Why Piketty's Full Of It

It's the National Trust, see?

M. Piketty insists that it’s absolutely terrible that the wealth to GDP ratio is rising. We’re going to be back in Jane Austen times you mark his words. Bonnets and mimbling about freckles will return. And those vast aristocratic fortunes will revive and we’ll all be proles serving the billionaire masters.

One of the proofs of this is that it was only taxation and war that broke those previous, Austen-esque fortunes. Which is French tossery bollocks.

One thing to note is that the wealth to GDP ratio is rising because we’re all living longer. Therefore we rationally save more for our retirement and we’ve 200% of GDP in our pensions savings. The rise of 200% of GDP in the wealth to GDP ratio being the thing that Le Froggo is using to prove that we’re all about to bee in bonnets about freckles again.

The other is that we didn’t, in fact, dispossess the aristocrats through tax or war. We did it with free trade.

The Montagus hope to raise £3,000 – and given the success of their previous crowdfunding requests, they should smash this target in a few weeks. When one of their eagle figurines, which have adorned the pillars at the front of the house for 300 years, fell off its perch last year, they quickly raised £23,000 to get them restored. Donors also paid £18,500 for the archive room to be overhauled with scanners, archive supplies and a fireproof safe.

Then there are the family Coronation robes, which have been conserved at the Royal School of Needlework thanks to a £1,500 crowdfunder; and the 18th-century Peacock Tapestries, which are being restored by celebrated conservator Emma Telford, after £20,000 of donations. Last year alone, the estate raised £70,000 for restoration from online benefactors gifting up to £1,500 at a time.

Donors come across the Earl and Countess on Mapperton Live, the couple’s YouTube channel, which documents the highs and lows of running the house, five farms and 1,900 acres of pasture and woodlands.

Back in the day 1,900 acres and 5 farms was enough to build - and staff - the mansion. These days it’s not enough even for maintenance. And there are those who have complained it’s not enough to even heat these grand houses.

This is why we have the National Trust:

Bailey was followed as chairman of the Trust by Lawrence Dundas, 2nd Marquess of Zetland, and in 1936 the Trust set up the Country Houses Committee, with James Lees-Milne as secretary, to look into ways of preserving country houses and gardens at a time when their owners could no longer afford to maintain them. A country house scheme was set up and the National Trust Acts of 1937 and 1939 facilitated the transfer of estates from private owners to the Trust. The scheme allowed owners to escape estate duty on their country house and on the endowment which was necessary for the upkeep of the house, while they and their heirs could continue to live in the property, providing the public were allowed some access.

So, back when Pemberley was an estate to set a girl’s heart aflutter wheat was expensive. You weren’t allowed to import it from abroad unless the price was eyewatering. As David Ricardo would point out - did point out - this meant the rent that could be squeezed from wheat growing land was high - high enough to build grand houses.

Then we abolished the Corn Laws, invented the steamship to get grain from the Americas, extended the railways into the Ukraine and Britain had at least two and possibly three agricultural depressions in a row. The relative value of farmland fell, those grand aristocratic fortunes tied up in said land faded away. The nobs still rich are those who had, by chance, urban landholdings. Westminster, Chelsea, Cadogan, de Walden etc.

Quite fuck all to do with war and or taxation. Free trade and technological development is what did for the nobs. Which is also what will deal with it this time around of course.

But then Piketty’s a Frenchman trying to do economics. Not one of them has had a clue since Bastiat.