Great news. Das Kapital 2.0 is the number one top seller on amazon.

[Lucille]

The dumbass collectivist sure doesn't mind charging an arm and a leg for the rehashed dumbassery contained therein though, does he?

If a hundred million dead can't convince people, then nothing will. Forward to communist utopia!

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-0...ller-list-book

Which of course, is merely a rehash of a critique of all capitalism as expounded some 150 years ago by this book.
[...]
And to think all it took was 147 years of 'capitalism' for the circle to be complete from Das Kapital's labor-vs-capital Marxist manifesto to Thomas Piketty's Capital "exposing capitalism's fatal flaw" topping the Amazon book charts. One wonders who finds the time to read the 696 page tome whose core thesis is well-known for socialists the world over: under capitalism the rich, or hoarders of capital, get steadily richer in relation to everyone else; inequality gets worse and worse and it's all unavoidable, between #Selfies, The Voice semi-finals, and Dance Moms finales.

One thing is certain: the financial asset tax we warned about back in 2011 is coming with a bang.

So, communism's heyday is coming again, right? Maybe. One thing is certain: liberals couldn't be more delighted about mandatory equality. But as we discussed yesterday, there is one thing that no one seems to want to discuss about Piketty's findings... gold...

Well, feature the chart that Professor Piketty publishes showing inequality in America. This appears in the book at figure 9.8; a similar version, shown alongside here, is offered on his Web site. It’s an illuminating chart. It shows the share of national income of the top decile of the population. It started the century at a bit above 40% and edged above 45% in the Roaring Twenties. It plunged during the Great Depression and edged down in World War II, and then steadied out, until we get to the 1970s. Something happened then that caused income inequality to start soaring. The top decile's share of income went from something like 33% in 1971 to above 47% by 2010.



Hmmm. What could account for that? Could it be the last broadcast of the “Lawrence Welk Show?” Or the blast off of the Apollo 14 mission to the Moon? Or could it have something to do with the mysterious D.B. Cooper, who bailed out of the plane he hijacked, never to be seen again? A timeline of 1971 offers so many possibilities. But, say, what about the possibility that it was in the middle of 1971, in August, that America closed the gold window at which it was supposed to redeem in specie dollars presented by foreign central banks. That was the default that ended the era of the Bretton Woods monetary system.

That’s the default that opened the age of fiat money. Or the era that President Nixon supposedly summed up in with Milton Friedman’s immortal words, “We’re all Keynesians now.” This is an age that has seen a sharp change in unemployment patterns. Before this date, unemployment was, by today’s standards, low. This was a pattern that held in Europe (these columns wrote about it in “George Soros’ Two Cents”) and in America (“Yellen’s Missing Jobs”). From 1947 to 1971, unemployment in America ran at the average rate of 4.7%; since 1971 the average unemployment rate has averaged 6.4%. Could this have been a factor in the soaring income inequality that also emerged in the age of fiat money?

This is the question the liberals don’t want to discuss, even acknowledge.

[thoughtomator]

A more accurate book would be called "Das Capitol"

[acptulsa]

A more accurate book would be called "Das Capitol"

This. Fascism is perpetrating this evil, and capitalism is getting the bum rap.

Write a book demonstrating the truth of that statement and see if amazon.com will even stock it...

[Lucille]

It's exhausting having to explain over and over again how there is no capitalism here, there, or anywhere.

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-0...ional-new-book

We can learn a great deal about crony capitalism by studying the period between the end of WWI and the Great Depression and also the last twenty years, but we won’t learn much about capitalism. Crony capitalism is the opposite of capitalism. It is a perversion of markets, not the result of free prices and free markets.

One can see why the White House likes Piketty. He supports their narrative that government is the cure for inequality when in reality government has been the principal cause of growing inequality.
[...]
If the Obama White House, the IMF, and people like Piketty would just let the economy alone, it could recover. As it is, they keep inventing new ways to destroy it.

[Henry Rogue]

Yet, the progressive fools will defend the federal reserve because it fits their ideal of central planning.

[Ronin Truth]

Each generation needs to be retaught the same old lessons, ad nausem.

[Lucille]

http://reason.com/blog/2014/04/25/am...ays-benghazi-b

A 700-page economics text about income inequality, Capital in the 21st Century, is now at the top of Amazon's best seller list. However, it has only garnered 57 reviews, suggesting a significant amount of buyers aren't finishing the book, or maybe even reading it.

Thank God it's 700 pages. LOL Wenzel has skewered it more than any other blog I read.

http://www.economicpolicyjournal.com...s-piketty.html

http://www.economicpolicyjournal.com...in-thomas.html

http://www.economicpolicyjournal.com...o-advance.html

http://www.economicpolicyjournal.com...st-thomas.html

http://www.economicpolicyjournal.com...ses-again.html

[Cabal]

A 700-page economics text about income inequality, Capital in the 21st Century, is now at the top of Amazon's best seller list. However, it has only garnered 57 reviews, suggesting a significant amount of buyers aren't finishing the book, or maybe even reading it.

Pseudo-intellectuals who just want to stuff it in their livingroom/office bookshelves?

[Lucille]

Probably!

http://www.lewrockwell.com/lrc-blog/tax-the-rich/

It will help in understanding Piketty’s elevated concern with income distribution and his tax proposals to know that he supported the socialist candidate in 2007 and reportedly “has close connections with the French Socialist Party.”

Economic policy-making by the state is an horrendous disaster area, from A to Z. The state readies and drops bombs continuously, blasting one segment of the economy after another. To focus on income distribution as yet more grist for the politician’s mill is pure insanity. Income distribution is the outcome of factors too numerous to mention, much less control, success and failure at creating wealth being one of them. There is absolutely no reason to believe that the state can improve upon free market outcomes, and the latter include voluntary wealth transfers and charitable contributions. There is every reason to believe that the state’s interference will distort incentives perversely, as it has already in many of the state’s attempts to end poverty.

The people who will indulge in the insanity of attempting to control the distribution of wealth are of two main kinds. There are first the ignorant. They are those who do not understand the negative consequences of widespread state interference in this or any other economic matter. The second are those who stand to gain by such interference because it suits their fancy, their ideology, their religion, their quest for power, their influence, their popularity, their wealth or their chances of reelection. They include politicians. They include those in the nomenklatura who benefit by being the architects, purveyors, advisors, researchers, reporters, economists and administrators of such measures.

http://armstrongeconomics.com/2014/0...angerous-idea/

The second idea to come from the French Elite has been Communism and this notion of “social justice.” Europe thought that what made American economically powerful was a single currency. They failed to see that its taxes were half of that in Europe and the regulations promoted small business formation rather than suppress it. The European who cheered the Euro was more valuable than the dollar missed the entire point of economics just as Russian who only see Russia getting bigger and that is most important.

Europe failed to understand that it is the people who are a nation’s greatest asset and their total productivity. This is why Communism failed for it suppressed the very element that makes a country rich – the total productivity of its people. Communism was a French idea they sold to Marx. The French elite like Christine Lagarde and Thomas Piketty are at it again determined to impose their brain-dead idea of “social justice” upon the world that made Russia so hated. No other idea has been responsible for more wars and the death of millions than this French idea of “social justice”.

To survive the future, it is time to realize “social justice” suppresses economic growth and lowers the living standards for everyone. Not every country can have a trade surplus. Someone has to have a trade deficit. This theory is simply insane. It is indistinguishable from handing out the same grades in school regardless if the students show up at all for we have to be fair to everyone. This is about as stupid as thinking that landmass equals power. Both of these ideas threaten our future like nothing ever before. If we are not careful, we will once again see half the population of the world killed by these two terrible ideas.

[Lucille]

Not a fan of Harsanyi but here's his take.

http://reason.com/archives/2014/04/2...s-piketty-book

As I write this, Thomas Piketty's book Capital in the Twenty-First Century is the number one seller on Amazon.com. It's been deemed an "important book" by a bunch of smart people. Why not? It validates many of the preconceived notions progressives have about capitalism: Inequality is growing. Mobility is shrinking. Meritocracy is dead. We all live in a sprawling zero-sum fallacy.

The book has also sparked nonstop conversation in political and media circles. Though it's best to let economists debunk Piketty's methodology and data, it is worth pointing out that liberal pundits and writers have enthusiastically and unconditionally embraced not only a book on economics but a hard-left manifesto.

Now, I realize we're all supposed to accept the fact that conservatives are alone in embracing fringe economic ideas. But how does a book that evokes Karl Marx and talks about tweaking the Soviet experiment find so much love from people who consider themselves rational, evidence-driven moderates?

Put it this way: It's unlikely that Democrats would have praised a book like this 20 years ago—or even 10. Nowadays, Jack Lew—better known as the treasury secretary of the United States of America—takes time to chitchat with the author.

Isabel Paterson asked and answered that question in 1943.

http://mises.org/daily/2739

Then there must be a very grave error in the means by which they seek to attain their ends. There must even be an error in their primary axioms, to permit them to continue using such means. Something is terribly wrong in the procedure, somewhere. What is it?

Certainly the slaughter committed from time to time by barbarians invading settled regions, or the capricious cruelties of avowed tyrants, would not add up to one-tenth the horrors perpetrated by rulers with good intentions.
[...]
Why did the humanitarian philosophy of 18th-century Europe usher in the Reign of Terror? It did not happen by chance; it followed from the original premise, objective, and means proposed. The objective is to do good to others as a primary justification of existence; the means is the power of the collective; and the premise is that "good" is collective.

The root of the matter is ethical, philosophical, and religious, involving the relation of man to the universe, of man's creative faculty to his Creator. The fatal divergence occurs in failing to recognize the norm of human life.

[Occam's Banana]

Thomas Piketty Refuted | Robert P. Murphy @ The Tom Woods Show
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aL90pISm7Y8

[Occam's Banana]

Thank God it's 700 pages. LOL Wenzel has skewered it more than any other blog I read.

Bob Murphy has him beat. Murphy has routinely & frequently been tearing into Piketty, often in great detail - both at Free Advice (Murphy's own blog) and at Mises Canada. (And, of course, in the Tom Woods Show interview I posted above.) Wenzel mostly seems to quote other peoples' criticisms - which is absolutely A-OK, and Murphy does that, too. But Murphy is a trained economist thoroughly familiar with the Neo-Classical and Keynesian paradigms - and capital & interest theory is one of his areas of specialty, so his criticisms have some extra "ooomph" (though they also tend to be a bit more technical) ...

Here's a brief selection of his most recent pieces from Free Advice (some of which link to his Mises Canada articles):

Shocking Quotes from Piketty: http://consultingbyrpm.com/blog/2014...m-piketty.html
(see here for a thread I started on this one: http://www.ronpaulforums.com/showthr...Thomas-Piketty)

Larry Summers Unwittingly Blows Up Piketty's Whole Book: http://consultingbyrpm.com/blog/2014...hole-book.html
Piketty Can't Even Get His Basic Tax History Right: http://consultingbyrpm.com/blog/2014...ory-right.html
Heterodox Economists School Krugman on His Flim-Flam Econ: http://consultingbyrpm.com/blog/2014...flam-econ.html
Showing Problems With Piketty Using Neo-Classical Models: http://consultingbyrpm.com/blog/2014...al-models.html

There are a number of others (including a bunch of pieces on the subject of capital & interest that do not deal directly with Piketty's book, but which were prompted by the book and all the econo-blogosphere reaction to it).

[helmuth_hubener]

Here's Paul Krugman's review:

The big idea of Capital in the Twenty-First Century is that we haven’t just gone back to 19th-century levels of income inequality, we’re also on a path back to “patrimonial capitalism,” in which the commanding heights of the economy are controlled not by talented individuals but by family dynasties.

It’s a remarkable claim — and precisely because it’s so remarkable, it needs to be examined carefully and critically. Before I get into that, however, let me say right away that Piketty has written a truly superb book. It’s a work that melds grand historical sweep — when was the last time you heard an economist invoke Jane Austen and Balzac? — with painstaking data analysis. And even though Piketty mocks the economics profession for its “childish passion for mathematics,” underlying his discussion is a tour de force of economic modeling, an approach that integrates the analysis of economic growth with that of the distribution of income and wealth. This is a book that will change both the way we think about society and the way we do economics. -- http://billmoyers.com/2014/04/16/pau...ew-gilded-age/

[dannno]

Put another one of those red dotted lines at 1913:




Now form a prediction for the future.

[Occam's Banana]

Yikes! Piketty Accused of Literally Making Up Wealth Inequality Data
http://consultingbyrpm.com/blog/2014...lity-data.html
Bob Murphy (23 May 2014)

OK, so I personally busted Piketty just making stuff up about tax rates, and in a way that served his narrative. Economist Diana Furchtgott-Roth at the Manhattan Institute caught him just making stuff up about the minimum wage, and in a way that served his narrative.

Now Chris Giles of FT comes out with an analysis that begins this way:

[W]hen writing an article on the distribution of wealth in the UK, I noticed a serious discrepancy between the contemporary concentration of wealth described in Capital in the 21st Century and that reported in the official UK statistics. Professor Piketty cited a figure showing the top 10 per cent of British people held 71 per cent of total national wealth. The Office for National Statistics latest Wealth and Assets Survey put the figure at only 44 per cent.

This is a material difference and it prompted me to go back through Piketty’s sources. I discovered that his estimates of wealth inequality – the centrepiece of Capital in the 21st Century – are undercut by a series of problems and errors. Some issues concern sourcing and definitional problems. Some numbers appear simply to be constructed out of thin air.

When I have tried to correct for these apparent errors, a rather different picture of wealth inequality appeared.

Two of Capital in the 21st Century’s central findings – that wealth inequality has begun to rise over the past 30 years and that the US obviously has a more unequal distribution of wealth than Europe – no longer seem to hold.

Now I haven’t personally gone through and verified Giles’ claims (I *did* verify the ones about the minimum wage–and yep, Piketty did indeed just make up a bunch of stuff that served his narrative on that issue). But this looks pretty bad.

But remember kids, all we troglodyte critics can really do is sputter and call Piketty names [ hxxp://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/25/opinion/krugman-the-piketty-panic.html ]. We got nothin’.