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.”)
These buttons register your public Agreement, Disagreement, Troll, or LOL with the selected comment. They are only available to recent, frequent commenters who have saved their Name+Email using the 'Remember My Information' checkbox, and may also only be used once per hour.
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/
ben Tillman:
Yes, as usual, the Daily Mail can be depended to report what our own undependable MSM fails to report!
The DM is a credit to tabloid journalism.
AIDS is a little tattletale telling on those who've been naughty but who might want to keep it a secret.
Doing a search brings up a heck of a lot of such cases all over. Some of these people have reportedly had hundreds of contacts. One thing that seems to be the case is that most of them strike...
Bernie Goetz wasn't in the right time frame to be a pivotal figure. As I said, right now The Narrative is like communism was in 1989. In Bernie's day, The Narrative still had many people convinced it was worth giving a try, i.e it was more like communism in 1965. On the other hand, the New York s...
Any chance of the media, academics and leftist 'commentators' accepting responsibility for the anti-white racism they aggravated with their unhinged and false description of trump as a racist?
Didn't think so.
The current narrative and its defenders-promoters really are despicable.
LSAT yes, just because I found the questions fun ( I never read any of the methodologies for answering the questions as that would take away from the fun).
The others however are School mandated. Some ignored them but they were a tiny minority. Everyone else took them because our mothers would...
"Or, even if they["interracial cuckolds"] don’t necessarily have a pornographic interest in it they can’t help themselves but frame every racial problem in the United States in the form of black men getting sexual access to white women."
I think that's an exaggeration.
I would remind you, h...
Note that it does not state that it is confident that the Russian government directed the disclosures of the information or even supplied it to those sites.
As far as I can tell, the number of Africans in
Poland is minuscule. Under Communism a few
of them came to study in Poland, and several
perhaps intermarried with Polish women. Out
of one such relationship came a mixed-race weather
woman who was very visible on Polish TV for a couple
of dec...
"And apparently it’s the highest American value to support the Government of Russia over the Government of the US"
It is a traditional American value to not trust the American Government.
I've lived in the "black" and "African-American" span, plus whatever else they added since I stopped paying attention. (I think it went from black to African-American instead of the other way around, though it may have gone back and forth a couple times; I don't know. I don't want to nitpick.) I ...
The black police chief thought it was stupidity rather than being a racial hate crime and avoided agreeing that it might be as such. Wonder what it takes for something to be called a hate crime when the victim is white or at least non-black? The media couldn't ignore this video so they'll be busy...
Um, no. The Young Turks are hacks to the extreme, only rarely admitting they are wrong. Saargon has regular fun ripping their lies and double standards to shreds:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yvkRXi00p8c
Is it because the perpetrators are simply too sordid to stand in for some larger point?
I think so. The 120 IQ, verbal-weighted pundit cannot conceive, does not want to conceive, of the complete lack of introspection and time preference which is the normal frame of mind for a feral homo sapiens....
The Young Turks nailing Dems for the false Russian hacks meme being a cover for Hillary doing a crappy job:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a_VqlWn5S3s
And Young Turks contributor Jimmy Dore on his own show trashing the Dems for pushing the fake Russian hacks story:
https://www.youtube.com/w...
The female equivalent of Eton would be arguable either Cheltenham Ladies College or Roedean in Brighton.
For a while - back when God was a boy - I dated an ex Roedean head girl, she was upper crust Ulster Protestant. In my last year at a minor English public school I attended a 6th form dance at...
Latin is more popular than ever, today, in High School/Boarding/Parochial/Magnet schools. Steve should do a topic of this. Two of my sons are fluent in Latin. Latin is sort of hot again, for the gamer/coder/math-oriented/robotics/history-interested guys and girls. Scottish Games, Renaissance...
This might be a factor in what's different about Japan with respect to remaining nationalistic and not trying to drown their citizens in new voters:
Population density (citizens per square mile)
873 - Japan
593 - Germany
85 - US
From List of countries by population density...
"Kylie, 'dual citizenship' simply means that two separate governments consider someone to be a citizen."
Yes, I managed to grasp that.
And as far as American citizenship is concerned, I'm unalterably opposed to it.
I came to NZ as a skilled migrant. I was required to have an HIV test. If you roll up with a sob story and tell them you're persecuted, being HIV positive doesn't seem to be a problem.
http://www.crime.co.nz/c-files.aspx?ID=36
At least he was deported.
iSteve: Perhaps on the Wrong Side of History, but on the right side of reality.
Email me at SteveSlr *at* aol*dot*com (make the obvious substitutions between the asterisks; you don’t have to capitalize an email address, I just included the capitals to make clear the logic — it’s my name without a space and without the vowels in “Sailer” that give so many people, especially irate commenters, trouble.)
iSteve Panhandling
Steve Sailer
I always appreciate my readers’ help, especially monetary. Here’s how you can help:
First: You can use PayPal (non-tax deductible) by going to the page on my old blog here. PayPal accepts most credit cards. Contributions can be either one-time only, monthly, or annual.
Steve Sailer
P.O Box 4142
Valley Village, CA 91617-0142
Third: You can make a tax deductible contribution via VDARE by clicking here. (Paypal and credit cards accepted, including recurring “subscription” donations.) Note: the VDARE site goes up and down on its own schedule, so if this link stops working, please let me know.
I’m using Coinbase as a sort of PayPal for Bitcoins.
The IRS has issued instructions regarding Bitcoins. I’m having Coinbase immediately turn all Bitcoins I receive into U.S. dollars and deposit them in my bank account. At the end of the year, Coinbase will presumably send me a 1099 form for filing my taxes.
Payments are not tax deductible.
Below are links to two Coinbase pages of mine. This first is if you want to enter a U.S. dollar-denominated amount to pay me.
Fifth: if you have a Wells Fargo bank account, you can transfer money to me (with no fees) via Wells Fargo SurePay. Just tell WF SurePay to send the money to my ancient AOL email address steveslrAT aol.com — replace the AT with the usual @). (Non-tax deductible.) There is no 2.9% fee like with PayPal or Google Wallet, so this is good for large contributions.
Sixth: if you have a Chase bank account (or even other bank accounts), you can transfer money to me (with no fees) via Chase QuickPay (FAQ). Just tell Chase QuickPay to send the money to my ancient AOL email address (steveslrATaol.com — replace the AT with the usual @). If Chase asks for the name on my account, it’s StevenSailer with an n at the end of Steven. (Non-tax deductible.) There is no 2.9% fee like with PayPal or Google Wallet, so this is good for large contributions.
Steve Sailer
Seventh: send money via the Paypal-like Google Wallet to my Gmail address(that’s isteveslrATgmail .com — replace the AT with a @). (Non-tax deductible.)
Here’s the Google Wallet FAQ. From it: “You will need to have (or sign up for) Google Wallet to send or receive money. If you have ever purchased anything on Google Play, then you most likely already have a Google Wallet. If you do not yet have a Google Wallet, don’t worry, the process is simple: go to wallet.google.com and follow the steps.” You probably already have a Google ID and password, which Google Wallet uses, so signing up Wallet is pretty painless.
You can put money into your Google Wallet Balance from your bank account and send it with no service fee.
Or you can send money via credit card (Visa, MasterCard, AmEx, Discover) with the industry-standard 2.9% fee. (You don’t need to put money into your Google Wallet Balance to do this.)
Google Wallet works from both a website and a smartphone app (Android and iPhone — the Google Wallet app is currently available only in the U.S., but the Google Wallet website can be used in 160 countries).
Or, once you sign up with Google Wallet, you can simply send money via credit card, bank transfer, or Wallet Balance as an attachment from Google’s free Gmail email service. Here’s how to do it.
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/