Dude. Try to keep up. You're a century behind. Piketty's book is entitled, "Capital in the Twenty-First Century."

i fixed that instantly. sorry. i did.

There's so many of us
There's so many of us
There's so many
There's so many of us
There's so many of us
There's so many

Let's have a war
So you can go and die!
Let's have a war!
We could all use the money!
Let's have a war!
We need the space!
Let's have a war!
Clean out this place!

Let's have a war!
Jack up the Dow Jones!
Let's have a war!
It can start in New Jersey!
Let's have a war!
Blame it on the middle-class!
Let's have a war!
We're like rats in a cage!

Let's have a war!
Sell the rights to the networks!
Let's have a war!
Let our wallets get fat like last time!
Let's have a war!
Give guns to the queers!
Let's have a war!
The enemy's within!

Concentrated and accumulating cash are in the hands of private investors and companies eager to grow their portfolios and business. That will not be "shaken loose" my modern day asymmetrical warfare. It's not like the 30's and 40's, where you know an in investment in a steel plant is a sure thing to fight World War II. Wars these days are mostly attacks from rebels and terrorists not tied to just one or two nations causing havoc in multiple countries and with access to weapons of mass destruction. The unpredictability of wars nowadays does not make such a good investment.

That's a great movie line (though not Welles's originally, but:

...In This is Orson Welles (1993), Welles is quoted as saying "When the picture came out, the Swiss very nicely pointed out to me that they've never made any cuckoo clocks," as the clocks are in fact German, native to the Black Forest. Writer John McPhee also points out that during the period of time the Borgia flourished in Italy, Switzerland was "the most powerful and feared military force in Europe," and not the peacefully neutral country that it is currently...

(Well regulated militia.)

@2 I didn't spell it out just for emphasis or to be pedantic. That's actually what's on the cover of the book. Not numerals.

Okay, now I'm being pedantic. Sorry.

Respect to Piketty's title aside, your post is spot-on. I just wish we didn't need an "excuse" to back-track on the multi-decade plot by the GOP to enrich the rich by cutting their taxes to ridiculously low historical levels, which starved the ability of the government to build and strengthen this country and its middle class in the process.

I'll just be building these Guillotines in the Public Square with the masses - don't mind us ...

Wouldn't it just be easier to tax the fuckers than go to war? I grew up during the Vietnam war and was eventually drafted. I could not understand how so many people are willing to sacrifice their children for such dubious purposes. Then I realized that most people are sheep willing to listen to even the most unreasonable excuses for war.

In brief: Keynesian stimulus is good only when coupled with the needless slaughter of working class youth.
Here endeth the lesson.

Yes, and I've said exactly this in comments to previous posts.

@raindrop: Good point - Operation Desert Storm and the like won't bring about the socialist policies that WWII did. A civil war might, though.

"They have looked to weak demand, rising inequality, Chinese competition, over-regulation, inadequate infrastructure and an exhaustion of new technological ideas as possible culprits."

Fancy that! None of these tossers apparently considered what tripling the price of crude would do to consumerism.

@6 government consumes about 4/10 of GDP in the US. that's a lot, even compared to other OECD countries with much better welfare states

because the tax revolt is not just present in the upper reaches, it seems like a good use of any improvement in tax rates of wealthy people/ bizs and/or cuts to lame spending would b reduction of tax burden for poor people and middle class people, as Piketty suggests

the best taxes r taxes on social bads like icky food and carbon, imo