Grand conclusions from small islands

Michael Barone says Thomas Piketty wants income equality — and the hell with growth and notes a common tactic of those on the left.

“Like global warming alarmists, he extrapolates from abstract theory and a few years’ trendlines out a century forward — and presents the results as inevitable.

He also presents them as justifying the confiscation, more or less, of wealth accumulated by private individuals and putting it in the hands of mandarins guided by their supposedly superior sensitivity to public welfare.

People that build things, create things, make things cheaper and better — these are the targets of Piketty and others of his ilk (and, it appears, the Pope as well).

The U.S. stands as an example of just what you can do for the poor if government will stand back and let people build and create and improve. Sadly, the modern trend seems to be to harass, inhibit, and punish this sort of effort. The rationale, as Barone illustrates, is often dishonest in that it takes a small island and creates a grand conclusion with much hubris but very little base.