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Piketty

Sbee

Well-known member
Joined
Jul 8, 2013
Messages
9,259
Just bought it, had to. I wasn't going to read 700 pages about economics but it's all the rage right now.

Anyone else?
 
They talked about it on Stephanopolous this morning.

I'm pretty sure I learned as much as I need to know.
 
all the columnist that i read regularly are talking about it, I figured it's something I should read
 
If it's all the rage with other columnists it's probably vastly overrated. Save your money and buy something for the house. How about a nice lamp..
 
Hmmm yes there is, but they are all in neighborhoods not near mine. Haven't considered going to one in a while.

You have a car, and you drive, right? Like, for example, if someone got you tickets for a White Sox game, say if they were playing the Tigers (like they are right now, but's starting to rain) you would be able to drive to whatever that new White Sox stadium is called, and meet them for the game, right?
 
You have a car, and you drive, right? Like, for example, if someone got you tickets for a White Sox game, say if they were playing the Tigers (like they are right now, but's starting to rain) you would be able to drive to whatever that new White Sox stadium is called, and meet them for the game, right?

Well, theoretically yes. But with the kid now, it's not as easy. Either I have to bring the whole family OR negotiate with the wife to allow me to go without her, which is tough because she stays home with him all day.
 
Well, theoretically yes. But with the kid now, it's not as easy. Either I have to bring the whole family OR negotiate with the wife to allow me to go without her, which is tough because she stays home with him all day.

All right, fuck it; I'm just gonna go out to the bookstore, buy you the book and send it to you.

Or maybe I'll just have the wife do it; she's the one who knows your address, and shit like that.
 
All right, fuck it; I'm just gonna go out to the bookstore, buy you the book and send it to you.

Or maybe I'll just have the wife do it; she's the one who knows your address, and shit like that.

Damn, it's on back order EVERYWHERE until May 8.

I called Paul Krugman and offered him $1000 for his own copy (obviously I told him I expected him to sign it for that much money) and all he had to say was "fuck you, TinselWolverine..."

He's kind of an ass.
 
Damn, it's on back order EVERYWHERE until May 8.

I called Paul Krugman and offered him $1000 for his own copy (obviously I told him I expected him to sign it for that much money) and all he had to say was "fuck you, TinselWolverine..."

He's kind of an ass.

He did that? JEsus H. Christ, what a jerk.

I think we'll maybe take a swing around the block and see if we can find it this weekend.
 
just download the kindle app for whatever smartphone you have or tablet or even for PC.

pikkety did his homework on this stuff, wow
 
Book looks good... Here is a article about it...

When Piketty Came to America

The French economist found that concentrated wealth drives income inequality. That means the U.S. has its policy all wrong.

By ANDREA LEVERE and EZRA LEVIN

April 28, 2014

The top-selling book on Amazon.com right now, amazingly enough, happens to be a 696-page treatise on economic history written by a Frenchman. It’s the talk of the town in Washington and even a hot topic on cable news. The book, “Capital in the Twenty-First Century,” by economist Thomas Piketty, has been called “the most important economics book of the year — and maybe of the decade” by New York Times columnist Paul Krugman, its stunning findings chewed over by pundits on the left and right. But all the buzz has missed a fundamental implication from Piketty’s work: America’s public policies devote billions of dollars to an asset welfare system that helps some build wealth, while leaving most working families behind. Piketty’s book is a meticulously researched argument in favor of turning these upside-down policies right-side up.


Piketty offers a surprisingly simple explanation for the huge spike in income inequality in developed countries over the past few decades. He finds that the rate of return on capital — homeownership, business ownership, stock, bonds and everything that makes up a household’s net worth — has regularly outpaced the growth of income. Income tends to grow at 2 to 3 percent annually, while capital tends to grow at 4 to 5 percent each year. Because capital is concentrated among wealthier households, inequality has increased over decades to the levels we are now seeing..


This is a particular problem in countries where wealth is distributed very unequally. In the United States, the top 1 percent of the population owns more than 35 percent of the wealth — more than the entire bottom 90 percent combined. In fact, our nonprofit organization, the Corporation for Enterprise Development, has found that 44 percent of U.S. households have almost no savings. These “liquid asset poor” families are not only missing out on the returns from wealth — they’re one economic shock away from financial disaster.

It is no surprise that a French economist like Piketty proposes solutions that are political nonstarters in this country, such as a redistributive global tax on wealth. Like Piketty, many U.S. economists and policymakers focus their attention on the concentration of wealth at the top. But a more pragmatic starting place should be looking to see what we can do to help low- and moderate-income working families save, invest and build wealth from the bottom up.



The federal government alone spends more than $500 billion annually to encourage Americans to save, invest and build wealth. But the vast majority of this support goes to high-income households through tax spending on asset support — for instance to buy a house (mortgage interest and property tax deductions), invest in stocks (reduced rates on capital gains) and save for retirement (exclusion for 401(k) and IRA contributions). This is essentially welfare targeted at high-income households.


By contrast, welfare for low-income households tends to come as income support for everyday expenses, such as to pay for food (the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program), rent (Section 8 vouchers) and health insurance (Medicaid).


In other words, government spends to help low-income families just get by, and it spends to help high-income families get further ahead. Piketty found that concentrated wealth is the driving force behind income inequality, and federal policy is actively concentrating that wealth.

Some may argue that working families do not receive benefits for saving and investments because these families are unable to save or invest. But decades of research proves otherwise. The American Dream Demonstration, for instance, a nationwide research project on savings for working families, showed that even the lowest-income families will save toward their goals of college, home and business ownership if provided with the right opportunities and incentives. And a rigorous study of New York City’s $aveUSA program has found that low-income tax filers will save a significant portion of their refund to serve as a personal safety net.



There’s no shortage of ideas for new asset-based policies. Children’s Savings Account programs, which help children start building assets early in life, have launched throughout the country and congressional leaders have committed to supporting legislation to provide every child born in the country with a savings account.

Other asset-based proposals would expand and make refundable the Saver’s Credit — a rare retirement savings tax expenditure targeted to low- and moderate-income households. Policymakers are also working to remove asset limits from public benefit programs so families don’t have to choose between building wealth and receiving benefits that help them make ends meet. (In many states, a parent who saves as little as $1,000 or $2,000 in a savings account for themselves or for their kids risks getting kicked off of public benefits.)

These incentives and reforms won’t help if families lack access to saving vehicles. To tackle this issue, California and Illinois are exploring a policy called Automatic-IRA to guarantee that families without an employer-sponsored retirement plan can save for the future. And President Barack Obama recently announced the myRA, a U.S. Treasury-sponsored account aimed at removing barriers to retirement savings by creating a simple, safe and affordable retirement savings product for working families.

Our upside-down Tax Code and asset policies strongly encourage savings and investments by the wealthy and do little for most working families. Piketty’s work shows us that if we want to stem the growing tide of inequality, we need to fix those policies. But we don’t have to enact radical global tax schemes. All we need to do is turn the system we do have right-side up.

Andrea Levere is president of the Corporation for Enterprise Development (CFED).

Ezra Levin is federal affairs manager of CFED.


Read more: http://www.politico.com/magazine/st...me-to-america-106034_Page2.html#ixzz30wvfe6Sa
 
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I just finished it this week, it takes a guy with 3 kids a while to dig through 600 pages of economics. for those of you who don't have the time, the whole book can be summed up below (from the conclusion)

The Central Contradiction of Capitalism

The overall conclusion of this study is that a market economy based on private property, if left to itself, contains powerful forces of convergence, associated in particular with the diffusion of knowledge and skills: but it also contains powerful forces of divergence, which are potentially threatening to democratic societies and to the values of social justice on which they are based.

The principal destabilizing force has to to with the fact that the private rate of return on capital, R, can be significantly higher for long periods of time than the rate of growth of income and output, G.

The inequality R>G implies that wealth accumulated in the past grows more rapidly than output and wages. This inequality expresses a fundamental logical contradiction. The entrepreneur inevitably tends to become a rentier, more and more dominant over those who own nothing but their labor. Once constituted, capital reproduces itself faster than output increases. The past devours the future.
 
nice. I got my copy a couple weeks ago, but I've yet to crack it.

I have another book to finish first, and some profession/career specific studying to do before I have free time.

another book I thought was pretty good was Freefall by Joseph Stiglitz. It contained a few chapters with summaries of the economic situation of the last couple decades, the causes of the crash, and then spent some more time dispelling the use of Econ 101 theories the Right & Right-wing economists use to explain & justify the abuses we see.

it's absurd to take a simple supply/demand curve or a labor supply model and argue it applies to, for example, GM, or Exxon-Mobil. The reality for society must take a lot more into account, such as the negative externalities created by their actions, and find a way to ensure they bear the cost of these, and aren't able to dump them on society while enjoying all the profits. etc. etc. etc.
 
I'll check free fall later this year. I mix in more scholarly books with guilty pleasure books about golf and other sports. After a long day of hustling at work and then wrangling 3 kids it's harder to dig into books on economics, etc.

That's one thing I miss about my pre kids life, I'd fly through about 25 books a year, now it's 5.
 
I'll check free fall later this year. I mix in more scholarly books with guilty pleasure books about golf and other sports. After a long day of hustling at work and then wrangling 3 kids it's harder to dig into books on economics, etc.

That's one thing I miss about my pre kids life, I'd fly through about 25 books a year, now it's 5.

My favorite golf book of all time was Tin Cup.

The novel went way deeper into the psyche of the Kevin Costner character, and it explained a lot better why he did the stupid fuckin' thing that he did than the movie explained it.
 
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