" guys, I've actually been to France and literally talked with a talented person who would never start a business due to taxes, despite having a phenomenal idea that was a perfect match for starting a small business in."

Please tell me you're joking.

I think he is not joking.

France is notorious for having a very cumbersome and over burdening fiscal and administrative system. From direct personal experience, you better off being an employee than being under the status of self employed. The hassle you get from the tax office and employment agency totally overweight the flexibility this status should offer. There is a reason Paris is not the start up hub it would like to be.

Sure you have the odd example that shows this is still possible, but in an industry where you do not need to be on location to produce some work, the incentive to stay in France and develop a successful start up is lessen by the appeal of the US and Canada and to a lesser extend the UK.

You're confusing two unrelated issues - cost of entry, and inequality.

Monopoly capitalism is just as good at suppressing new business as government bureaucracy is. Markets with a strong de facto monopoly - like web search, commercial operating systems, telecoms infrastructure, and so on - are completely closed to newcomers who can't access billions in capital.

You can be sure there are some very strong business opportunities in those areas, but because capital is so concentrated they will never make it to market while the de facto monopolies remain.

>If you let the average person become 1.10x better off, and you do so by letting some people become 10x better off, are you ahead or behind?

Also known as the "a rising tide lifts all boats" argument." Sometimes dressed up as "trickle down."

Unfortunately Piketty's data proves that the world doesn't work like this, so I'm not sure why you think the question is relevant or interesting.

Piketty's data doesn't prove any such thing. Even the poorest people in the US can now have an iPhone, a piece of technology that was unavailable in any form to anyone just ten years ago.

The rising tide does lift all boats. The data only shows that return on capital will always outstrip wages as a way to accumulate wealth.

Neither Piketty nor anyone else wants to stop the process that creates Musks and Zucks and Brins. Surely we can agree, however, that these gentlemen live far, far down the long tail. Even though there is randomness built into the economic system, in most cases, capital increases rather than transferring to a random Stanford grad student's pockets. The story of Sergei Brin does not disprove, via "logic", "facts", or anything else, any thesis of Piketty's.

You may; I have not. As I understand it, however, the bulk of the book comprises a historical documentation of and theoretical explanation for inequality. In conclusion he proposes various taxes and other transfers to reduce inequality. Although the history and theory seems plausible, I'm not completely sold on the effectiveness of the inequality measures, although I'm sure that you and Piketty have your reasons to disagree with me. I doubt much more that those measures would reduce the occurrence of M&Z&B, rather than just taxing them a bit more once they've done really well for themselves.

EDIT: It's unfortunate that the downvotes have chased 'logicallee from the arena. I have found that unwarranted downvotes have a way of correcting themselves, given a few hours on a lively thread.

you do realize that picking one example in your favor has no statistical significance?

That's why Piketty collected A LOT of data and wrote his book.

Individual cases of taking little capital and making a fortune is not all that convincing.

For instance if 40 of your friends go in to a casino and all pick a different number on the roulette wheel and one of them hits, it does not mean that it was a good method.

Individual cases and individual markets. The IT industry over the last 10-15 years is hardly your standard case study in an average part of the economy.

A mass of HN denizens certainly know how to show disagreement (and intolerance).