Yep, no need to read the book.
Krugman on Piketty: Why we're in a new Gilded Age
- Thread starter Julius Skrrvin
- Start date
-
- Tags
- discussion economics thoughts
Yep, no need to read the book.
Never claimed it would reduce inequality... but what is this link you speak of that makes taking retirement into your own hands laughable?
Broke Wave
The GOAT
My argument against social security privatization is totally irrelevent to this thread. The author of that asinine CATO article made that link and it was laugh worthy. I didn't laugh at the concept of SS privatization I just laughed at how stupid that false link was.
My argument against SS privatization is mainly that the existing system works and has worked for 70 years impervious to the boom and bust cycle of the markets and has allowed millions to collect benefits without complain. It is the most popular ever government program, and is solvent indefinitely if the cap on payroll taxes is raised. A privatized SS would have been murdered in the 2008 recession, that is indisputable fact, as 401k's we're killed as well.
It is just a ploy to get more commissions and fees to Wall Street. I linked you to Canada because the CPP is one of the best working social welfare tools in the world.
Julius Skrrvin
I be winkin' through the scope
that shyt is meh. You want to read an actually interesting non kneejerk negative response?Kapital for the Twenty-First Century? | Dissent Magazine
*subs for later*
Yea I mean I think there is a clear problem with wealth/income inequality in the west, but where left leaning economists continually fail is in suggesting the solution is through high taxationI'll begin reading his book this weekend but at face value...
Telling people what they want to hear has been a blueprint for success for a long time.
What good will taxing the 1% at a 90% marginal rate do if the jobs the 99% used to do are all replaced by robots and computers
Inequality activists get so caught up in the numbers they don't step back and look at what's causing the trends and shifts that got us here
We should be asking questions like.... how can society balance the forces of automation and increasing productivity with the need to keep people employed.... how can society better equip current and future generations with the skills and knowledge to capitalize on segments of growth and prosperity... etc. etc. People misdiagnose symptoms for causes and from there no kind of productive change or discussion can come. But its easier to essentially troll with a simple emotionally loaded term like inequality than to get people to sit down and look at the full scope of the problem....
Its nice to pretend like the super wealthy are not getting what they have at the expense of anybody else, and when goofballs like Pickett frame the problem in a way that makes pretty much punitive taxes on the rich a deterministic solution, it's easy for shallow minded capitalism cheerleaders to tear it down
edit:
Looks like they are summing up the book rather nicely.
But if one doesn't realize, for example, how the Fed's programs have essentially borrowed from all of America's future to pump up assets that benefit the top 1% disproportionately in the present, they are either letting others do their thinking for them or just not paying attention. So just because Pickett missed this glaring theft of wealth from the poor to the rich doesn't mean such transfers aren't happening.
You mean to tell me this niqqa @GinaThatAintNoDamnPuppy! actually gets it?
All I can do is apologize for my fits of obtuse idiocy directed at you, I had no idea you could see.
Last edited:
Since I'm tagged, I'll make a contribution. None of us are really talking about the book, so here's the summary:
None of the "talking points" surrounding Piketty's work are particularly original. What makes his book unique is that his survey of countries' return on all investments relative to the national growth rate, which is a nice bit of data collection.
According to Piketty, return on investments generally averages out at around 5%. So when overall growth is less than 5%, the income gap grows. The poor don't necessarily get poorer, but the rich do get richer. Piketty's solution is a global wealth tax that would prevent large transfers of inherited wealth and theoretically boost growth.
There are several interesting issues though. For example, even though return on investment is GENERALLY 5%, it may not be 5% in any particular case. Furthermore, a global tax on wealth sounds very coercive. Piketty's goal could be just as easily accomplished by a higher land tax or intellectual property reform (read: tax). Another solution would be to increase growth directly by liberalizing immigration policy and supporting higher birth rates.
In general, I agree that large concentrations of wealth tend to breed a coercive environment and challenge the rule of law . . . which offends my right-of-center sensibility.
But a global wealth tax is an unrealistic and even MORE coercive way to achieve that goal.
Libertarians and conservatives shouldn't find much of a problem with Piketty's analysis of wealth and return on investment. It's the "global wealth tax" that's sort of off the cliff.
None of the "talking points" surrounding Piketty's work are particularly original. What makes his book unique is that his survey of countries' return on all investments relative to the national growth rate, which is a nice bit of data collection.
According to Piketty, return on investments generally averages out at around 5%. So when overall growth is less than 5%, the income gap grows. The poor don't necessarily get poorer, but the rich do get richer. Piketty's solution is a global wealth tax that would prevent large transfers of inherited wealth and theoretically boost growth.
There are several interesting issues though. For example, even though return on investment is GENERALLY 5%, it may not be 5% in any particular case. Furthermore, a global tax on wealth sounds very coercive. Piketty's goal could be just as easily accomplished by a higher land tax or intellectual property reform (read: tax). Another solution would be to increase growth directly by liberalizing immigration policy and supporting higher birth rates.
In general, I agree that large concentrations of wealth tend to breed a coercive environment and challenge the rule of law . . . which offends my right-of-center sensibility.
But a global wealth tax is an unrealistic and even MORE coercive way to achieve that goal.
Libertarians and conservatives shouldn't find much of a problem with Piketty's analysis of wealth and return on investment. It's the "global wealth tax" that's sort of off the cliff.
Last edited:
Julius Skrrvin
I be winkin' through the scope
Peep the Galbraith article I just linked @DEAD7 , reckon youll find it interestingIts nice to pretend like the super wealthy are not getting what they have at the expense of anybody else, and when goofballs like Pickett frame the problem in a way that makes pretty much punitive taxes on the rich a deterministic solution, it's easy for shallow minded capitalism cheerleaders to tear it down
But if one doesn't realize, for example, how the Fed's programs have essentially borrowed from all of America's future to pump up assets that benefit the top 1% disproportionately in the present, they are either letting others do their thinking for them or just not paying attention. So just because Pickett missed this glaring theft of wealth from the poor to the rich doesn't mean such transfers aren't happening.
Madvillain
Pro
I have the ebook or pdf if anybody wants it.
Been meaning to read it but I figure I'll get into it around vacay time.
The analysis and data are really the meat of the book nh and from what I've picked up that's def worth the hype as far as econ & the contribution to the field goes, but reading so many summaries, synopses and takes on it have me a lil bummed cuz I know the "ending" or at least a significant part of it - his global wealth tax solution seems a little weak. Dude is still pretty capitalist at heart.
It's funny tho, ya'll should read his comments on the god Marx too: Thomas Piketty Interview: Economist Discusses His Distaste for Marx | New Republic
Been meaning to read it but I figure I'll get into it around vacay time.
The analysis and data are really the meat of the book nh and from what I've picked up that's def worth the hype as far as econ & the contribution to the field goes, but reading so many summaries, synopses and takes on it have me a lil bummed cuz I know the "ending" or at least a significant part of it - his global wealth tax solution seems a little weak. Dude is still pretty capitalist at heart.
It's funny tho, ya'll should read his comments on the god Marx too: Thomas Piketty Interview: Economist Discusses His Distaste for Marx | New Republic
TrueEpic08
Dum Shiny
Yeah, I've actually had zero time whatsoever to read this, but from what I can tell from multiple commentaries on the book the way in which he collects and presents data on taxation and wealth accumulation and links it to the present economic context is the real draw of the book. With that said, nothing Piketty seems to be suggesting to solve the problem is actually that radical. Given his findings and the solution that he comes to from what those findings tell him, one could even say that there's quite the disconnect between what he states to be the problem of the global economy and his solution for fixing that problem.
That being said, I haven't gotten to it due to classwork and teaching, so I can only say so much. I would like to get a copy of that book if anyone is offering, though.
Edit: I'm also not shocked that he doesn't care for Marx like that (their methodologies really aren't that similar, from what I can tell), but his statement about Capital not having data is a bit disingenuous. For one, Marx did analyze all of the economic data (data for the time, that is) that he could get his hands on, but he was working towards a general theory of the capitalist mode of production. And two, I hope he doesn't mean that in the current sense of economic data, since econometrics weren't really put to use in economic circles until the early 20th century, if I'm remembering correctly. Whatever.
Last edited:
His relationship to Marx is complicated. The title of the book is a clear allusion to him, and his early protest that he isn't a Marxist reads more like a pre-emptive defensive maneuver, because many of the arguments he makes rehash the man pretty straightforwardly. He even calls himself a political economist, rather than an economic scientist, and has made it clear in interviews that he thinks economics should return to a self-definition that is unusually close to how Marx describes it. That's why I don't actually think the Right is off, at least as much as mainstream left voices claim, when they get riled up about the ghost of Marx haunting his work, even if the Right doesn't have accurate reasons for seeing it there.
TrueEpic08
Dum Shiny
As I said, I haven't had the time to read the book, so I could be wrong. The arguments may be similar, but it doesn't exactly seem like their methodologies are. Then again, that could merely be the result of needing different methods to make the same types of points in a different era.
And even with all that I wrote in that last post, the fact that we have someone making a mass-scale analysis of the global political economy and calling it "something Capital" means that, even if he's being completely forthright and hasn't really read him, Marx is finding his place in mainstream economic analyses more and more (which has been happening for the last half-decade or so, to be honest).
Gonna have to read it before I make more concrete conclusions about the book, though.