While I have little interest in humouring the idea that all of this boil down to an optimisation problem (it doesn’t - fiscal policies and social policies scarily live at the intersection of economy and politics - plus even from a pure economic point of view it is much more complicated than a simple optimisation problem and I do have an economic degree by the way), on top of you being frankly condescending while bringing little to the table which would somehow explain if not justify the attitude, you can certainly get away with far heavier inheritance taxes without actually hurting your economy in any meaningful way. You can also tax the rich a lot more heavily without hurting your economy in any meaningful way.

And I don’t ask you to believe me from the goodness of your heart. I think Piketty must have had something like half a dozen best sellers on this topic alone at this point.

> I have little interest in humouring the idea that all of this boil down to an optimisation problem... I do have an economic degree by the way

I hope your degree was "economic" in the sense that you didn't pay much for it

> I think Piketty must have had something like half a dozen best sellers on this topic alone at this point.

Thinking pop-slop authors like Piketty are worth paying attention to is a worse self-indictment than the most condescending thing I could possibly say here.

You should downgrade your confidence that it's possible to meddle with natural resource allocation without causing problems.

Do you have any argument to share outside of insulting me and Piketty?

Charitably, you seem to be implying that any actions which would disturb the current situation would be detrimental because current allocation is the best that can be done.

That seems highly suspicious to me because I don't think anyone is happy with the current fiscal policies. People disagree about what should be done but I think everyone agrees we are not at an optimum.