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Este blog trata basicamente de ideias, se possível inteligentes, para pessoas inteligentes. Ele também se ocupa de ideias aplicadas à política, em especial à política econômica. Ele constitui uma tentativa de manter um pensamento crítico e independente sobre livros, sobre questões culturais em geral, focando numa discussão bem informada sobre temas de relações internacionais e de política externa do Brasil. Para meus livros e ensaios ver o website: www.pralmeida.org. Para a maior parte de meus textos, ver minha página na plataforma Academia.edu, link: https://itamaraty.academia.edu/PauloRobertodeAlmeida.

Mostrando postagens com marcador Robert P. Murphy. Mostrar todas as postagens
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sábado, 31 de maio de 2014

O ataque a propriedade por Thomas Piketty e companheiros - Robert P. Murphy (Mises)

Algumas frases aterradoras contidas no livro de Thomas Piketty
por , sexta-feira, 30 de maio de 2014

 

PikettyMarx.jpgVários artigos, inclusive na grande mídia, já foram escritos comentando os vários erros teóricos, bem como as flagrantes manipulações de dados, encontrados no livro-sensação do momento, Capital no Século XXI, do francês Thomas Piketty. 
Financial Times, por exemplo, descobriu que o livro contém dados que foramdeliberadamente adulterados.
Juan Ramón Rallo decidiu testar empiricamente a tese central propagandeada pelo livro — a de que a riqueza dos bilionários aumenta quase que por inércia, a uma taxa maior que a do crescimento da economia — e tambémdescobriu que ela não se sustenta
E Hunter Lewis mostrou que os dados utilizados por Piketty não apenas foram erroneamente interpretados por ele como também, e ainda pior, são baseados em extrapolações criadas pelo próprio autor.
Meu intuito aqui é outro: quero chamar a atenção para o estupefaciente ódio à propriedade privada e aos básicos direitos à privacidade financeira que permeia todo o livro.  A maneira mais rápida de fazer isso é simplesmente reproduzindo algumas das mais aterradoras frases contidas no livro, as quais vão logo abaixo.
À medida que você for lendo as frases abaixo, lembre-se de que o livro de Piketty vem sendo celebrado por toda uma gama de intelectuais progressistas, os quais, mesmo quando eventualmente o criticam pontualmente — como fez Larry Summers, ex-secretário do Tesouro de Bill Clinton —, fazem questão de ressaltar que o livro é simplesmente maravilhoso. 
O motivo de tais intelectuais estarem dispostos a relevar os vários erros metodológicos, teóricos e empíricos encontrados no livro é simplesmente porque eles endossam o espírito do livro.  E quando você finalmente entender qual é exatamente esse espírito, você ficará extremamente preocupado quanto ao futuro.  Apenas leia o material coletado.
"Impostos não são uma questão técnica.  Impostos são, isso sim, uma questão proeminentemente política e filosófica, talvez a mais importante de todas as questões políticas.  Sem impostos, a sociedade fica destituída de um destino comum, e a ação coletiva se torna impossível." (p. 493)
"Quando um governo tributa um determinado nível de renda ou de herança a uma alíquota de 70 ou 80%, o objetivo principal obviamente não é o de aumentar as receitas (porque essas altas alíquotas nunca geram muita receita).  O objetivo é abolir tais rendas e heranças vultosas, as quais são socialmente inaceitáveis e economicamente improdutivas..." (p. 505)
"Nossas descobertas [de Piketty e de seus co-autores] possuem importantes implicações para o grau desejável de progressividade tributária.  Com efeito, elas indicam que impor alíquotas confiscatórias sobre as altas rendas não apenas é possível como também é a única maneira de acabar com os aumentos observados nos altos salários.  De acordo com nossas estimativas, a alíquota ótima de imposto de renda para os países desenvolvidos é provavelmente uma maior que 80%." (p. 512)
"Uma alíquota de 80% aplicada a receitas maiores que US$500.000 ou US$1 milhão por ano não traria ao governo muito em termos de receita, pois ela rapidamente alcançaria seu objetivo: reduzir drasticamente as remunerações, mas sem reduzir a produtividade da economia, de modo que os salários subiriam a níveis menores". (p. 513)
"O propósito primário dos impostos sobre ganhos de capital não é o de financiar programas sociais, mas sim o de regular o capitalismo.  A meta é, em primeiro lugar, acabar com os contínuo aumento na desigualdade de renda, e, em segundo lugar, impor uma regulação efetiva sobre os sistemas bancário e financeiro para evitar crises." (p. 518)
"[A transparência financeira associada ao imposto global proposto por Piketty] iria gerar preciosas informações sobre a distribuição de riqueza.  Os governos nacionais, as organizações internacionais, e os institutos de estatística ao redor do mundo iriam pelo menos ser capazes de produzir dados confiáveis sobre a evolução da riqueza global... [Os cidadãos] teriam acesso a dados públicos sobre fortunas, cujas informações seriam fornecidas por lei.  Os benefícios para a democracia seriam consideráveis: é muito difícil ter um debate racional sobre os grandes desafios enfrentados pelo mundo atual — o futuro do estado de bem-estar social, os custos da transição para novas fontes de energia, o tamanho do estado em países desenvolvidos, e muito mais — porque a distribuição global de riqueza continua muito opaca." (pp. 518-519)
"Um imposto de 0,1% sobre o capital não seria apenas mais um imposto; ele teria, acima de tudo, o intuito de ser uma lei que obriga o relato compulsório de informações pessoais.  Todos seriam obrigados a divulgar informações sobre a natureza de seus ativos para as autoridades financeiras mundiais.  Só assim poderão ser reconhecidos como os proprietários legais daquilo que possuem..." (p. 519)
Referindo-se à necessidade de se abolir todos os paraísos fiscais por meio da obrigatoriedade de especificar todos os seus ativos às autoridades globais: "Ninguém tem o direito de determinar suas próprias alíquotas de impostos.  Não é certo que indivíduos enriqueçam por meio do livre comércio e da integração econômica, obtendo lucros à custa de seus vizinhos.  Isso é roubo puro e descarado." (p. 522)
"Se, amanhã, alguém descobrir em seu quintal um tesouro maior do que toda a riqueza existente em seu país, seria correto aprovar uma emenda constitucional para que esta riqueza seja redistribuída de uma maneira mais sensata (é o que devemos desejar)." (p. 537)
"Na África, a saída de capitais sempre excedeu o influxo de ajudas estrangeiras.  Não há dúvidas de que foi algo bom vários países ricos terem impetrado medidas judiciais contra líderes africanos que saíram de seus respectivos países com grandes fortunas.  Porém, seria algo ainda mais proveitoso criar uma instituição de âmbito global voltada para a cooperação tributária e para o compartilhamento de dados com o objetivo de permitir que os países da África e de outros continentes descubram essas pilhagens de maneira mais sistemática e moderna, especialmente quando se leva em conta que empresas internacionais e acionistas de todas as nacionalidades são, no mínimo, tão culpados quanto as inescrupulosas elites africanas.  De novo, a transparência financeira e um imposto global e progressivo sobre o capital são a solução correta."  (p. 539)
"Do ponto de vista do interesse geral e do bem comum, é preferível tributar os ricos a tomar emprestado deles." (p. 540)
Essas frases revelam que Piketty na realidade não tem nenhum interesse em apenas aumentar as receitas dos governos com seus esquemas tributários; o que ele realmente quer é acabar de uma vez por todas com a formação de fortunas.
Para finalizar, um alerta a todos que ainda prezam valores ultrapassados como privacidade financeira e estado de direito: preocupem-se.  Piketty e todos aqueles que estão tecendo louvores a seu livro não têm a mais mínima consideração pela maneira como uma pessoa construiu sua fortuna.  Não importa se você trabalhou duro, poupou e foi um corajoso empreendedor.  Tudo será confiscado.  Eles, aliás, nem sequer têm "planos nobres" para como irão utilizar toda a propriedade que pretendem confiscar — o objetivo é apenas o de garantir que uma pessoa rica deixe de ser rica. 
Se você for razoavelmente rico, é melhor se tornar amigo de Piketty e sua turma, e bem rápido.  Talvez assim eles permitirão que você mantenha pelo menos uma fatia de suas propriedades.
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Robert P. Murphy 
é Ph.D em economia pela New York Universityeconomista do Institute for Energy Research, um scholar adjunto do Mises Institute, membro docente da Mises University e autor do livro The Politically Incorrect Guide to Capitalism, além dos guias de estudo para as obras Ação Humana e Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market.  É também dono do blog Free Advice.

domingo, 11 de maio de 2014

Piketty comete erros primarios em seu livro: critica de Robert P.Murphy (Blog Free Advice)

Piketty Can’t Even Get His Basic Tax History Right

Robert P.Murphy 

Blog Free Advice

Capital & Interest

The more I read of Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century, the worse it gets. Try this excerpt:
[T]he Great Depression of the 1930s struck the United States with extreme force, and many people blamed the economic and financial elites for having enriched themselves while leading the country to ruin. (Bear in mind that the share of top incomes in US national income peaked in the late 1920s, largely due to enormous capital gains on stocks.) Roosevelt came to power in 1933, when the crisis was already three years old and one-quarter of the country was unemployed. He immediately decided on a sharp increase in the top income tax rate, which had been decreased to 25 percent in the late 1920s and again under Hoover’s disastrous presidency. The top rate rose to 63 percent in 1933 and then to 79 percent in 1937, surpassing the previous record of 1919. [Piketty pp. 506-507]
Look, I don’t mean to be a stickler, but the above tax “history” is totally wrong. Here is the actual history of the top federal income tax rate, from the Tax Policy Center:
2014.05 Top US PIT rate
The column you want to look at is second from the right. A few things:
(1) The top rate was lowered to 25 percent in 1925, not exactly “the late 1920s” and certainly not by Herbert Hoover. (I think the brief 24 percent rate in 1929 was a one-off adjustment in the surtax, but I am not certain and I’m not going to go look it up right now.)
(2) The top rate was jacked up to 63 percent in 1932, not 1933, and it was done by Herbert Hoover, not by FDR. (Note that the 63 percent rate applied to the 1932 tax year, so we can’t rescue Piketty by saying he was referring to the first year of impact rather than the passage.)
(3) The top rate was raised to 79 percent in 1936, not 1937. (If you want to cross-reference another source, this page also agrees that the 79 percent rate kicked in in 1936.)
Now if there had just been one instance of Piketty being off by a single year, I would excuse it by saying maybe he got mixed up in interpreting how US tax laws work. But to say (or did he merely imply?) that Hoover was the one to lower tax rates to 25% is just crazy; Hoover wasn’t inaugurated until March 1929, and the top rate was lowered to 25% back in 1925.
Furthermore, notice that this isn’t an “arbitrary” screwup on Piketty’s part: On the contrary, it serves his narrative. It would be really great for Piketty’s story if the right-wing business-friendly Herbert Hoover slashed tax rates to boost the income of the 1%, thereby bringing in a stock bubble/crash and the Great Depression. Then FDR comes in to save the day by jacking up tax rates. Except, like I said, that’s not what actually happened.
So let’s see: The #1 Amazon bestseller is a work involving a theoretical mechanism that explains how interest rates will interact with GDP growth in order to yield an ever-rising share of capital income, and this is embedded in what is (we are told) a masterful historical analysis of tax policy and income distribution. So far we’ve seen:
(a) Piketty’s theoretical structure suffers from basic confusion, which was so bad that Nick Rowe declared in the comments here: “If an economist writes a whole book about capital and the functional distribution of income, you would think he would at least understand the very basics of the theory of capital and interest. He does not.
Bob is absolutely [right] about this. How come anyone takes this stuff seriously?”
and
(c) Piketty botches basic historical tax facts, in a way that helps his narrative.
But hey, it’s all good. He gives us a scientific justification for taking property away from rich people. Why let the above quibbles get in the way of worldwide confiscation?

15 Responses to “Piketty Can’t Even Get His Basic Tax History Right”

  1. Ash
    One common criticism I hear of Austrians is that the reason they aren’t taken seriously, is because all the “good work” is being done by the mainstream. .
    Well, if making crucial errors in the history of thought and the political history used to buttress your policy conclusions qualifies as doing “good work”, then maybe it’s a good thing Austrians aren’t doing any!
    • Tel
      Even a first year student can calculate the economic justification for selling your opinions on the open market.
  2. AC
    Sorry, you “conservatives” had your chance. DeKrugman said the debate is over.
  3. Obi1Kulinobi
    I have it from secondary scources but i heart that pikety is in favour of Capital tax.
    I wonder if mainstream in this case is base on Ramsey model?I learnt in college that base on Ramsey model capital tax is the worse type of tax, is he dealing with this issue anyhow?
    • Bob Murphy
      Obi, I am going to do a full book review in a week or two. Stay tuned.
      (But, Piketty doesn’t think taxing capital is bad, at least not if it’s limited to the very wealthy. So he rejects the standard arguments that claim taxing capital is much worse than taxing income or consumption.)
  4. Major-Freedom
    Murphy, thanks for all of this. We “Austrians” learned our lesson after Hayek didn’t write a critique of The General Theory because he believed it would be just a passing fad.
    • Enopoletus Harding
      According to Gary North, as next to no one reads the General Theory, a series of critiques of the most popular economics textbooks would be far more relevant.
  5. Ken P
    My guess is that he didn’t feel the need to check his facts because everyone knows that Hoover would have been the one that cut taxes and FDR would have been the one that raised them. Extreme bias causes facts to morph to fit your worldview.
    a) and b) are mistakes that show a lack of scholarly rigor. Bob did a good job of explaining those – even I was able to understand his example. c) would be poor for even a high school term paper.
  6. Cosmo Kramer
    Somehow…. I think these table errors will be allowed to slide under the rug.
    Had the implications been inversed though…http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-05-28/krugman-feud-with-reinhart-rogoff-escalates-as-austerity-debated.html
  7. MG
    Bob, look at this other error:
    Again, incredibly sloppy, and always erring on one side of the narrative.
    • Cosmo Kramer
      again….. these policy proposals by statists are racist, period.
      “In 1938 the average hourly wage in manufacturing
      industries was 62 cents an hour. In January, 1968, it was
      $2.64 an hour. But our legislators, not content with this
      general rise in wages due to more and better tools and
      natural economic forces, have decided to keep raising
      the legal minimum wage even faster than the fast-rising
      market average. Thus the statutory minimum was only
      29 per cent of average hourly earnings in manufacturing
      just before the increase in 1950, but 40 per cent
      before the increase of the minimum in 1956,43 per cent
      before the increase in 1961, 47 per cent before the increase
      in 1963, and 54 per cent before the increase in
      1968. The consequence of this is that the legal minimum
      wage was pushed up 114 per cent between early 1956
      and 1968, though average hourly earnings in manufacturing
      rose only 55 per cent. Meanwhile, the Federal
      minimum wage has become effective over a far greater
      range.
      The net result of all this has been to force up the wage
      rates of unskilled labor much more than those of skilled
      labor. A result of this, in turn, has been that though an
      increasing shortage has developed in skilled labor, the
      proportion of unemployed among the unskilled, among
      teen-agers, females and non-whites has been growing.
      The outstanding victim has been the Negro, and particularly
      the Negro teen-ager. In 1952, the unemployment
      rate among white teen-agers and non-white
      teen-agers was the same—9 per cent. But year by year,
      as the minimum wage has been jacked higher and
      higher, a disparity has grown and increased. In Februaryary of 1968, the unemployment rate among white teenagers
      was 11.6 per cent, but among non-white teenagers
      it had soared to 26.6 per cent.”
    • Bob Murphy
      MG thanks! This guy is something else, isn’t he?
  8. Yancey Ward
    If you had shown me the tables and then asked me to describe how Piketty would describe the tax changes, I would have predicted exactly what Piketty wrote. These aren’t errors- they are lies that Piketty hoped no one would catch, but if they were caught, it could be explained away as a “slight error”. Krugman has made this sort of thing into an art form.
    • Bob Murphy
      Yancey, I guess I am more naive than you. I would not have predicted a scholar would put demonstrably wrong historical facts in his book. Like you said, Krugman et al. have totally misled their readers regarding Hoover vs. FDR, but at least he didn’t write things that were flat-out false. Piketty has lowered the bar.
      (I should note that this is through a translator, so it’s conceivable there’s a less sinister explanation. But it doesn’t look good, especially with the minimum wage stuff.)
      • Yancey Ward
        I guess I have seen too many “scholars” put demonstrably wrong facts in their books, and done so deliberately. Then I have seen legions of other “scholars” defend the practice.

sexta-feira, 9 de março de 2012

Cartas a um Jovem Economista: um manual introdutorio - Robert P. Murphy




Teaching Tomorrow's Economists
by Robert P. Murphy
Mises Daily, March 9, 2012

I am happy to announce that the Teacher's Manual is now available for my introductory textbook, Lessons for the Young Economist. For those readers who are unfamiliar with it, let me explain that the student text was designed with junior-high students in mind, but it is applicable for younger, precocious students, and also even for adults who never got a solid grounding in free-market economic principles.
The newly available manual is intended to guide the teacher through the course, giving the broader context of the material in the student text, as well as offering suggested test questions and further activities. It can be used by classroom teachers, but is also ideally suited to homeschooling instruction by parents who may not be confident in their own economics knowledge.
A Teaching Plan
Here's how the manual works: First, before introducing a particular chapter (or lesson), the teacher needs to read it in the student text. Then, the teacher should read the accompanying material in the manual. For each section of each chapter, the manual may give the historical context, clarify the relationship between what the student is learning from the text compared to a typical college textbook, warn about possible confusions the student may encounter, give links for the teacher's own edification (not necessarily to be assigned to the student), and so forth.
After walking through the main body of the student text in a given chapter, the manual then provides thorough answers to the study questions found at the back of each lesson. The manual then lists optional supplemental materials, which are free online videos, audio lectures, and readings, along with instructions as to their level of difficulty and relevance, helping the teacher determine which (if any) to assign.
Next the manual will list one or more suggested activities, which are applied ways to illustrate the concepts from the chapter. Some of the activities will be suitable for classroom use, while others will be more relevant for homeschooling families where the teacher and student will be out in the "real world" together on a regular basis.
Finally, each chapter of the manual ends with a sample test, which can be printed out (if the teacher is using a PDF version) or copied (if using a physical book).
Sample Activities
In this section I'll summarize some of the suggested activities listed in the manual, to motivate teachers to consider it. (The book can be perused for free in PDF form.)
Lesson 2 from the student text is entitled "How We Develop Economic Principles." It lays out the rudiments of Ludwig von Mises's conception of human action and the nature of economic law, and in particular how we do not "test" economic laws the same way we test laws in chemistry or physics. In the Teacher's Manual, the suggested activity is
Get the student comfortable with the distinction between purposeful action versus reflexive (mindless) behavior by working with extreme examples. For example, does the sun "want" to rise in the east every morning? Does a plant "want" to gradually move its leaves toward the sunlight? Does a dog perform a trick for a treat "on purpose"? Are the zombies in movies using means to achieve ends?
In Lesson 3, one of the principles the student learns is that only individuals act. The student text explains the danger in statements such as, "Germany attacked France." In reality, of course, it is more precise to say that certain individuals in the German army obeyed orders to invade the borders of France, and launch attacks on French military targets. To motivate these ideas, the suggested activity in the Teacher's Manual for this chapter is "Have the student browse a newspaper or watch the nightly news, and note how many times a collective entity (such as a country or government) is reported to have taken a purposeful action."
Lesson 4 of the student text is devoted to "Robinson Crusoe" economics. The chapter explains the various categories or concepts of economics, such as scarcity, goods, consumer goods, producer goods, saving, investment, and so on. The book emphasizes that these concepts exist in the mind of the individual; economics is subjective, in other words.
To make these abstract ideas a bit more concrete, the suggested activities in the Teacher's Manual include:
  1. Ask the student to think of situations in which typically non-scarce goods can become scarce and hence subject to economic analysis. For example, deep sea divers must purchase tanks of oxygen, and we could imagine space travelers buying gravity-generating devices for their ships.
  2. Ask the student to come up with scenarios in which changing beliefs can alter which physical things are considered scarce economic goods. For example, if a certain root is believed to have medicinal properties, people will pay others to collect it. But if it turns out that the man publicizing the claims is a fraud, then the root might lose its status as a good.
  3. The next time you and the student are at a store, ask about the status of the items on the shelf, from the point of view of the store owner and the customer. For example, the student could say that all of the items on the shelves are producer goods to the owner, because he or she looks at them as a means of earning money. But from the point of view of the customer, some of the items (such as a loaf of bread) could be classified as a consumer good, while others (such as a drill) could be classified either way, depending on how the student frames the situation. (Note that in one sense, a drill doesn't confer direct happiness on the consumer, except in a Tim Allen-macho-man fashion.) Furthermore, even "obvious" consumer goods could be classified as producer goods, depending on how the student frames the issue. A woman might buy expensive clothes in order to fit in with a certain group of people, for example, even though she would rather wear sweatpants; in this sense the items are a means to an end, i.e., producer goods.
Lesson 5 of the student text explains the social function of the institution of private property. It follows the approach of Hans Hoppe, arguing that property rights are necessary to peacefully resolve potential conflicts over the contradictory uses of scarce resources. The Teacher's Manual suggests the following activities for thoughtful students:
  1. Especially if the student is an animal lover, you could ask whether it's really correct to say that Crusoe was the only intelligent mind on his island, appraising the scarce goods. For example, what if Crusoe's activities destroyed bird nests? There is no preferred answer here, but you should point out the difficulties in actually assigning property rights to birds, monkeys, etc. Note too that just because someone has the legal right to use an object (i.e., is its owner), doesn't relieve him or her of moral or religious responsibilities. For example, even if we can agree that Crusoe is the effective owner of everything on the island, we can still consider it deeply immoral for him to commit wanton cruelty to the animals on it.
  2. One of the most difficult problems in applying the concept of private property in the real world, is understanding the boundaries between various property rights. A discussion on these issues might be fruitful. The classic expression of this idea is to say, "Your right to extend your fist ends where my nose begins," but there are many other examples. For example, does a homeowner have the right to throw a noisy party on his own property at 3 a.m., or do his neighbors have the right to exclude disturbing sound vibrations from entering their property? These subtleties lie outside the scope of this course, but they could provoke interesting discussions. Murray Rothbard laid out a particular view of property rights in his book The Ethics of Liberty. Note that not all libertarian or even Austrian scholars would necessarily endorse Rothbard's views, but the book at least provides an example of a serious attempt to answer the question of assigning actual property titles.
As a final example, let's jump ahead to Lesson 17, which discusses the problems with price controls, including the minimum wage. Here the suggested activities are well suited for homeschooling families:
  1. Often a good way to introduce the problems with the minimum wage — especially with someone who initially thinks it's a good idea — is to ask, "Why not set a minimum wage of $100 per hour, so everyone would be rich?" (The same thing could be done for rent control of $10 per month.) Another way to approach the issue is to ask, "Why doesn't every worker — including brain surgeons and star quarterbacks — get paid the minimum wage?
  2. While on an interstate road trip, have the student find out the minimum wage levels applicable in each state along the route using Wikipedia. Then pay attention to how many workers the various restaurants have along the way, trying to hold other factors constant (such as time of day, weekday versus weekend, size of the crowd, etc.). For example, as of this writing the minimum wage in Washington State was $8.55 for workers 16 and older, whereas in adjacent Idaho it was only $7.25. Other things equal, we would expect to see fewer workers at fast-food restaurants in Washington. (Be careful if stopping at a fancier restaurant, because minimum wage laws usually make exceptions for workers who earn tips.)
Conclusion
Whether a homeschooling parent or a professional educator, anyone who teaches economic principles to students in the junior-high through high-school level should consider adding the new Teacher's Manual as a resource. And if the teacher hasn't already done so, he or she should review the original student textbook, Lessons for the Young Economist, to see if it is appropriate to incorporate into the curriculum.

Robert Murphy is an adjunct scholar of the Mises Institute, where he teaches at the Mises Academy. He runs the blog Free Advice and is the author of The Politically Incorrect Guide to Capitalism, the Study Guide to "Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market," the "Human Action" Study Guide, The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Great Depression and the New Deal, and his newest book, Lessons for the Young Economist. Send him mail. See Robert P. Murphy's article archives.