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Thomas Piketty's Changing Views on Inequality
real-world economics review, issue no. 92 subscribe for free Thomas Piketty’s changing views on inequality Steven Pressman [Colorado State University] Copyright: Steven Pressman, 2020 You may post comments on this paper at https://rwer.wordpress.com/comments-on-rwer-issue-no-92/ 1. Introduction Thomas Piketty established his professional reputation by using income tax returns to measure income distribution over long time periods in several nations. Long before Capital in the Twenty-First Century (hereafter C21) appeared, Piketty (2001; 2003; & Saez, 2003) showed that, in many capitalist countries, income flowed to the top 1% (really the top .1%). C21 made two new contributions – a theory to explain this phenomenon, r>g, and a policy solution, taxing wealth. Surprisingly, C21 became an international best seller. Nonetheless, it was criticized by a broad array of economists. Heterodox economists objected to the economic theory Piketty used to explain rising inequality. Neoclassical economists disliked his policy proposal and understood that neoclassical economics didn’t support Piketty’s explanation of rising inequality. And many economists criticized Piketty’s data and his interpretation of the distributional facts (see Pressman, 2016). Piketty’s follow up, Capital and Ideology, was published in France last fall; an English version appeared in March of 2020. There are many similarities between the two books. Both are massive tomes,1 well-written and packed with economic data. Both use the term “capital” when really talking about wealth. Finally, literary references abound to support key points. Despite these similarities, there are many changes. Gone are r>g and any analysis of inequality that rests on neoclassical economic theory. -
Making Money Book Discussion with Christine Desan
Announcements – Subscribe Click and scroll down to subscribe to receive notifications when new posts are added to Just Money! We welcome notices and other relevant content. They should be sent to Dan Rohde: [email protected] Included in Announcements are Calls For Papers (CFPs), conference and meeting announcements, and other relevant events that come across our radar. TheConference Archive page includes panels, keynotes, and photos of the conference on Money as a Democratic Medium (Harvard Law School, Dec. 14-15, 2018). Ujima Boston: Making the Case for a Public Bank – Black & Indigenous Ecosystem Support for Public Banking, September 22 at 6:00 pm EST Workshop Tonight: Black & Indigenous Ecosystem Support for Public Banking The next Ujima Open Meeting is TONIGHT on Zoom! Wednesday, September 22nd, from 6:00pm-8:30pm. Time: Wednesday, September 22nd, 6PM | Location: Zoom Only 6:00-7:15p #CoLearn: Coalition Support for Public Banking, featuring speakers fromBlack Mass Coalition, BECMA, North American Indian Center of Boston, King Boston, and The Boston Foundation. Featured Speakers: Greg Ball, King Boston – Gregory Ball joined King Boston in November 2020 as Director of Embrace Ideas. Ball brings more than two decades of experience as a cultural curator, journalist and content creator. Ball’s work has appeared in the Boston Globe, Boston Magazine, Dig Boston, XXL and the Bay State Banner along with various international editions of the Metro Newspaper. Ball is the co-founder and editor at KBX Media, a Boston-based digital editorial platform and media content creation. Previously, Ball worked at Berkshire Bank as the first Reevx Labs Director, opening the bank’s community co-working spaces for entrepreneurs and later served as Marketing Content Manager. -
S20 Final.Indd
Harvard SPRING • SUMMER 2020 INTERNATIONAL EDITION CONTENTS NEW RELEASES 1 PAPERBACKS 65 LOEB CLASSICAL LIBRARY 85 DUMBARTON OAKS MEDIEVAL LIBRARY 88 THE I TATTI RENAISSANCE LIBRARY 89 DISTRIBUTED BOOKS 90 RECENTLY PUBLISHED 101 INDEX 103 ORDER INFORMATION 104 Cover image: koya79/iStock/Getty Images Plus Capital and Ideology Thomas Piketty Translated by Arthur Goldhammer The epic successor to one of the most important books of the century: at once a retelling of global history, a scathing critique of contemporary politics, and a bold proposal for a new and fairer economic system. Thomas Piketty’s bestselling Capital in the Twenty-First Century galvanized global debate about inequality. In this audacious follow-up, Piketty challenges us to revolutionize how we think about politics, ideology, and history. He exposes the ideas that have sustained inequality for the past millennium, reveals why the shallow politics of right and left are failing us today, and outlines the structure of a fairer economic system. Our economy, Piketty observes, is not a natural fact. · · Markets, profits, and capital are all historical constructs ⅛ ¼ · $. · £. that depend on choices. Piketty explores the material · and ideological interactions of conflicting social . groups that have given us slavery, serfdom, colonialism, communism, and hyper-capitalism, shaping the lives of billions. He concludes that the great driver of human progress over the centuries has been the struggle for equality and education and not, as often argued, the assertion of property rights or the pursuit of stability. The new era of extreme inequality that has derailed that progress since the 1980s, he shows, is partly a reaction against communism, but it is also the fruit of ignorance, intellectual specialization, and our drift toward the dead-end politics of identity. -
The Fiscal Origins of Comparative Inequality Levels: an Empirical and Historical Investigation Andrés Irarrázaval*
Economic History Working Papers No: 314 The Fiscal Origins of Comparative Inequality Levels: An Empirical and Historical Investigation Andrés Irarrázaval November 2020 Economic History Department, London School of Economics and Political Science, Houghton Street, London, WC2A 2AE, London, UK. T: +44 (0) 20 7955 7084. The Fiscal Origins of Comparative Inequality levels: An Empirical and Historical Investigation Andrés Irarrázaval* Keywords: Inequality, redistribution, institutions, colonialism, Latin America and India JEL: D02, D31, D63, D72, F54, H2, H23, N30, O15, O17, P16 Abstract: This research exploits novel evidence on current and historical inequality dynamics, as well as an instrumental variable (IV) strategy (founded on historical settler mortality à la Acemoglu et al.), to document the fundamental role of income redistribution through taxes and transfers in accounting for differences in inequality across regions and historical periods. This research challenges the conventional wisdom about the origins of world-leading inequality levels in Latin America, India or Africa, arguing that inequality is not rooted in the colonial period nor are current inequality levels explained by supposedly persistent “extractive” economic institutions maintaining an unequal playing field. De facto, Latin America, Africa and India have had, in most cases, lower inequality levels than Western countries (i.e. Western Europe and its Offshoots) until the early 20th century. Before this period, no different than in colonized nations, Western countries had a regressive fiscal system which required the poorest taxpayers to fund public services that benefited richer households. The IV strategy, and the evidence on inequality dynamics, both indicate that contemporary inequality differences are a product of the 20th century. -
Twenty-Four Conservative-Liberal Thinkers Part II Hannes H
Hannes H. Gissurarson Twenty-Four Conservative-Liberal Thinkers Part II Hannes H. Gissurarson Twenty-Four Conservative-Liberal Thinkers Part II New Direction MMXX CONTENTS Hannes H. Gissurarson is Professor of Politics at the University of Iceland and Director of Research at RNH, the Icelandic Research Centre for Innovation and Economic Growth. The author of several books in Icelandic, English and Swedish, he has been on the governing boards of the Central Bank of Iceland and the Mont Pelerin Society and a Visiting Scholar at Stanford, UCLA, LUISS, George Mason and other universities. He holds a D.Phil. in Politics from Oxford University and a B.A. and an M.A. in History and Philosophy from the University of Iceland. Carl Menger (1840–1921) 7 William Graham Sumner (1840–1910) 33 Ludwig von Mises (1881–1973) 55 Friedrich von Hayek (1899–1992) 99 Wilhelm Röpke (1899–1966) 187 Michael Oakeshott (1901–1990) 219 Founded by Margaret Thatcher in 2009 as the intellectual Sir Karl R. Popper (1902–1994) 249 hub of European Conservatism, New Direction has established academic networks across Europe and research Bertrand de Jouvenel (1903–1987) 293 partnerships throughout the world. Ayn Rand (1905–1982) 321 Milton Friedman (1912–2006) 353 James M. Buchanan (1919–2013) 443 New Direction is registered in Belgium as a not-for-profit organisation and is partly funded by the European Parliament. Registered Office: Rue du Trône, 4, 1000 Brussels, Belgium. President: Tomasz Poręba MEP Executive Director: Witold de Chevilly. Robert Nozick (1938–2002) 485 The European Parliament and New Direction assume no responsibility for the opinions expressed in this publication. -
CEPAL Review No132
Why the rich always stay rich (no matter what, no matter the cost) José Gabriel Palma To determine the laws which regulate [the distribution of the produce of the earth between rent, profit and wages] is the principal problem in Political Economy David( Ricardo) Inequality is a choice [between perfectly feasible alternatives] (Joseph Stiglitz) I am my choices (Jean-Paul Sartre) The comfort of the rich depends upon an abundant supply of the poor (Voltaire) Abstract This article returns to the Ricardian tradition of understanding income distribution as the outcome of an “antagonistic” conflict with a multiplicity of actors and struggles, where history, politics and institutions matter as much as economic “fundamentals”. Because this relates to the political sphere, there are no purely logical solutions to the conflict, but rather options in a scenario of multiple equilibria. In deregulated markets, this conflict favours the supremacy of unproductive rent (especially those of “inefficiency”), to the detriment of operating profits, affecting investment and productivity growth. Moreover, dysfunctional institutions have the “ability to persist”, thus transforming the domination into a “stationary process”: the unbalancing impacts of shocks have only limited lifespans. When, in democracy, the Latin American oligarchy limits change and weakens the State through Buchanian-style constitutional straitjackets, they redesign their distributional strategies and absorb elements of opposing ideologies to keep their own hegemonic. Keywords Income distribution, inequality, Palma ratio, ideology, “reverse catching-up”, institutional persistence, neoliberalism, new left, poverty, Western Europe, emerging Asia, Latin America, Chile JEL classification D31, E12, N36, P16 Author José Gabriel Palma holds a PhD in Economics from the University of Oxford, and another in Political Sciences from the University of Sussex. -
Thomas Piketty, "Capital and Ideology." Lansana Keita
Document generated on 09/26/2021 5:18 p.m. Philosophy in Review Thomas Piketty, "Capital and Ideology." Lansana Keita Volume 41, Number 2, May 2021 URI: https://id.erudit.org/iderudit/1078059ar DOI: https://doi.org/10.7202/1078059ar See table of contents Publisher(s) University of Victoria ISSN 1206-5269 (print) 1920-8936 (digital) Explore this journal Cite this review Keita, L. (2021). Review of [Thomas Piketty, "Capital and Ideology."]. Philosophy in Review, 41(2), 89–91. https://doi.org/10.7202/1078059ar Copyright ©, 2021 Lansana Keita This document is protected by copyright law. Use of the services of Érudit (including reproduction) is subject to its terms and conditions, which can be viewed online. https://apropos.erudit.org/en/users/policy-on-use/ This article is disseminated and preserved by Érudit. Érudit is a non-profit inter-university consortium of the Université de Montréal, Université Laval, and the Université du Québec à Montréal. Its mission is to promote and disseminate research. https://www.erudit.org/en/ Philosophy in Review Vol. 41 no. 2 (May 2021) Thomas Piketty. Capital and Ideology. Trans. Arthur Goldhammer. Harvard University Press year. 1104 pp. $39.95 USD (Hardcover ISBN 9780674980822). Thomas Piketty’s book, Capital and Ideology, is to be understood as a sequel to his earlier text, Capital in the Twenty-First Century (Belknap Press 2017). Piketty’s earlier text was founded on the economic principle that the rate of return on capital was greater than the actual growth rate. Capital and Ideology ventures in a different direction by raising evaluative questions on the issue of inequal- ity as was expressed in different regimes over time. -
89 Thomas Piketty. Capital and Ideology. Trans. Arthur
Philosophy in Review Vol. 41 no. 2 (May 2021) Thomas Piketty. Capital and Ideology. Trans. Arthur Goldhammer. Harvard University Press year. 1104 pp. $39.95 USD (Hardcover ISBN 9780674980822). Thomas Piketty’s book, Capital and Ideology, is to be understood as a sequel to his earlier text, Capital in the Twenty-First Century (Belknap Press 2017). Piketty’s earlier text was founded on the economic principle that the rate of return on capital was greater than the actual growth rate. Capital and Ideology ventures in a different direction by raising evaluative questions on the issue of inequal- ity as was expressed in different regimes over time. In a copious work of some 1,000 pages, Piketty offers a kaleidoscopic view of how inequality was expressed from the European feudal era to modern times. The structure of societies in the feudal era is described by Piketty as ternary societies struc- tured according to trifunctional lines. In the case of Europe trifunctionality expressed itself as the three classes of clergy, nobility, and the third estate. In the post-feudal era societies were founded on what Piketty labeled as proprietarian within the context of property owning capitalism. The key point that Piketty makes in his historical analysis is that social structures founded on economic inequalities are not morally acceptable and must be addressed. Piketty’s critical point of departure is that the reason inequality has persisted so long in social structures is that ‘every human society must justify its inequalities: unless reasons for them are found, the whole political and social edifice stands in danger of collapse’ (1). -
A Century of Unequal Opportunity in India: Concentration of Educational Access and Investments Abhijit Tagade Master APE EHESS and Paris School of Economics
A century of unequal opportunity in India: Concentration of educational access and investments Abhijit Tagade Master APE EHESS and Paris School of Economics Advisor: Referee: Professor Thomas Piketty Professor Abhijit Banerjee EHESS and Paris School of Economics Massachusetts Institute of Technology JEL Codes: I24, N35, D63, H52. 1 2 Acknowledgements This thesis has come to fruition due to the support and patience of my advisor, Thomas Piketty. I owe him immensely. A special thanks to Abhijit Banerjee for agreeing to referee the thesis. Without their body of work, this thesis would not have been possible. I would to like to thank Lucas Chancel for his continuous motivation and support. I thank Olivier Compte for his mentorship, time and wisdom throughout my studies at PSE. My heartfelt gratitude goes to the history group, especially Jerome Bourdieu, Lionel Kesztenbaum, and Gilles Postel-Vinay for introducing me to the beauty of historical research. It is rare to find such a warm and supportive group. Lastly, I thank NIEPA for providing access to DISE data. I thank my friends and colleagues Resuf Ahmed, Andrei Kalk, Thomas Pastore, Manpreet Singh and Aymeric Vie for highly productive discussions and making the two years enjoyable. The second floor family of Maison de l’Inde and close ones have been a strong support system throughout. Indeed, my journey so far would not have been possible without my parents. Words will not do justice to express my gratitude for all that they have been and done for me—thank you. ABSTRACT 3 Abstract Using administrative and survey data, we study the unequal evolution of education in India from the colonial period to the present.