How do you avoid violent redistribution of wealth?: Redistributionists
The napkin
Piketty published the number that mattered on a napkin: r > g. The rate of return on capital exceeds the rate of economic growth. It has exceeded it in every century for which we have data except 1914 to 1975, when two world wars and sixty million dead temporarily compressed the distribution. When the wars ended, the default reasserted itself.
We did the math. The math is why we are here.
The gradualists prescribe the Nordic model and we agree on every item. Where we part company is the timeline. U.S. wealth share of the top 1 percent grew from 22 to 32 percent since 1980. The gradualists propose expanding the Earned Income Tax Credit — a wage subsidy worth $7,000 to a qualifying family. Bezos’s wealth increased by $70 billion in 2024. These numbers do not occupy the same universe.
Concentration is a political feedback loop. The wealthy have a shock absorber built from policy they helped write. Wealth buys influence. Influence protects wealth. The loop is the bottleneck.
Modern Solon reforms: a 2 percent annual wealth tax on net assets above $50 million, rising to 5 percent above $1 billion. A financial transactions tax. Mandatory worker representation on corporate boards — codetermination, where employees elect members to the board that governs their company, which Germany has operated since 1976. Public ownership stakes in companies that receive public subsidies. These are the operating assumptions of most European democracies. They sound radical only in a country where exceptionalism has been redefined to mean exceptional tolerance of conditions that would topple governments elsewhere.
The structural reformers argue for land value taxation. The Georgist case is stronger than most economists admit. We incorporate it. But capital concentration in 2025 operates through financial instruments, IP, and platform monopoly in addition to land.
Where we concede ground: Norway’s wealth tax produced capital flight. $54 billion left. We predicted it would be manageable. We were wrong.
What would change our mind: A major economy achieving sustained deconcentration through markets alone, without policy intervention.
Read the full synthesis: How do you avoid violent redistribution of wealth?