1. Three Dangerous French Economists
1.1. Thomas Piketty
1.1.1. 2001: published a book with one of first 1% graphs, showed inequality as bad as 1920s
1.1.1.1. inspired Occupy Wall St., We are the 99%
1.1.2. 2014: published "Capital" and became famous. His solution: higher taxes
1.2. Emanual Saez
1.2.1. "How the Rich Dodge Taxes and How to Make Them Pay,” with Zucman reads like a to-do list for the next US president.,
1.2.1.1. reported that the 400 richest US Americans pay a lower tax rate than every single other income group
1.2.1.2. The most important step? Pass an annual progressive wealth tax on all multimillionaires. Turns out, high taxes need not be bad for the economy. On the contrary, high taxes can make capitalism work better. (In 1952, the highest income tax bracket in the United States was 92%, and the economy grew faster than ever.)
1.3. Gabriel Zuckman
1.3.1. trained as an intern at French Brokerage firm during '08 collapse
1.3.2. struck by the astronomical sums flowing through small countries like Luxembourg and Bermuda, the tax havens where the world’s super-rich hide their wealth.
1.3.3. In his book, "The Hidden Wealth of Nations (2015)" he worked out that $7.6tn of the world’s wealth is hidden in tax havens.
2. NeoLiberals: Small Govt.Free Market
2.1. Reagan
2.2. Milton Friedman
2.2.1. book Capitalism and Freedom (1982)
2.2.1.1. “Only a crisis – actual or perceived – produces real change. When that crisis occurs, the actions that are taken depend on the ideas that are lying around.”
2.3. Friedrich Hayek
2.4. Mont Perelyn Society, Think Tank est.1947
2.5. Fear Soviet style tyranny
2.6. government should turn every sector into a marketplace, from healthcare to education. By force, if necessary. Even in a natural disaster, competing companies should be the ones to take charge of organising relief.
2.7. During the crises of the 1970s (economic contraction, inflation, and the Opec oil embargo), the neoliberals were ready and waiting in the wings.
2.8. Hard as it may be to imagine now, there was a time – some 70 years ago – that it was the defenders of free market capitalism who were the radicals.
3. 1970's Neoliberal Revolution
3.1. Thatcher in UK
3.2. Reagan in US
4. 1990's Social Democrats Leaned into neoliberal, free market ideas
4.1. And after the fall of communism in 1989, even social democrats seemed to lose faith in government. In his State of the Union address in 1996, Clinton, president at the time, pronounced “the era of big government is over”
4.2. "Liberals" Clinton and Blair continued the neoliberal movement
4.3. At a dinner in 2002, Thatcher was asked what she saw as her great achievement. Her answer? “Tony Blair and New Labour. We forced our opponents to change their minds.”
5. 2008 Financial Crisis
5.1. When massive government bailouts were needed to save the so-called “free” market, it seemed to signal the collapse of neoliberalism.
5.2. And yet, 2008 did not mark a historic turning point. One country after another voted down its leftwing politicians. Deep cuts were made to education, healthcare, and social security even as gaps in equality grew and bonuses on Wall Street soared to record heights.
5.3. Where the neoliberals had spent years preparing for the crises of the 1970s, their challengers now stood empty-handed. Mostly, they just knew what they were against.
6. 2020
6.1. Financial Times
6.1.1. “Radical reforms – reversing the prevailing policy direction of the last four decades – will need to be put on the table. Governments will have to accept a more active role in the economy. They must see public services as investments rather than liabilities, and look for ways to make labour markets less insecure. Redistribution will again be on the agenda; the privileges of the elderly and wealthy in question. Policies until recently considered eccentric, such as basic income and wealth taxes, will have to be in the mix.” 4/2020
6.2. In 2020, Sanders’s “moderate” rival Joe Biden is proposing tax increases double what Hillary Clinton planned four years ago
6.2.1. though Sanders ran on a more radical climate plan than Biden in 2020, Biden’s climate plan is more radical than that Sanders had in 2016.
6.3. These days, the majority of US voters (including Republicans) are in favour of significantly higher taxes on the super-rich. Meanwhile, across the pond, even the Financial Times concluded that a wealth tax might not be such a bad idea.
6.4. COVID-19
6.4.1. Essential Workers don't include Hedge Fund Mgrs.
6.5. more young US Americans have a favourable view of socialism than of capitalism
7. 2016
7.1. Obama didn't take to the idea, Obama’s financial advisers assured him a wealth tax would never work, and that the rich (with their armies of accountants and lawyers) would always find ways to hide their money.
7.2. Even Sanders turned down french economists offer to design tax structure
8. Margaret Mazzucato
8.1. one of the most forward-thinking economists of our times. Mazzucato belongs to a generation of economists, predominantly women, who believe merely talking taxes isn’t enough. “The reason progressives often lose the argument,” Mazzucato explains, “is that they focus too much on wealth redistribution and not enough on wealth creation.
8.2. "The Entrepreneurial State"
8.2.1. Shows that the ideas of wasteful govt. are off base
8.2.2. demonstrates that not only education and healthcare and garbage collection and mail delivery start with the government, but also real, bankable innovations. Take the iPhone. Every sliver of technology that makes the iPhone a smartphone instead of a stupidphone (internet, GPS, touchscreen, battery, hard drive, voice recognition) was developed by researchers on a government payroll.
8.2.3. Google? Received a fat government grant to develop a search engine. Tesla? Was scrambling for investors until the US Department of Energy handed over $465m.
8.2.4. Mazzucato points out, is that [private enterprise] is not willing to venture all that much. After the Sars outbreak in 2003, private investors quickly pulled the plug on coronavirus research. It simply wasn’t profitable enough. Meanwhile, publicly funded research continued, for which the US government paid a cool $700m. (If and when a vaccine comes, you have the government to thank for that.)
8.2.5. But maybe the example that best makes Mazzucato’s case is the pharmaceutical industry. Almost every medical breakthrough starts in publicly funded laboratories. Pharmaceutical giants like Roche and Pfizer mostly just buy up patents and market old medicines under new brands, and then use the profits to pay dividends and buy back shares (great for driving up stock prices).
8.2.6. When government subsidises a major innovation, she says industry is welcome to it. What’s more, that’s the whole idea! But then the government should get its initial outlay back – with interest. It’s maddening that right now the corporations getting the biggest handouts are also the biggest tax evaders. Corporations like Apple, Google, and Pfizer, which have tens of billions tucked away in tax havens around the world.
8.2.7. There’s no question these companies should be paying their fair share in taxes. But it’s even more important, according to Mazzucato, that the government finally claims the credit for its own achievements.
8.3. Mazzucato, alongside British-Venezuelan economist Carlota Perez, became the intellectual mother of the Green New Deal, the world’s most ambitious plan to tackle climate change
8.4. Mazzucato has advised Warren, Ocasio-Cortez
9. Stephanie Kelton
9.1. The Deficit Myth
9.2. Govt can print money
9.3. hailed by Financial Times as a modern-day Friedman
9.4. “must see public services as investments rather than liabilities”,
10. Joseph Overton
10.1. The "Overton Window"-- What's acceptable at any time. Must work the edges to shift the window.
11. Hellen Lewis
11.1. "Difficult Women"
11.1.1. History of feminism in UK
11.1.2. ought to be required reading for anyone aspiring to create a better world.
11.2. Change is Difficult
11.2.1. have to make sacrifices
11.2.2. revolutionary thinkers tend to be difficult
11.2.3. doing good doesn't mean you're perfect
11.2.4. need complex alliances