The Government's Assault on the Supply of Capital Has Begun to Transform the Economy into One of Stagnation and Decline Causing Anger over “Economic Inequality”

The government’s massive assault on the supply of capital has begun to transform the American economic system from one of continuous economic progress and generally rising living standards into one of stagnation and outright decline. People are shocked and outraged as they see the standard of living fall. They had believed that while physical nature might be fragile and damaged by the loss even of a single species of plant or animal life, the economic system was indestructible. No tax, no regulation, was ever too much for it. The cost would always somehow come out of the profits of the rich, not the standard of living of the average wage earner, even if the ever-repeated additional costs came quickly to exceed all the profits of the economic system.

As people have learned that the economic system is not indestructible, they have turned in anger and resentment against “economic inequality,” as though it were the surviving wealth of others that was the cause of their poverty, rather than the fact that, thanks to the government, others do not have sufficient capital to supply and employ them in the manner they would like.

--George Reisman, Piketty's Capital: Wrong Theory / Destructive Program (Laguna Hills, CA: TJS Books, 2014), Kindle e-book.