If the primary threat from the top 1 percent share is political, then the main response should be related to monitoring and containing the political implications of the increase in top-level inequality—not necessarily catch-all policies such as the wealth taxes advocated by Piketty. Such policies should be explicitly related to the institutional fault lines of the specific society and should be conceived in the context of strengthening institutional checks against any potential power grab.#
Independence of most Latin American countries came in the early nineteenth century as domestic elites took advantage of the invasion of Spain by Napoleon to capture control of the state. But, the only thing that changed was the identity of the recipients of the rents.#