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A Question for the Piketty Defenders on National Income Accounting and Interest
OK Kevin Donoghue manages to escape the trap I had set for Piketty, much as Luke Skywalker–nursing his mangled arm–fled Vader at the end of The Empire Strikes Back. To refresh your memories: Piketty clearly had argued that if the “marginal productivity of capital” (and from his discussion it was clear that this was a […]
Read moreBookkeeping: More Commentary From Others on Piketty
This post is mostly so I don’t lose these links… ==> George Cooper is a blogger after my own heart. He comes up with a fable of a kingdom trying to show why Piketty’s approach confuses cause and effect. However, I think Cooper leaves out one loose end when valuing his capital stock etc.; his […]
Read moreA Fleshed Out Example Showing Problems With Piketty
[UPDATE: Note that I clarified the thought experiment to make sure it’s obvious that all physical production is due to labor in an economic sense.] At Mises Canada I elaborate on an example showing Piketty’s approach is flawed even on its own terms. First I’ll refresh your memory about Piketty’s framework: Technology naturally plays a […]
Read morePiketty on the Marginal Product of Capital
I’m not going to comment on this right now; I have a big article on capital theory coming out next week, and you guys should read that first as foundation. So I’ll wait. In the meantime, however, let me go ahead and type out the following excerpt from pp. 212-213 of Thomas Piketty’s blockbuster Capital […]
Read moreYglesias Interviews Piketty
If you’re getting sick of the coverage, don’t worry: After I post my review (coming in a few weeks), I will probably be done with this topic. In the meantime, Piketty says some interesting things in this interview with Matt Yglesias. For example: I think what [economists are] doing wrong is that in order to […]
Read moreMore on Piketty
Here’s my latest Mises Canada post, in which I show how Brad DeLong actually (though it’s not his intent) concedes that Piketty’s entire case is built on quicksand. Matt Rognlie (who I think is this PhD econ student at MIT) left what may be the most important comments in a MR blog post this year. […]
Read moreCompton and Long Beach Togetha on This One: Piketty Has No Clue About Capital
It’s rare that you will see Peter Klein and James Galbraith agree, but they do. And after getting my own copy of Capital in the 21st Century, I can join the party: Thomas Piketty doesn’t have the foggiest idea what economists are arguing about when they bring up concerns over aggregation in capital theory. Here’s […]
Read moreTwo Quick Questions on Piketty
Help me out here. I haven’t read the book yet, but I gather a really important insight is that we currently live in a world where r > g, meaning the real return on capital exceeds the real growth rate of the economy. Everyone takes this to imply that the 1% (or the 0.01%, if […]
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