I would guess that Thomas Piketty would be quite chagrined to hear you say "there is no rational basis" for his arguments on why wealth is distributed as it is.
I developed my thesis on my own after looking at the data, much thought, further reading, and discussing my thinking with an economist friend. I was pleased to observe, however, upon reading "Capital in the 21st Century," that Piketty agreed with me. He is arguably the number one authority on wealth distribution and its history in Europe, Great Britain, and the United States, so that gives me great confidence that my ideas, with regard to the genesis of the current wealth distribution in the U.S. anyway, are correct.
The path that led us to this point got a boost with Reagan's administration, when compression of the tax rates was extreme. Of course, this was soon recognized as damaging, and some of this compression was therefore subsequently undone. More adjustment in the direction of greater progressivity is still urgently needed however. (You will recall that such was one of Sanders proposals, and a reason why I contributed to his campaign.) Rate compression coupled to lower rates on unearned income is the root cause of the wealth distribution we see. There are other secondary factors that contribute. These are in large part, however, not independent variables, because these secondary factors have been fueled by the core effects of the supply-side economics that started to be implemented in a serious way with Reagan and still haunt us today. (Corporate executive compensation is a factor, but the magnitude of its effect is not independent of tax structure.)
When you reduce the tax rate dramatically on the wealthy and raise it a little bit on the middle class, what is your idea of how that would affect wealth distribution over time? What is your idea of how this tax rate change would affect the proportion of unearned income in the various deciles of income distribution? If unearned income is taxed at a lower rate, even a few percent, than earned income, what would be the effect of compounding this rate difference over thirty-five years? How would redistribution of wealth from the middle class to the wealthy affect the demand for credit in the middle class? What would be the result of increasing demand for credit in the middle class on unearned income in the highest deciles of wealth distribution? When I look at wealth distribution as a function of time from the 1980s forward, I find that wealth grows exponentially in the upper deciles despite some of the bracket compression in the 1980s having been later undone. What should this tell me? Would this observation be supportive of, or counter, my thesis? Would you conclude that labor is getting exponentially lazier, and the wealthier are working exponentially harder?
(I hope not!)
Finally, I would be most entertained if you would give me your explanation of how
"50 million immigrants, most of whom are of welfare," [to quote one of the posts above] have managed to produce the wealth distribution that exists in the United States in 2016.
