{"id":186141,"date":"2014-04-26T20:02:00","date_gmt":"2014-04-27T01:02:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2014\/04\/26\/why-a-french-economist-has-so-many-wingers-terrified\/"},"modified":"2014-04-26T20:02:00","modified_gmt":"2014-04-27T01:02:00","slug":"why-a-french-economist-has-so-many-wingers-terrified","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2014\/04\/26\/why-a-french-economist-has-so-many-wingers-terrified\/","title":{"rendered":"Why a French Economist has So Many Wingers Terrified"},"content":{"rendered":"

Paul Krugman has an interesting OP\/ED on Thomas Piketty’s book Capital in the Twenty-First Century<\/i><\/a>.<\/p>\n

Picketty makes the assertion that capital demands rates of return greater than that of the underlying economy, and that, over the long run capital will extract more and more of the overall economy, to the detriment to wages and labor.<\/p>\n

As Krugman notes, this work has the apologists for the rent seekers apoplectic:<\/p>\n

\u201cCapital in the Twenty-First Century,\u201d the new book by the French economist Thomas Piketty, is a bona fide phenomenon. Other books on economics have been best sellers, but Mr. Piketty\u2019s contribution is serious, discourse-changing scholarship in a way most best sellers aren\u2019t. And conservatives are terrified. Thus James Pethokoukis of the American Enterprise Institute warns in National Review that Mr. Piketty\u2019s work must be refuted, because otherwise it \u201cwill spread among the clerisy and reshape the political economic landscape on which all future policy battles will be waged.\u201d<\/span>

<\/span>Well, good luck with that. The really striking thing about the debate so far is that the right seems unable to mount any kind of substantive counterattack to Mr. Piketty\u2019s thesis. Instead, the response has been all about name-calling \u2014 in particular, claims that Mr. Piketty is a Marxist, and so is anyone who considers inequality of income and wealth an important issue.<\/span>

<\/span>I\u2019ll come back to the name-calling in a moment. First, let\u2019s talk about why \u201cCapital\u201d is having such an impact.<\/span>

<\/span>Mr. Piketty is hardly the first economist to point out that we are experiencing a sharp rise in inequality, or even to emphasize the contrast between slow income growth for most of the population and soaring incomes at the top. It\u2019s true that Mr. Piketty and his colleagues have added a great deal of historical depth to our knowledge, demonstrating that we really are living in a new Gilded Age. But we\u2019ve known that for a while.<\/span>

<\/span>No, what\u2019s really new about \u201cCapital\u201d is the way it demolishes that most cherished of conservative myths, the insistence that we\u2019re living in a meritocracy in which great wealth is earned and deserved.<\/span>

<\/span>For the past couple of decades, the conservative response to attempts to make soaring incomes at the top into a political issue has involved two lines of defense: first, denial that the rich are actually doing as well and the rest as badly as they are, but when denial fails, claims that those soaring incomes at the top are a justified reward for services rendered. Don\u2019t call them the 1 percent, or the wealthy; call them \u201cjob creators.\u201d<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Needless to say, the defenders of oligarchy are unamused by this.<\/p>\n

The book, which, if reports are true, uses rather traditional economic tools, makes a compelling argument that excessive wealth is not synonymous with virtue.<\/p>\n

I’m putting Capital in the Twenty-First Century<\/i> on my summer reading list.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Paul Krugman has an interesting OP\/ED on Thomas Piketty’s book Capital in the Twenty-First Century. Picketty makes the assertion that capital demands rates of return greater than that of the underlying economy, and that, over the long run capital will extract more and more of the overall economy, to the detriment to wages and labor. …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[991,973,1002,1175],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-186141","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-academe","category-economy","category-good-writing","category-literature"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/186141"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=186141"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/186141\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=186141"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=186141"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=186141"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}