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In the German case, it is clear that the exceptional taxes on private wealth that were levied in 1949–1952 and continued into the 1980s were a much better way of reducing public debt than the hyperinflation of the 1920s, not only from an economic point of view but also from a social and democratic one.

DE:thehyperinflationofthe1920shadseriouslydestabilizedsocialrelations and turnedtheentirecountryupsidedown, therewasgreaterwarinessofthe socialconsequences(rising prices)somoresophisticatedmethodsof accelerateddebtreductionweretriedin1949–1952.Morespecifically, theGermanFederalReoublicestablishedavarietyofprogressive/exceptional taxes on private wealth,whichsomeGermanswererequiredto pay4decdsinsomecasesuntilthe80s

. A case in point involves the development of rent control, which began during World War I. The scope of rent control expanded after World War II to the point where the real value of French rents in 1950 fell to one-fifth of what it had been in 1914, resulting in a comparable fall in the price of real es- tate.26

In general, faith in private capitalism was strongly shaken by the economic crisis of the 1930s and the ensuing cataclysms. The Great Depression, triggered by the Wall Street crash of 1929, struck rich countries with unprecedented force.

The particularly high level of income inequality in the United Kingdom and France before World War I—compared with Germanyforexample—can in large part be explained by the amount of income derived from foreign investments by wealthy British&French citizens. In this respect, the domestic inequality regimes one sees in Europe were closely related to the structure of inequality at the international/colonial level

The expropriations of foreign assets illustrate to perfection the political- ideological shift that took place in the world in the first half of the twentieth century. Between 1914 and 1950 it was the very concept of property that changed due to the effects of war and social and political conflict.

After the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, the Soviets decided to repudiate all these debts, which in its eyes had only pro- longed the existence of the Tsarist regime (which was not entirely false). The United Kingdom, United States, and France sent troops to northern Russia in 1918–1920 in the hope of quelling the revolution, to no avail.

The total value of private property literally collapsed during World War I and in the early 1920s before recovering slightly later in the decade and collapsing again in the Great De- pression, World War II, and the immediate postwar years, to the point where private property represented the equivalent of only two years of national in- come in France and Germany in 1950.

The Belle Époque (1880–1914) was the high watermark of international investment, which on the eve of World War I surpassed the equivalent of a year’s national income for France and nearly two years of na- tional income for the United Kingdom, compared with less than half a year for Germany—still quite a lot in comparative historical terms but not all that much by contemporary European norms.17

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, private capital was flourishing. The market value of all real estate, professional, and financial as- sets (net of debt) held by private owners fluctuated between seven and eight years of national income in France and the United Kingdom and around six years in Germany (Fig. 10.8). These sums included assets held abroad in in the colonies and elsewhere.