From my review of Thomas Piketty in Taki’s Magazine:
One of the surprises in Thomas Piketty’s best seller Capital in the Twenty-First Century is how grating the Frenchman’s prose style turns out to be.
Granted, Piketty has valid reasons for being perpetually outraged at his fellow economists’ ignorance and cupidity. … So Piketty’s peevishness is hardly unreasonable. But across 685 pages his irritability and arrogance start to sound like a 2002 Jonah Goldberg parody of Gallic intellectual stridency (perhaps mixed with Teutonic pedantry). To pick an example at random, on p. 85 Piketty dismisses some dubious bit of Information Age hype with his characteristic overkill:
“The plain fact is that this argument is often used to justify extreme inequalities and to defend the privileges of the winners without much consideration for the losers, much less for the facts, and without any real effort to verify whether this convenient principle can actually explain the changes we observe. I will come back to this point.”
The rare occasions when Piketty attempts to sound modest are comic in their insincerity and didacticism:
“To be frank, I know virtually nothing about exactly how Carlos Slim or Bill Gates became rich, and I am quite incapable of assessing their relative merits. Nevertheless, it seems to me that Bill Gates also profited from a virtual monopoly on operating systems …”
(By the way, Piketty appears to believe that Slim, who is the second largest shareholder of the New York Times, is a victim of “Western ethnocentrism.”)
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To be frank, I know virtually nothing about exactly how Carlos Slim or Bill Gates became rich
Would it be that hard to learn?
I understand that there would be a cascading effect involved, where more and more billionaires would fall into the mix, but isn’t it worthwhile to look at how the uber-rich earned their money? Here’s two examples of men who made their fortunes off of monopolies (or monopoly-type systems). Is this generalizable to most billionaires? Isn’t this question worth pursuing when you’re writing a book on inequality?
Seems like a lazy position to take.
“but isn’t it worthwhile to look at how the uber-rich earned their money?”
Particularly since much of his argument rests on the very wealthy being that way because of inherited wealth, and a safe 5% return on assets that exceeds the growth rate of the economy as a whole.
He’s still right about r and g. You’re right about immigration. These are two pieces of the puzzle.
I don’t know why you’re so miffed at him. He’s a lefty, he’s not going to mention that, it’s an even bigger hot button in France than it is here. His book is a useful weapon against the elites…since, as many of your commenters have noted, our concentration of wealth is one of the things that lets Adelson and his buddies pay congressmen to ignore their constituents’ views on immigration.
I’m not sure why Steve is so down on Piketty. This is the book that everyone with a brain has been waiting for, a systematic explanation of how neoliberalism has failed to produce the prosperity that its champions promised. Maybe he’s wrong about some details, but what matters is that the monolithic support for current economic order amongst the establishment has now started to crack.
I get the sense that the even a baby boomer as aware as Steve is underestimating the populist rage building among younger Americans. It’s going to explode at some point.
Much of the growth in wealth concentration in the USA can be explained by trickle up effects from loose immigration policies-along with bad trade deals and changes to us tax policies. Much of the GDP increases since 1980 we have seen got capitalized into higher real estate prices( like Henry George predicted in the 1800′s, and now Matt Rognlie at MIT is showing). Land is far more concentrated than income to wealth concentration increases that way. http://fortune.com/2015/04/06/inequality-piketty/
I wouldn't call the Young Turks "laughable jokes." It's a fairly decent show and offers pretty good analysis. Unlike typical mainstream journalists, they're not afraid to say what they really think or go after the establishment. Of course, the Young Turks are progressive liberals and slant the...
I'm not sure if your objection makes sense. Yes, the Byzantines were also stagnant. Just as with the medieval Catholics and Muslims, that can also be explained by the retarding effects of unquestioned religious dogma. Western advances coincided with the twin movements of Renaissance humanism and ...
I guess you didn't bother to read Steve's article in Taki, where he describes the Middle Ages as a period of stagnation. Why are you attacking me and not him?
I seem to remember several decades when the fashionable narrative was the the US and the CIA were behind everything and Russia was behind nothing. Right up until around 2008, in fact. There were even one or two movies made about it.
Hoax or not, it has:
- Suspects arrested.
- Video of alleged attack.
That makes it more credible than the Muslim girl's hate hoax in NYC, which had neither (until she was arrested, for making a false report). That journalists I follow such as Catherine Rampell retweeted the report of t...
By doing the reductio ad absurdum schtick you will not make the issue go away. Here is Barbara Spectre in her own words:
"I think there is a resurgence of anti-Semitism because at this point in time Europe has not yet learned how to be multicultural. And I think we are going to be part of ...
It might not matter to you girls what dinosaurs are called but to us men it matters a great deal. Brontosaurus and Apatosaurus were found to be the names of the same Brachiosaur, and since Apatosaurus was the name it was baptised with first it therefore became the unique name. Christ my son could...
My comment was about the known American policy of fostering multiculturalism and immigration through its embassies and NGOs. Here's the smoking gun: the guidelines (wiki) leaked from the American embassy in Paris.
https://wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/10PARIS58_a.html
Just pointing out the obvious, but if this happened with a black victim and white aggressors, we’d have protests in every major city, complete with lots of unauthorized shopping.
Yeah, but it would start a conversation.
LOL! Nice spot.
Mind you, it's a lot more plausible for a small-medium nation like the Turks to blame nefarious doings in their country on a superpower with a track record of interference in other countries' affairs, black and subversion ("democracy promotion") budgets (official and NGO/oligarch...
"His Biglish managed to defeat the entire media that were firmly on the side of Hillary, shooting all their word missiles at Trumpzilla. "
I like you, Priss.
About Trump winning: https://www.dasmagazin.ch/2016/12/03/ich-habe-nur-gezeigt-dass-es-die-bombe-gibt/
Ich habe nur gezeigt, dass...
The White Sox of the 1975-1985 era have to be one of the fattest franchises ever.
And this team also had to go out on the field wearing uniforms comprising pedal-pushers and tops with leisure suit collars!
This was obviously a brave squad who earned their places at the table.
The evidence that our glorious intel community has released thus far is not really indicative of Russian government involvement, not that anyone in the media cares about that.
I wish they could still say retarded. I have no idea what "special needs" means.
Kidnapping and torturing a retarded person is not funny. The glibness of some of the commenters here can be off-putting.
When even the laughable jokes at the Young Turks are criticizing the Corporate Media for blaming Russia without evidence, the divide between the elite and the masses is stark.
Assange and Snowden, heros. There is no need for these secret domestic spying operations or secret USG domestic operations. Think of how incompetent North Korea is, yet they have nukes and are safe from invasion and subjugation. Same for us. Government by the people cannot tollerate secerate op...
Birth tourism is an extreme example of a extremely stupid immigration policy.
It gives a lifetime "We Owe You" card, via a birth certificate, to someone who is born here and then gone in a few weeks. Even people who are normally unable to say NO to anything about immigrants can say NO! to this ...
Birth tourism doesn't imply there's anything wrong in China. The US born Chinese kids are still just as Chinese as if they were born in China. They aren't giving up anything but the cost of the birth tour. Hell, they probably don't even pay their doctor bill. Doctors write off bills for people a ...
Er, this could be a matter of self-selection. After all, refugees in MN could move to PR (and be warmer). And refugees in PR could move out.
This is similar to my other comments of the great risk Hungary faces due to a flood of refugees eager to learn a language useless outside of Hungary.
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To be frank, I know virtually nothing about exactly how Carlos Slim or Bill Gates became rich
Wow.
http://www.unz.com/isteve/pikettys-prose/#comment-586224
Prudhomme said that behind every great fortune is a crime.
He of course knew nothing of the Clinton fortune.
“Bill Gates also profited from a virtual monopoly on operating systems …”
And a semi monopoly on virtual operating systems
To be frank, I know virtually nothing about exactly how Carlos Slim or Bill Gates became rich
Would it be that hard to learn?
I understand that there would be a cascading effect involved, where more and more billionaires would fall into the mix, but isn’t it worthwhile to look at how the uber-rich earned their money? Here’s two examples of men who made their fortunes off of monopolies (or monopoly-type systems). Is this generalizable to most billionaires? Isn’t this question worth pursuing when you’re writing a book on inequality?
Seems like a lazy position to take.
“but isn’t it worthwhile to look at how the uber-rich earned their money?”
Particularly since much of his argument rests on the very wealthy being that way because of inherited wealth, and a safe 5% return on assets that exceeds the growth rate of the economy as a whole.
[…] Source: Steve Sailer […]
He’s still right about r and g. You’re right about immigration. These are two pieces of the puzzle.
I don’t know why you’re so miffed at him. He’s a lefty, he’s not going to mention that, it’s an even bigger hot button in France than it is here. His book is a useful weapon against the elites…since, as many of your commenters have noted, our concentration of wealth is one of the things that lets Adelson and his buddies pay congressmen to ignore their constituents’ views on immigration.
Sailer,
Your Taki post on Piketty made the links page at Naked Capitalism (http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2014/06/links-61914.html) but with a proviso, viz.:
>>A Blind Spot Full of Billionaires Taki’s Magazine. On Piketty. Natalie recommended this despite “prejudice against author”.<<
I’m not sure why Steve is so down on Piketty. This is the book that everyone with a brain has been waiting for, a systematic explanation of how neoliberalism has failed to produce the prosperity that its champions promised. Maybe he’s wrong about some details, but what matters is that the monolithic support for current economic order amongst the establishment has now started to crack.
I get the sense that the even a baby boomer as aware as Steve is underestimating the populist rage building among younger Americans. It’s going to explode at some point.
Much of the growth in wealth concentration in the USA can be explained by trickle up effects from loose immigration policies-along with bad trade deals and changes to us tax policies. Much of the GDP increases since 1980 we have seen got capitalized into higher real estate prices( like Henry George predicted in the 1800′s, and now Matt Rognlie at MIT is showing). Land is far more concentrated than income to wealth concentration increases that way. http://fortune.com/2015/04/06/inequality-piketty/