When and if taxing the wealthy, because of inequality, remember that governments are part of the problem.

Sir, Thomas Piketty proposes to “Save capitalism from the capitalists by taxing wealth” March 29, and of course there’s nothing wrong with those having the most in society carrying the heaviest load… especially when it comes to finance opportunities.

But, as Piketty also admits, much of the reason for the growing unequal capital is that “the political process [is] so tightly captured by top earners”… and so governments are part of the problem, and can therefore not be trusted with efficiently distributing those revenues.

For instance, if the purpose is to fund education, I can think of many systems whereby funds from the wealthy can go directly to pay for the costs of less wealthy students, with no one getting their hand in the tilt for political or other purposes.

In other words, when redistributing economic wealth, we must make sure we are not increasing excessively the might of wealthy governments, since that can create and even worse sort of inequality, which could endanger capitalism even more.

Personally, before going after the wealthy, I would prefer to tax at a higher rate all those who benefit from special relations… be it monopolies, protected intellectual property or similar… because even in the case of wealth there are some which are better earned than others.

PS. And let me take the opportunity to remind of the need to get rid of that odious opportunity killer, and that odious inequality driver, that risk based bank capital requirements represent… and which of course has nothing to do with capitalism and all to do with regulatory foolishness.