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Serious question: How much more information do you typically retain by reading all 696 pages, versus watching a 20 minute summary? The linked webpage talks abo

Serious question: How much more information do you typically retain by reading all 696 pages, versus watching a 20 minute summary? The linked webpage talks about that, saying that it needed to be condensed into a TED talk because the book scared of many people (myself included). But for all the prodigious evidence, how much do you really remember? Does any of it come up in conversation at a dinner party? > Piketty predicted (correctly) [that it] ... would attract vicious assaults from the mainstream of economic thought. Ah, so is this more of an academic thing. Not just for the layperson, but for the economist. Like a dissertation that needs to be backed up with a ton of evidence and references. Ok, I think I answered my own question. I also just changed my own attitude towards reading books like this. It's not entertainment, it's knowledge.

lnanek2 10y ago
Reading the whole thing is more in the entertainment realm. He advises some things that aren't acceptable in the US like government control of CEO salaries, but also some things that aren't acceptable anywhere, like confiscatory taxes. I.e. he states that there wouldn't be government benefit to taxing the super rich so heavily they are no longer rich because there are too few of them to contribute meaningfully to large state projects, but he still states they should have confiscatory (his term) taxes applied to them just to remove their wealth so that there is less income inequality. When people talk about the book or summarize they often stick to the more factual stuff, like the fact that income equality is real and growing, but they often skip over the other parts that no one would actually agree with like the above.
therealdrag0 10y ago
I listened to it on Audiobook and definitely didn't retain crap. But it's interesting. There were a lot more moments of "pause and reflect" probably listening to tens of hours of audio-book instead of a 20min video.

lnanek2 10y ago

Reading the whole thing is more in the entertainment realm. He advises some things that aren't acceptable in the US like government control of CEO salaries, but also some things that aren't acceptable anywhere, like confiscatory taxes. I.e. he states that there wouldn't be government benefit to taxing the super rich so heavily they are no longer rich because there are too few of them to contribute meaningfully to large state projects, but he still states they should have confiscatory (his term) taxes applied to them just to remove their wealth so that there is less income inequality. When people talk about the book or summarize they often stick to the more factual stuff, like the fact that income equality is real and growing, but they often skip over the other parts that no one would actually agree with like the above.

therealdrag0 10y ago

I listened to it on Audiobook and definitely didn't retain crap. But it's interesting. There were a lot more moments of "pause and reflect" probably listening to tens of hours of audio-book instead of a 20min video.