Over the years, I have noticed a trend. For the record, I have no data to back it up. It’s personal observation. Self-made men and women often have a sense of where they come from and the contributions made by others to their success. As a result they are often generous. Conversely, the scions of wealth, growing up with a silver spoon, and groomed in the finest schools to fill top executive positions, are more focused on their on entitlement, more greedy, and more inclined to buy power. Remember the Thomas Piety. He took that idea and put meat on its bones.
“Capital in the Twenty-First Century,” 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’s contribution is serious, discourse-changing scholarship in a way most best sellers aren’t. And conservatives are terrified. Thus James Pethokoukis of the American Enterprise Institute warns in National Review [wing-nuts delinked] that Mr. Piketty’s work must be refuted, because otherwise it “will spread among the clerisy and reshape the political economic landscape on which all future policy battles will be waged.”
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’s thesis. Instead, the response has been all about name-calling — in particular, claims that Mr. Piketty is a Marxist, and so is anyone who considers inequality of income and wealth an important issue.
I’ll come back to the name-calling in a moment. First, let’s talk about why “Capital” is having such an impact.
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’s 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’ve known that for a while.
No, what’s really new about “Capital” is the way it demolishes that most cherished of conservative myths, the insistence that we’re living in a meritocracy in which great wealth is earned and deserved… [emphasis added]
Inserted from <NY Times>
Click through for the rest of this fine Krugman article. It makes sense of why everything the Republican Party does always relates to one of two goals. The first is to transfer even more wealth from the poor and middle classes to billionaires. The second is to establish a permanent Republican Regime, a totalitarian fascist plutocracy in which elections exist only for show.
Our voices must speak louder than their money, before it’s too late.
8 Responses to “Krugman on Piketty”
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Thanks for this TC, I'd never have noticed it otherwise. The article is good – at last someone other than us is warning the world that we could be heading back to the conditions of gross economic inequality that sparked the Russian Revolution and the French Revolution! From the article
"What Mr. Piketty shows is that these are not idle questions. Western societies before World War I were indeed dominated by an oligarchy of inherited wealth — and his book makes a compelling case that we’re well on our way back toward that state."
I know that many of us here have said that before, as well as excellent and notable figures like Robert Reich and Paul Krugman et al – thank the Lord that someone new has stood up and said so too and of course the Far Right can only name-call as opposed to refute his ideas… Please God the rest of the world heeds these excellent figures before the situation gets much worse.
I just love it when the Right wing nut jobs are tongue tied. Besdes running out of ideas to refute Piketty they might be runing out of time. They've already run out of Class.
I would agree that inherited wealth in general leads to a greater sense of entitlement than wealth one has worked to produce. However there are exceptions Every once in a while a wealthy family produces a black sheep with empathy – FDR and Jay Rockefeller come to mind. (Both also had great wives with real empathy, a factor you think?) The opposite is also true – it's a proverb that many a self made man is a terrible example of the results of using unskilled labor. But by and large you are right.
I think it possible that this work by Piketty is considered to be a work on the level of that of de Toqueville (although from what I can grasp considerably more accurate) and therefore can't be ignored. On a scholarly level. I don't see the rank and file of Republican voters actually reading it. I fear the Republican führers can say whatever they want about it and effectually get it ignored by their subjects. It will take a lot of Progressives reading and acting to accomplish anything.
I guess it's a feather in Mr. Krugman's cap that he will be working with the Luxembourg Income Study. But I hope it doesn't mean we will see less of him here. We need him desperately.
Iff we lived in a meritocracy, farmers, healthcare givers and teachers would all be billionaires, as would quite a few others that tend to congregate on the lower rungs of the income ladder.
I have noticed that the few friends I have who started out with much are the ones who are so intent on keeping it at the expense of others and cry the most about welfare queens. Those who started out with little are far more generous. The Republicans are merely serving their masters, just as the ;plebes did in past centuries, hoping for a crumb from the table.
Amen to all the above. Ive read excerpts from Pikkety, anf dry is an understatement. Thank goodness for the likes of Krugman and Reich!!
We need some trinkle down and it seems the only way is to squeeze it out of them… 😆