An alternative explanation for Mr. Piketty's latest

The essential question being asked here is quite simple:

Given the steep rise in economic inequality in many parts of the world since the 1980s, one might have expected to see increasing political demands for the redistribution of wealth and the return of class-based politics. This didn’t quite happen – or at least not straightforwardly.

To make sense of the big picture, we studied the long-term evolution of political divides in 50 western and non-western democracies, using a new database on the vote that covers more than 300 elections held between 1948 and 2020.

Why aren’t the sans culottes storming the barricades? Where are the descamisados demanding what’s theirs by right?

A third related mechanism involves the ascendancy of a global ideology that puts private property interests above all else, abandoning any sense that capitalism can be radically transformed. The moderation of traditional leftwing parties’ platforms since the 1980s (think of New Labour), as well as in some cases their shift to promoting neoliberal policies, directly contributed to the decline of class divisions being perceived as politically salient, the subsequent demise of these parties, and the rise of identity-based conflicts.

Quite, why?

As Branko Milanovic has pointed out there is a useful answer available. Which is that this neoliberal capitalism actually works. By far the greater predictor of your income - and thus consumption possibility - is the country you are born into, not the position or class you are born into within one. Back when that work was being done, a decade ago, one result was that the average income of the bottom 10% of the United States was higher than that of the top 10% of either India or China.

Meaning that if we were to view the world through that veil of ignorance, as with the injunction from Rawls, the proto-you would be insisting upon the possibly unequal society dedicated to private property interests above all else rather than the radically transformed one. For we’ve not got an example, anywhere, of a society that did the radical transformation bit and improved the living standards of the average omnibus rider, nor of one that created such improvement in the first place without the capitalism and private property bits.

It is, that is, in the enlightened self interest of the demos to go for that unradically transformed capitalist - even neoliberal - system which actually produces the goods. The goods and services which improve life.

We did conduct the experiment too. We call it the 20th century - with able assists from Venezuela and Zimbabwe in this one. It is not, of course, the end of history and there are flavours within the basic structure as well. But we do know the answer to an interesting question - how do we make the average person richer, significantly, sustainably? We use capitalism and markets. Not doing so fails at that task.