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Here is a more critical reading of Piketty (http://business.financialpost.com/2014/04/10/terence-corcoran-the-straw-dogs-of-thomas-pikettys-capitalism/ http://b

by jsnk 12y ago

Here is a more critical reading of Piketty (http://business.financialpost.com/2014/04/10/terence-corcoran-the-straw-dogs-of-thomas-pikettys-capitalism/ http://business.financialpost.com/2014/04/10/terence-corcora...). One thing that surprises me when I read reviews about Piketty (I haven't read the book) is that they state as if it's a surprising fact that the inequality is inherent in free market Piketty was smart enough to find out about it. Is this a news to even trained economists?

deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
dimitar 12y ago
I remember in that in high school when I got writing assignments that I didn't like, I made my life easier by implying that the author is just a communist. Since people in the media were doing exactly that all the time and I did had a very cool teacher I got away with it from time to time.
- jokoon 12y ago
  Yeah it's always easy to argue that one's wrong because his opinion doesn't work in the actual world. I find it to be the worst, most myopic and misleading argument kind. That's like telling a cow is a bad cow because it's not like the other cows.
bertil 12y ago
I was a student in the different Master’s Piketty taught ten years ago. The debate, at the time, was a bit binary; I know the 2007 crisis changed things a bit, but not significantly. Binary: one side people arguing with simple models that one should look into rules and regulations that would promote growth, inherently leading to new elites. Cases mentioned include new wealth from tech, telcos & construction, where marginal cases where key (should software be copyrightable, licensed to be used but not copies when ‘proprietary’, patentable; should incumbent offer access to ‘essential assets’ to encourage investment in infrastructures). The support from old-money to the handful of cases of new-money was not mentioned; neither was the large role played of investment — simply (deregulated) algorithmic trading as another example of the lack of regulation replacing the old guard. Bluntly put: the assumption of perfect rationality meant that investment went to good ideas, therefore social access to wealth wasn’t supposed to be an issue. I am not making it up that any model without perfect rationality was until 2006 laughed out of most polite society: mentioning in passing a coherent model for financial bubbles with something as simple as private success information, two periods and two types of agents got two of my teachers in trouble repeatedly. The other side, namely ‘heterodoxes’, was, and probably largely still is, a very varied group: from Transaction costs economists, the closest to mainstream, who argue things similar to what I mentioned, but with consistent models, nuances and many exceptions; to more exotic animals, including self-confessed Marxists and neo-Marxists. Piketty was part of the most vocal and least theoretical sub-group; mainly thanks to amusing cases of institutional ‘hacking‘ to access national databases for wealth and revenue, he was able to prove something that can come off as obvious to non-theoretical economist. However, redistribution hasn’t really been the focus on that discipline since the 70’s. “New economics” postulated Cliton-inspired steady strong growth, fueled by the digital revolution. One was only allowed one critic: Solow’s Missing computers (“You can see computers everywhere, except in production growth.”) I’ve personally tried to mention that computeres needed a different kind of company structure, with more ad-hoc internal communication tools: that got me “Yeah… Maybe”-s; but if I tried to argue that this meant a thousand employees (Google headcount at the time) could do the work of a million, potentially leaving a generation of obsolete workers, unable to find an explanation of what to do to find a job (with detailed official data in hand), I got into real trouble and I was scolded into remembering that “New economics” meant jobs for everyone. I never dared stay in public that internet-based job search meant faster finds, a lower structural unemployment and that the stable overall numbers actually meant a growing population of long-term unemployed, dropped out of sight by counting standards. Digital Lumpen-proletariat wasn’t a word, and describing Amazon warehouse working condition wasn’t acceptable. Thanks to his incredible skill-set, Piketty was also able to stay active at the most prestigious institutions, rather than be labeled a marginal and ignored by national media. Until 2007, his position were fairly ignored by specialists. Since, critic has come, but still evolving slowly; the current leading edge to me was McAfee & Brynjolfsson last year, and more recenlty Piketty apologising for assuming that the 1% got rich, while it was the 1% of the 1%.
Tycho 12y ago
Seems sort of like 'inequality' is the meme of the day and all this attention is just because somebody wrote a big weighty book about it, rather than another documentary with emotional music behind all the dialogue.
- yungchin 12y ago
  If we are to believe this [0], it's actually the other way around: inequality is the meme of the day precisely because he's been writing big weighty books about it for a while. [0]: http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2014/may/08/thomas-piketty-new-gilded-age/ http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2014/may/08/thomas-... It's a long review, but even just the first paragraphs are worth a skim - for me as a lay person they were very enlightening as to why this work makes a difference.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
leaveyou 12y ago
Judging from the abundance of "left", "neo-Marxist" and "class warfare" it's quite critical, but no matter how they spin it (with straw men like "there will always be inequality in capitalism", "Mises said, inequality elimination would destroy the market place"), it's hard to defend the extreme inequality the author is warning us about.

by jsnk 12y ago

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

dimitar 12y ago

I remember in that in high school when I got writing assignments that I didn't like, I made my life easier by implying that the author is just a communist. Since people in the media were doing exactly that all the time and I did had a very cool teacher I got away with it from time to time.

jokoon 12y ago
Yeah it's always easy to argue that one's wrong because his opinion doesn't work in the actual world. I find it to be the worst, most myopic and misleading argument kind. That's like telling a cow is a bad cow because it's not like the other cows.

bertil 12y ago

I was a student in the different Master’s Piketty taught ten years ago. The debate, at the time, was a bit binary; I know the 2007 crisis changed things a bit, but not significantly. Binary: one side people arguing with simple models that one should look into rules and regulations that would promote growth, inherently leading to new elites. Cases mentioned include new wealth from tech, telcos & construction, where marginal cases where key (should software be copyrightable, licensed to be used but not copies when ‘proprietary’, patentable; should incumbent offer access to ‘essential assets’ to encourage investment in infrastructures). The support from old-money to the handful of cases of new-money was not mentioned; neither was the large role played of investment — simply (deregulated) algorithmic trading as another example of the lack of regulation replacing the old guard. Bluntly put: the assumption of perfect rationality meant that investment went to good ideas, therefore social access to wealth wasn’t supposed to be an issue. I am not making it up that any model without perfect rationality was until 2006 laughed out of most polite society: mentioning in passing a coherent model for financial bubbles with something as simple as private success information, two periods and two types of agents got two of my teachers in trouble repeatedly. The other side, namely ‘heterodoxes’, was, and probably largely still is, a very varied group: from Transaction costs economists, the closest to mainstream, who argue things similar to what I mentioned, but with consistent models, nuances and many exceptions; to more exotic animals, including self-confessed Marxists and neo-Marxists. Piketty was part of the most vocal and least theoretical sub-group; mainly thanks to amusing cases of institutional ‘hacking‘ to access national databases for wealth and revenue, he was able to prove something that can come off as obvious to non-theoretical economist. However, redistribution hasn’t really been the focus on that discipline since the 70’s. “New economics” postulated Cliton-inspired steady strong growth, fueled by the digital revolution. One was only allowed one critic: Solow’s Missing computers (“You can see computers everywhere, except in production growth.”) I’ve personally tried to mention that computeres needed a different kind of company structure, with more ad-hoc internal communication tools: that got me “Yeah… Maybe”-s; but if I tried to argue that this meant a thousand employees (Google headcount at the time) could do the work of a million, potentially leaving a generation of obsolete workers, unable to find an explanation of what to do to find a job (with detailed official data in hand), I got into real trouble and I was scolded into remembering that “New economics” meant jobs for everyone. I never dared stay in public that internet-based job search meant faster finds, a lower structural unemployment and that the stable overall numbers actually meant a growing population of long-term unemployed, dropped out of sight by counting standards. Digital Lumpen-proletariat wasn’t a word, and describing Amazon warehouse working condition wasn’t acceptable. Thanks to his incredible skill-set, Piketty was also able to stay active at the most prestigious institutions, rather than be labeled a marginal and ignored by national media. Until 2007, his position were fairly ignored by specialists. Since, critic has come, but still evolving slowly; the current leading edge to me was McAfee & Brynjolfsson last year, and more recenlty Piketty apologising for assuming that the 1% got rich, while it was the 1% of the 1%.

Tycho 12y ago

Seems sort of like 'inequality' is the meme of the day and all this attention is just because somebody wrote a big weighty book about it, rather than another documentary with emotional music behind all the dialogue.

yungchin 12y ago
If we are to believe this [0], it's actually the other way around: inequality is the meme of the day precisely because he's been writing big weighty books about it for a while. [0]: http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2014/may/08/thomas-piketty-new-gilded-age/ http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2014/may/08/thomas-... It's a long review, but even just the first paragraphs are worth a skim - for me as a lay person they were very enlightening as to why this work makes a difference.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]

leaveyou 12y ago

Judging from the abundance of "left", "neo-Marxist" and "class warfare" it's quite critical, but no matter how they spin it (with straw men like "there will always be inequality in capitalism", "Mises said, inequality elimination would destroy the market place"), it's hard to defend the extreme inequality the author is warning us about.