I had just read Krugman's notes on Picetti's “Capital in the Twenty-First Century” when I tried to visualize that top 1 per cent on Forbes. Many well-known family names and then a definitely Hungarian one appeared. How small the world is! That was of a man whose story I had never heard about before. Being born during a bombing raid and growing up in the peoples' REDpublic might pushes someone in the direction towards the basic institution of free market theory. The numerically talented ex-engineer Thomas Petterfy became the knight of the stock exchange. It is interesting to see being against the soviet type of socialism eventually makes someone support and promote Republicans as the last resort.
Having seen the data visualisation of amazing data set reaching back to 1700 or even more, I think Picetti added a lot to the arguments, although Krugman calls for some refinement. It sounds reasonable that even in a meritocracy you cannot have 100 times differences between salaries.
Now I have visualised someone at the top 1 per cent. Should powerbrokers ever happen to agree on a recalibration of the system, I wish we can see that.
#148 Thomas Peterffy
"Interactive Brokers founder Thomas Peterffy made a name for himself on Wall Street with his keen market observations. In November he launched a "probability lab" on the firm's website, sharing his framework for analyzing the stock market, as well as life decisions, based on probability. Peterffy was born in 1944 in Budapest, during a Russian bombing raid, and came to the United States in 1965 speaking no English. In 1977 Peterffy left a job designing commodities trading software and purchased a seat on the American Stock Exchange and began trading options. He founded Interactive Brokers in 1993; the electronic brokerage firm now executes 500,000 revenue trades each day. Peterffy is a strong opponent of socialism, and funded political ads in October 2012 warning Americans of its dangers and urging viewers to vote Republican. In his spare time Peterffy is an enthusiastic equestrian and keeps horses at his Greenwich estate. He has said that his favorite charitable organization is Teach for America."
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/25/opinion/krugman-the-piketty-panic.html?_r=0
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/03/14/notes-on-piketty-wonkish/
