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Comment by loumf | Hacker News Reader

It's not evident in Gates's review, but one of Piketty's arguments for a wealth tax is just so we can get a better picture of wealth. He goes through great lengths to try to get data on it -- if there was a tax, even a small one, we'd have far greater transparency.

He then thinks that this would lead to changes -- because his data, no matter how good you think it is, is arguable and possibly wrong.

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Does he make it clear why would the tax be needed? After all, you can impose the same information transparency requirements needed to levy the tax without actually levying it, no?

Tax evasion is a crime that's much more throughly punished than lying to sense agents or misreporting wealth. That's for obvious reasons, because tax evasion actually takes money from the hands of the government, while the later actions (that are not even consistently considered crimes) just hurt some abstract concept of data gathering, that could lead to better policies in the future, or not - nobody can be sure - for reasons that very few people can understand.

Add to that that the few people in power that do understand how data can improve policies normally have an idea what kind of improvement they'll get, and don't like it (they are in power, if they liked it, they'd already do it). While tax evasion is understood by everybody and weaken they power right now, in visible ways.

A tax does it with the force of law using the systems we already have in place. It's the cheapest, easiest, most likely to work way we have of doing this sort of thing.

Why can't we do it with the force of law using the systems we already have in place, without actually charging the tax?

The tax will make sure they list deductions, which are also useful to know.

Also, the transparency is a benefit, but so is the tax revenue. We should at least cover the expense of the program and consider if there are other taxes that should be reduced.

Haven't read Piketty - not sure I can handle it with the almost-insignificant knowledge I have about economy - but this argument seems very reasonable.

I've only read people writing ABOUT Piketty's book, and haven't seen anyone put it this way.

I'm from Brazil, and with the upcoming elections people have been all sorts of crazy down here, throwing around whatever "facts" they can find on the internet. One of the main points of disagreement between the two presidential candidates is income distribution, so "data" about it has been all over the news and conversations.

This kind of tax, if only to shed the faintest light on the matter, would definitely help. Even considering that the really wealthy people would not declare everything they have, there's only so much you can hide.

Thank you for this comment.

I think it's pretty clear from the book. I did a quick search -- this blog comment by Dan Kervick sums up the argument pretty clearly.

http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2014/05/pikettys-wealth-tax-r...

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