Jul 20, 2020
French economist Thomas Piketty has recently published a new book, Capital and Ideology, to follow up on his previous best seller, Capital in the Twenty-first Century. The new book goes beyond socialism, where the state owns the means of production, to recommend the abolition of private property because private property creates inequality. The influence of Piketty's ideas is a threat to our way of life because his student, Gabriel Zucman, and his collaborator, Emmanuel Saez, were economic advisors to the Sanders and Warren campaigns and likely influenced the platform recommendations of presidential candidate Joe Biden's "unity task force" that were prepared with the help of Sanders. In this episode the Edifice of Trust host, Victor Bolles, looks at how peoples' lives will be affected if these economic proposals are made into policy.