In this review of Piketty’s Capital (Harvard University Press, 2014) Pettifor and Tily argue that Thomas Piketty’s determinism (which suggests that inequality is set to continue to rise indefinitely and that interest and growth are on a preordained trajectory) is wrong. Things don’t have to be this way. Piketty’s approach arises from his fundamentally neo-classical approach to interest as the marginal product of capital.
Given persistent, pressing economic crises, the Obama administration should open an Office of Economic Innovation to consider systemic changes, and involve Marxists and heterodox economists to help visibilize possible solutions growing up alongside capitalism.
Branko Milanovic has an interesting post where he attacks the obfuscation of the term ‘human capital’ – backing up Piketty. it obfuscates the crucial difference between labor and capital by terminologically conflating the two.
French economist Thomas Piketty has put inequality back on the map and is being hailed as the Karl Marx of the 21st century. He talked to Max Tholl and Florian Guckelsberger about globalization gone wrong, a Eurozone parliament and our obsession ...
This exchange is from a conversation in Paris between David Graeber and Thomas Piketty, discoursing on the deep shit we’re all in and what we might do about climbing out. It was held at the École Normale Supérieure; moderated by Joseph Confavreux and Jade Lindgaard; edited by Edwy Plenel; first published by the French magazine Mediapart last October; and translated from the French for The Baffler by Donald Nicholson-Smith.
As inequality and concentration of wealth return to 19th century levels, can ownership and power be democratised through a revival of the commons and the resurgence of co-operative approaches? We asked seven experts to give their views
This exchange is from a conversation in Paris between David Graeber and Thomas Piketty, discoursing on the deep shit we’re all in and what we might do about climbing out. It was held at the École Normale Supérieure; moderated by Joseph Confavreux and Jade Lindgaard; edited by Edwy Plenel; first published by the French magazine Mediapart last October; and translated from the French for The Baffler by Donald Nicholson-Smith.
Now that the first round of intellectual debris left in the wake of French economist Thomas Piketty’s explosive best-seller “Capital in the Twenty-First Century”has begun to settle, it may be time to look more closely at the gaping hole it has left not only in political-economic analysis but also in conventional political strategy. After Piketty documented long-running trends that have turned over ever-increasing shares of national income to the owners of capital at the expense of the vast majority, the best solution he could muster was what he termed a utopian idea: a global tax on capital. Liberal economists, for their part, have largely rolled out the usual list of progressive tax reforms, often conveniently forgetting to confront the extraordinary political obstacles that stand in the way of any one policy remotely powerful enough to tackle the forces Piketty documents.
Exclusive: Despite some predictable griping from the Right, Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the 21stCentury has reinforced the case that Western societies – and especially America – are concentrating wealth at the very top and shortchanging almost everyone else, as Jim DiEugenio writes.
Piketty’s work has been under unrelenting attack, especially by people who don’t want to believe it and likely won’t believe it, even if it holds up over time as a valid argument. But the manic condemnation has created a bestseller.
Internationally acclaimed French economist Thomas Piketty says that “several parties [involved in the resolution of the Greek debt issue] have been hypocritical towards Greece.” In an interview with the Belgian newspaper L’ Echo, the author of The...
THE SYNOPSIS OF YOUR FAVORITE BOOK =--- Where to buy this book? ISBN: 9783642633607 Book Synopsis of The Theory of Ethical Economy in the Historical Scho...
If de-growth on a global level is inevitable sooner or later – and there is enough evidence to suggest that it is – then the implications go far beyond Piketty’s solutions for how we can achieve a just and sustainable world.
I think it would be a big mistake to oppose the objective of global progressive taxation of income and wealth with the objective of class struggle and political fight, for at least two reasons.
There are several things. There’s some debate about this, but I think most readers of Thomas Piketty’s book (Capital in the Twenty-First Century) get the impression that the accumulation of wealth — savings —is responsible for the rise in inequality and that there is, therefore, in a way,a link between the growth of the economy — the accumulation of capital— on the one hand and inequality and wealth. My paper begins with the observation that in fact, you cannot explain what has happened to the wealth/income ratio by that analysis. A closer look at what has gone on suggests that a large fraction of the increase in wealth is an increase in the value of land, not in the amount of capital goods.
1) Thomas Piketty, “Capital in the Twenty-First Century” (Cambridge: Belknap Press). So let’s get the obvious one out of the way. I don’t think I agree with Piketty’s “r > g” argument, and I’m obviously intrigued by Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson’s recent riposte to Piketty’s structural argument. But that doesn’t really matter. The fact is that a 700+ page, translated-from-French tract on economic inequality was the #1 Amazon bestseller for at least a week. Piketty clearly tapped into something.
Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty First Century argues that, absent corrective action, we can look forward to a rise in capital’s share of national income and a corresponding depression of the share of labour. This might not be so significant were capital evenly distributed so that all could share in its higher returns. But Piketty shows that the distribution of capital is extremely unequal and likely to grow more so. At the same time, he argues, the share of wealth that is inherited looks set to increase. Together these trends threaten to produce a society in which a relatively small section of the population comes to claim a larger share of national income through its (increasingly) concentrated ownership of (increasingly) inherited wealth.
The latest bestseller in economics has done a great deal of service to progressives in highlighting the imperative of shared wealth. But given the social and ecological limits to economic growth, this emerging conversation on global sharing has to get a lot more radical.
Thomas Piketty has written a book called Capital that has caused quite a stir. He advocates progressive taxation and a global wealth tax as the only way to counter the trend towards the creation of a “patrimonial” form of capitalism marked by what he dubs “terrifying” inequalities of wealth and income. He also documents in excruciating and hard to rebut detail how social inequality of both wealth and income has evolved over the last two centuries, with particular emphasis on the role of wealth. He demolishes the widely-held view that free market capitalism spreads the wealth around and that it is the great bulwark for the defense of individual liberties and freedoms. Free-market capitalism, in the absence of any major redistributive interventions on the part of the state, Piketty shows, produces anti-democratic oligarchies. This demonstration has given sustenance to liberal outrage as it drives the Wall Street Journal apoplectic.
What are the grand dynamics that drive the accumulation and distribution of capital? Thomas Piketty's latest findings will transform debate and set the agenda for the next generation of thought about wealth and inequality.
Entrepreneurs are making fortunes with digital companies existing on a cloud. And there are a plethora of new job titles. Who would have thought five years ago that “Android instructor” would be an actual job?
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