus/686690/263 "2014-05-13T08:37:59Z")
> [@Evil\_Captor](#): > > You’re talking STRICTLY in terms of consumer goods, and of course that’s not the ONLY place that money matters, does it? That’s not remotely what I said. I went out of my way to point out culture, access to information, access to entertainment, access to education… > [@](#): > > The wealthy can buy much more advanced medical care than the poor. Universal health insurance … which I note, conservatives, Republicans and libertarians are fighting tooth and claw … might reduce that gap, but we don’t have that in America, do we? Our current system helps a lot, but still, the wealthy will always be able to buy into the most advanced treatments and care. Why do you think health care is immune to the law of diminishing returns? It applies there perhaps more than anywhere else. The first dollar of health care gets you shots that prevent you from dying of common diseases. The first few hundred dollars of health care get you medically assisted childbirth, greatly cutting down on infant mortality. It also gets you eyeglasses and casts for broken arms basic dental care and other medical interventions that drastically improve the lives of everyone. The first few thousand dollars of health care get you access to decent first world medicine. When I was a kid, orthodontics were strictly a middle class thing. I was lucky that my teeth were straight because there was no way in hell we could afford to get them fixed. In fact, lack of access to orthodontics left a permanent mark on the underclass - crooked teeth. Orthodontics are now available to a much wider swath of humanity than they used to be. As you go up the cost ladder, you hit more and more diminishing returns. Once you’ve covered basic sanitation, childbirth care, basic immunization, dentistry and emergency surgery, you’ve covered the big killers and the big lifestyle enhancements. Once even the poor in society have access to all these things, the gap between them and billionaires is actually pretty small except in those rare cases where someone can afford dramatic and extensive medical treatments for a disease, and that such treatment makes a difference. This should be easily testable: Is there a measurable difference in lifespans between the middle class and billionaires that can be attributable to better health care? There’s a HUGE difference between the health care available to the poorest in America and the health care that the 3rd world gets. The gap between someone making $1000/yr and $20,000 yr in terms of life improvement due to health care is undoubtedly greater than it is between the poor in America and its billionaires. [/quote] And every indication is that we are verging one some REALLY big advances in medicine soon … who do you suppose will see the benefit of those FIRST … things that might extend life greatly, end debilitating illnesses … that’s where money REALLY comes in handy. Not in buying a bigger, better TV screen. [/QUOTE] Has it occurred to you that these advances happen _because_ there are rich people to pay for them? Every technological industry needs ‘early adopters’ to prove out products and fund R&D. And yes, they get the technology first, but as the R&D costs are amortized and the market expands, those treatments come down in price and become available to more and more people. And here’s something Piketty doesn’t count - the rich pay huge amounts of capital for cutting-edge treatments, then they trick down to the lower classes with the R&D amortized. That’s essentially a big social program or wealth transfer between the rich and the people below. Get rid of the rich, and that market goes away. And we’ll never know what we lost because we can’t see the things not invented because there was no market for them. ---
**Author:** ![adaher](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/dec6dc/32.png) [@adaher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/adaher)\ **Post date:** [May 13, 2014, 11:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/french-economist-thomas-piketty-is-raising-a-ruckus/686690/264 "2014-05-13T11:07:40Z")
> [@Evil\_Captor](#): > > Actually, most Westerners think it’s a great thing … but no justification for destroying the middle class in advanced Western societies. When a rising tide floats only the boats of the wealthy, there is something fucked up going on. And, they want to see those Third World workers get fired so that Americans can have those jobs back. Oh, I’m sorry, they are concerned for their welfare and don’t want them to be exploited. ---
**Author:** ![adaher](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/dec6dc/32.png) [@adaher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/adaher)\ **Post date:** [May 13, 2014, 11:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/french-economist-thomas-piketty-is-raising-a-ruckus/686690/265 "2014-05-13T11:09:14Z")
> [@Captain\_Amazing](#): > > How do you define “middle class”? The backbone of the Patriots in the American Revolution were the small farmers. Is that “middle class”? What about the English Civil War? In Europe, the 1848 revolts were middle class revolts. At least before the modern era, anyone who owned land was undoubtedly middle class. THe Soviets certainly regarded such people as middle class, and in need of liquidation. The middle class are usually the big losers of revolutions led by the poor, not the rich. The rich just “reform” and join the state apparatus, while moving their money offshore. ---
**Author:** ![iiandyiiii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/iiandyiiii/32/7924_2.png) [@iiandyiiii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iiandyiiii)\ **Post date:** [May 13, 2014, 11:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/french-economist-thomas-piketty-is-raising-a-ruckus/686690/266 "2014-05-13T11:45:58Z")
> [@adaher](#): > > At least before the modern era, anyone who owned land was undoubtedly middle class. THe Soviets certainly regarded such people as middle class, and in need of liquidation. The middle class are usually the big losers of revolutions led by the poor, not the rich. The rich just “reform” and join the state apparatus, while moving their money offshore. There was virtually no middle class in the times you are describing. Revolutions have not occurred when the middle class is a large portion of the population. ---
**Author:** ![Evil\_Captor](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/f17d59/32.png) [@Evil\_Captor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Evil_Captor)\ **Post date:** [May 13, 2014, 5:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/french-economist-thomas-piketty-is-raising-a-ruckus/686690/267 "2014-05-13T17:36:23Z")
> [@iiandyiiii](#): > > There was virtually no middle class in the times you are describing. Revolutions have not occurred when the middle class is a large portion of the population. Good point. Historically, the middle class has been a very small percentage of the population: much larger than the upper class, but not much at all compared to the peasantry. The scary thing is, if you look at the numbers, America is heading toward back toward the historic model. We had the best economy in the world and it was DRIVEN by our large middle class with its newfound purchasing power. Now the One Percent are trying to destroy the middle class. BRILLIANT. ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [May 13, 2014, 6:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/french-economist-thomas-piketty-is-raising-a-ruckus/686690/268 "2014-05-13T18:09:23Z")
And if you look more carefully at the numbers, you’ll see that: A) if they don’t include government transfers, they’re pretty meaningless and B) If the middle class is shrinking, it’s because it’s moving UP into the upper class. Specifically, households with two professional workers are often now in the upper class. An engineer married to a nurse or a mid-level bureaucrat can pull in $150,000-$200,000 per year in household income, easily. Speaking of government transfers… This is perhaps the biggest flaw in Piketty’s book. As I understand it, his numbers for income and capital do not include taxation of capital or government transfers that supplement income from the poor. This seems patently ridiculous to me - without doing that, you could have a country where the poor receive 80% of their income from taxes on the wealthy and see big increases in the standard of living, but if that caused them to work less, by Piketty’s methods that would mean income inequality is increasing. Another flaw in the book (or rather, in the conclusions drawn from the book) is that he looks at capital vs income, but his follows see this as directly analogous to being rich vs poor. But in a capitalist country, lots of people own capital. Middle class real estate ownership represents a significant amount of capital, as do the retirement savings of the middle class. So to the extent that gains in capital outperform gains in income, not all of these gains go to the ‘rich’ and affect income inequality. And I can’t think of a faster way to destroy the world economy and further impoverish the poor than Piketty’s loopy notion of a global income tax of 80% on the wealthy. It’s called ‘capitalism’ for a reason - you need private capital for the economy to work. Taxing it all and putting it in the hands of governments is a recipe for economic devastation. ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [May 13, 2014, 6:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/french-economist-thomas-piketty-is-raising-a-ruckus/686690/269 "2014-05-13T18:26:32Z")
> [@Evil\_Captor](#): > > Good point. Historically, the middle class has been a very small percentage of the population: much larger than the upper class, but not much at all compared to the peasantry. And historically, televisions are very scarce. Historically, access to horses was much better in the past. Any discussions of current living standards that seek comparisons to the 19th century are automatically suspect, since the 19th century is simply a radically different world. Global wealth was a tiny fraction of what it is now. Of course the poor didn’t do as well then - neither did anyone else. Because, progress. > [@](#): > > The scary thing is, if you look at the numbers, America is heading toward back toward the historic model. We had the best economy in the world and it was DRIVEN by our large middle class with its newfound purchasing power. Now the One Percent are trying to destroy the middle class. BRILLIANT. Can you provide some cites for that? How exactly is the one percent destroying the middle class? It seems to me that the damage to the middle class and the sudden good fortunes of the moneyed class has a lot more to do with government policies of the sort that your side approves of as much as anyone else, than it does with the activities of the 1%. Zero interest rates hurt retirement savers, ‘quantitative easing’ has been a boon to the stock market, bailouts of the financial sector prevented a correction that would have cost the wealthy a lot of capital. But when I look at the billionaires in society, I see a bright spot, not a sign of impending doom. Some of the most innovative, potentially life-changing advances are now being financed by billionaires with their own capital. SpaceX is revolutionizing spaceflight. In your ideal world, SpaceX wouldn’t exist, because Elon Musk wouldn’t have the profits from PayPal to fund it. The same goes for Tesla motors. If you look at the current breed of new billionaires, pretty much all of them are using their money in philanthropic or entrepreneurial ways. The Bill and Melinda Gates foundation is a massive charity. Paul Allen funds a lot of cultural events and facilities. Warren Buffett has signed a pledge to give all his wealth to charity. Even those dreaded Koch brothers give hundreds of millions of dollars to charities like cancer clinics. Silicon Valley is built on venture capital. A lot of our internet and cell phone infrastructure was financed through investments by those billionaires you hate. Some of the great advances in health care have come from companies financed through private capital. Where would the money have come from to build out a lot of this stuff if no one can accumulate capital in your socialist world? Do you honestly believe _governments_ can do this kind of innovation and efficient investment better? If so, perhaps you could point to a heavily socialist country that maintained an efficient, dynamic economy full of innovation? That brings up another flaw in Piketty’s model - he assumes that capital just accumulates. But it doesn’t - it gets invested in the economy and benefits many other people. He treats capital and income as separate things, but capital growth leads to higher investment, which leads to increased jobs and higher incomes. And if it’s not invested wisely, it dissipates in the form of salaries to employees of failed ventures and spent infrastructure that other people get to use. ---
**Author:** ![davidm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/davidm/32/225_2.png) [@davidm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/davidm)\ **Post date:** [May 13, 2014, 10:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/french-economist-thomas-piketty-is-raising-a-ruckus/686690/270 "2014-05-13T22:45:42Z")
**Sam Stone** , how long did it take you to get through 700 pages? I’ve just started and it is kind of a slog so I haven’t formed an opinion yet. I understand the point he’s trying to make, he explains that early on, but I haven’t gotten into the figures like you apparently have. ---
**Author:** ![MOIDALIZE](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e274bd/32.png) [@MOIDALIZE](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MOIDALIZE)\ **Post date:** [May 13, 2014, 10:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/french-economist-thomas-piketty-is-raising-a-ruckus/686690/271 "2014-05-13T22:53:40Z")
> [@davidm](#): > > **Sam Stone** , how long did it take you to get through 700 pages? I’ve just started and it is kind of a slog so I haven’t formed an opinion yet. I understand the point he’s trying to make, he explains that early on, but I haven’t gotten into the figures like you apparently have. He hasn’t read the book. He’s just repeating stuff he’s read elsewhere about the book, and half of those people probably haven’t even read the thing. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [May 13, 2014, 11:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/french-economist-thomas-piketty-is-raising-a-ruckus/686690/272 "2014-05-13T23:43:29Z")
> [@adaher](#): > > And, they want to see those Third World workers get fired so that Americans can have those jobs back. > > Oh, I’m sorry, they are concerned for their welfare and don’t want them to be exploited. See [“Fair Trade”.](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_trade) ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [May 13, 2014, 11:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/french-economist-thomas-piketty-is-raising-a-ruckus/686690/273 "2014-05-13T23:47:03Z")
> [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > The question is whether the key metric is income inequality, or absolute poverty. It’s very easy to confuse the two, because in the 19th and early 20th century the ‘have nots’ were destitute, while the wealthy were not. But it’s not clear at all that rising inequality matters for social cohesion if the economic floor allows you to live a comfortable life, educate your children, and retire at a reasonable age. [Robert Reich explains why it matters.](http://www.salon.com/2014/05/13/robert_reich_10_ways_to_close_the_inequality_gap_partner/) > [@](#): > > **Why It Threatens Our Society** > > This trend is now threatening the three foundation stones of our society: our economy, our ideal of equal opportunity and our democracy. > > **The economy.** In the United States, consumer spending accounts for approximately 70 percent of economic activity. If consumers don’t have adequate purchasing power, businesses have no incentive to expand or hire additional workers. Because the rich spend a smaller proportion of their incomes than the middle class and the poor, it stands to reason that as a larger and larger share of the nation’s total income goes to the top, consumer demand is dampened. If the middle class is forced to borrow in order to maintain its standard of living, that dampening may come suddenly—when debt bubbles burst. > > Consider that the two peak years of inequality over the past century—when the top 1 percent garnered more than 23 percent of total income—were 1928 and 2007. Each of these periods was preceded by substantial increases in borrowing, which ended notoriously in the Great Crash of 1929 and the near-meltdown of 2008. > > The anemic recovery we are now experiencing is directly related to the decline in median household incomes after 2009, coupled with the inability or unwillingness of consumers to take on additional debt and of banks to finance that debt—wisely, given the damage wrought by the bursting debt bubble. We cannot have a growing economy without a growing and buoyant middle class. We cannot have a growing middle class if almost all of the economic gains go to the top 1 percent. > > **Equal opportunity.** Widening inequality also challenges the nation’s core ideal of equal opportunity, because it hampers upward mobility. High inequality correlates with low upward mobility. Studies are not conclusive because the speed of upward mobility is difficult to measure. > > But even under the unrealistic assumption that its velocity is no different today than it was thirty years ago—that someone born into a poor or lower-middle-class family today can move upward at the same rate as three decades ago—widening inequality still hampers upward mobility. That’s simply because the ladder is far longer now. The distance between its bottom and top rungs, and between every rung along the way, is far greater. Anyone ascending it at the same speed as before will necessarily make less progress upward. > > In addition, when the middle class is in decline and median household incomes are dropping, there are fewer possibilities for upward mobility. A stressed middle class is also less willing to share the ladder of opportunity with those below it. For this reason, the issue of widening inequality cannot be separated from the problems of poverty and diminishing opportunities for those near the bottom. They are one and the same. > > **Democracy.** The connection between widening inequality and the undermining of democracy has long been understood. As former Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis is famously alleged to have said in the early years of the last century, an era when robber barons dumped sacks of money on legislators’ desks, “We may have a democracy, or we may have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we cannot have both.” > > As income and wealth flow upward, political power follows. Money flowing to political campaigns, lobbyists, think tanks, “expert” witnesses and media campaigns buys disproportionate influence. With all that money, no legislative bulwark can be high enough or strong enough to protect the democratic process. > > The threat to our democracy also comes from the polarization that accompanies high levels of inequality. Partisanship—measured by some political scientists as the distance between median Republican and Democratic roll-call votes on key economic issues—almost directly tracks with the level of inequality. It reached high levels in the first decades of the twentieth century when inequality soared, and has reached similar levels in recent years. > > When large numbers of Americans are working harder than ever but getting nowhere, and see most of the economic gains going to a small group at the top, they suspect the game is rigged. Some of these people can be persuaded that the culprit is big government; others, that the blame falls on the wealthy and big corporations. The result is fierce partisanship, fueled by anti-establishment populism on both the right and the left of the political spectrum. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [May 13, 2014, 11:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/french-economist-thomas-piketty-is-raising-a-ruckus/686690/274 "2014-05-13T23:49:31Z")
> [@MOIDALIZE](#): > > He hasn’t read the book. I’m sure few in this thread have; I’m still about 20th on the list for my library request. But enough has been published **about** it in the past few weeks to give us all a pretty clear understanding of the contents. ---
**Author:** ![davidm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/davidm/32/225_2.png) [@davidm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/davidm)\ **Post date:** [May 14, 2014, 12:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/french-economist-thomas-piketty-is-raising-a-ruckus/686690/275 "2014-05-14T00:05:48Z")
> [@MOIDALIZE](#): > > He hasn’t read the book. He’s just repeating stuff he’s read elsewhere about the book, and half of those people probably haven’t even read the thing. Woosh… ---
**Author:** ![Stringbean](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/d6d6ee/32.png) [@Stringbean](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stringbean)\ **Post date:** [May 14, 2014, 11:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/french-economist-thomas-piketty-is-raising-a-ruckus/686690/276 "2014-05-14T23:05:54Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > [Robert Reich explains why it matters.](http://www.salon.com/2014/05/13/robert_reich_10_ways_to_close_the_inequality_gap_partner/) That was an excellent piece by Reich. I gained a lot of respect for him quite frankly after reading it. ---
**Author:** ![Linden\_Arden](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/53a042/32.png) [@Linden\_Arden](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Linden_Arden)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2014, 2:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/french-economist-thomas-piketty-is-raising-a-ruckus/686690/277 "2014-05-15T02:40:20Z")
> [@adaher](#): > > Again, have there been any historical examples of countries where the vast majority are middle class erupting in revolt? I can think of only one: the American Revolution, history’s only conservative revolution. That is quite laughable. The most famous proponents of the American Revolution were inspired by the Father of Liberalism - John Locke. Jefferson and Madison wrote the key documents of revolution and considered themselves disciples of his. Thomas Paine’s famous writing was filled with liberal ideas. So is the Constitution with its Establishment Clause, rejection of monarchy, no debtors prison, no cruel and unusual punishment, and general consent of the governed among other anti-authoritarian ideas. Perhaps you should start a GD thread on this topic - if you dare to. ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2014, 6:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/french-economist-thomas-piketty-is-raising-a-ruckus/686690/278 "2014-05-15T06:03:18Z")
> [@Linden\_Arden](#): > > That is quite laughable. > > The most famous proponents of the American Revolution were inspired by the Father of Liberalism - John Locke. Jefferson and Madison wrote the key documents of revolution and considered themselves disciples of his. Thomas Paine’s famous writing was filled with liberal ideas. So is the Constitution with its Establishment Clause, rejection of monarchy, no debtors prison, no cruel and unusual punishment, and general consent of the governed among other anti-authoritarian ideas. That was an excellent and concise description. Well said. That’s why they were ‘Classical Liberals’, and not conservatives. ---
**Author:** ![adaher](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/dec6dc/32.png) [@adaher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/adaher)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2014, 6:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/french-economist-thomas-piketty-is-raising-a-ruckus/686690/279 "2014-05-15T06:43:56Z")
Which today makes them right-wing. As proven by liberals’ view of the Constitution as guaranteeing rights that aren’t even written down there, and seeing the rights that are written down as being negotiable. ---
**Author:** ![Evil\_Captor](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/f17d59/32.png) [@Evil\_Captor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Evil_Captor)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2014, 12:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/french-economist-thomas-piketty-is-raising-a-ruckus/686690/280 "2014-05-15T12:58:13Z")
> [@adaher](#): > > Which today makes them right-wing. As proven by liberals’ view of the Constitution as guaranteeing rights that aren’t even written down there, and seeing the rights that are written down as being negotiable. Uh, no. Just no. Today’s conservatives LOVE cruel and unusual punishments, hell, they LOVE torture.[Debtors’ prisons are making a return](http://www.cbsnews.com/news/as-economy-flails-debtors-prisons-thrive/). Hell, conservatives love for-profit prisons, where people are jailed just so others can make money. And although no conservative (for now) is calling for a return to monarchy, they DO love the oligarchy. And conservatives are NOTHING if not authoritarian. I know some conservatives like to pretend they are Marlboro Men out riding the range, but in fact they are a bunch of conformist stuffed shirts just waiting for someone to tell them what their talking points are so they can repeat them. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/french-economist-thomas-piketty-is-raising-a-ruckus/686690.md?page=13) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/french-economist-thomas-piketty-is-raising-a-ruckus/686690.md?page=15)