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A review of Thomas Piketty’s “Capital and Ideology”

bostonreview.net

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Re: A review of Thomas Piketty’s “Capital and Ideology”

#121

Post by naravara »

mongol wrote: post #110
fulafel wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tl;dw documentary, but that's not a very common interpretation. That was the time when the nordic countries built their succesful system that's in place today and is widely held in high regard.

There can be too much of everything and there was too much of "social democracy" in the 70s. Author Astrid Lindgren had to pay more than 100 % tax and wrote the "childrens story" / opinion piece "Pomperipossa in Monismania" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pomperipossa_in_Monismania Next election the social democrats lost it for the first time in 40 years.

That doesn't sound like "too much Social Democracy" so much as a badly designed law that had a weird edge case.

Re: A review of Thomas Piketty’s “Capital and Ideology”

#122

Post by sprafa »

lliamander wrote: post #99

I was watching a documentary[1] about Sweden's shift away from social democracy in the 70's/80's time-frame that Piketty talks about. From the way it sounds, the program of social democracy nearly destroyed the country. I would take Piketty's nostalgia for those times with a grain of salt. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QcX6BUZlEw4

This documentary from the first 4 minutes looks very low effort. You can gather any number of “experts” on any given topic to give you any form of a story you’d like to tell...

Also the “social democracy” you talk about is still there. University education is still free. Social democratic programs have not been completely destroyed.

Re: A review of Thomas Piketty’s “Capital and Ideology”

#123

Post by bisRepetita »

refurb wrote: post #104
bisRepetita wrote: post #101

I am reading Capital & Idelogy currently. I find interesting how Piketty challenges the view of property rights. Many think it is something completely natural, sacred. But he shows it is actually ideology. It is not "the nature of things". As I understand it in the book, property is not, and should not be seen as, a 100% inalienable human right. If it was so, it would be completely fair that slave-owners in Haiti and…

Of course property rights are ideology. Anything to do with society and how it's organized is ideological. I think we ended up with private property because the alternatives have been tried and they are worse (e.g. tragedy of the commons).

>I think we ended up with private property because the alternatives have been tried and they are worse (e.g. tragedy of the commons)

I don't thinl it is all or nothing. Private property is overall a very good idea and principle, and Piketty says that too. But when someone sees property it as inalienable right, at any level, is a problem.

For example, if one person talks about a tax based on wealth, two people can have a healthy disagreement, and discuss how to implement.

But when someone does not event want to consider it... because it would supposedly bring us back to communism dark ages, that is basic ideology in action, not rational thinking.

Re: A review of Thomas Piketty’s “Capital and Ideology”

#124

Post by andrenth »

worik wrote: post #34
simonh wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a fascinating book and deservedly highly influential, but please also read some of the rebuttals and counter-points for a good understanding of the issues.

The fundamental point (r>g) is irrefutable. It may be possible to claim that inequality does not matter. In the absence of poverty that may be possible, but when the richest country in the world (USA) has a health system that leas out ~20% of the population and one of the poorest (Cuba) has a gold plated health system, that is a hard claim to make.

The excellence of Cuba's health system is questionable.

https://fee.org/articles/the-myth-of-cubas-glorious-health-c...

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/29/world/americas/brazil-cub...

Re: A review of Thomas Piketty’s “Capital and Ideology”

#125

Post by specialist »

refurb wrote: post #102
specialist wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Krugman agrees with you. What's a better measure?

That's a tough question. Like most things that are complex, there is probably no one measure that accurately captures inequality. What would make sense to me would be measuring the wealth of the majority of the population (3 middle quintiles) and then bringing up the bottom quintile to an acceptable level with transfer payments. That reminds me as well, a lot of the inequality measures that you see ignore government…

FWIW, geek me would be ok with a basket of measures. Life expectancy, average weight & height, purchasing power, savings rate. I'm just hoping to find reasonably simple metrics which are least wrong proxies for larger concerns.

Re: A review of Thomas Piketty’s “Capital and Ideology”

#126

Post by alejohausner »

defterGoose wrote: post #90
worik wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good advice. But in the face of power imbalances ineffective.

Sadly true. Guess it's war then?

The Black Death and the world wars were catastrophes that led to greater equality. Peace and stability tend to favour the wealthy, and lead to greater inequality.

Re: A review of Thomas Piketty’s “Capital and Ideology”

#127

Post by naravara »

hkmurakami wrote: post #20
geodel wrote: post #7

" “the Democratic Party in the United States transitioned over half a century from the workers’ party to the party of the highly educated.” Elites’ distance from working-class interest, he contends, led the Democratic party and its ideological counterparts abroad to accede to a policy program betraying the values of social democracy: regressive taxation, elite domination of higher education systems, and forms of glob…

One thing to remember is that everyone thinks they're "middle class". Even the corporate VP making half a million dollars thinks she's middle class.

If everyone's in debt up to their eyeballs, nobody gets to feel "rich" since we're all stretched to our limits.

Re: A review of Thomas Piketty’s “Capital and Ideology”

#128

Post by charlescearl »

scythe wrote: post #97

I think Piketty makes some good points. But I still think any account of the woeful separation between the Democratic Party and the common people which ignores the rise of the pro-life movement has to be incomplete. Piketty thus misrepresents those who are concerned about the prevalence of destructive beliefs among the working class: >“The problem” with the story of a bottom-up defection “is not just that it depends…

It has always been hard to reconcile the rhetoric that labels the “Democrats” as “elites” who are against the “working class” or “under class”. Especially as the grandson of sharecroppers and “maids” and a relative of many other Black folk who would, in terms of wealth and household income, be in the “underclass”. As an exercise, started reading the French edition — I guess even poor Black folk can be “elites”

Re: A review of Thomas Piketty’s “Capital and Ideology”

#129

Post by ngngngng »

skrtskrt wrote: post #98
gumby wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> wonder if educated elites being merely oblivious or totally asshole about working class concerns. I lean to "oblivious" argument. People inherently see things through their own experience. Back in the 80s I took some classes that tried to break through the bubble (especially funny that it was MIT where I like to joke "if you don't arrive arrogant they'll beat it into you").* This was just before the CMC machine too…

I attended a top-20 US University and many of my classmates and friends had multimillionaire parents & fell into the "oblivious" camp, (like telling me $50k income for an entire family was upper middle class)... BUT their upbringing, the media they consume, and the reinforcement of beliefs through their social echo chamber makes it insanely hard to change their "obliviousness", to the point where it's not so innocent…

I had a rich roommate that once remarked that "most people make more than $400k a year." He had made it to college and believed that most people lived in a literal 1% salary.

Re: A review of Thomas Piketty’s “Capital and Ideology”

#130

Post by scarejunba »

lliamander wrote: post #99

I was watching a documentary[1] about Sweden's shift away from social democracy in the 70's/80's time-frame that Piketty talks about. From the way it sounds, the program of social democracy nearly destroyed the country. I would take Piketty's nostalgia for those times with a grain of salt. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QcX6BUZlEw4

Does not feel like a high-coefficient source.
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