Brad DeLong, the grasping hands guy, with whom I have previously tussled on a number of occasions, recently ran a piece, Is America Today Really No More Unequal Economic Class-Wise than It Was in 1960?, attempting to sort out recent claims regarding prior claims regarding an alleged increase in economic inequality in the world today….
Tag: thomas piketty
Neoliberalism and its discontents
Almost exactly one year ago, I wrote a contemptuous take down of Thomas Piketty’s then notorious book, Capitalism in the Twenty-First Century. If anyone has been citing Piketty’s arguments in the current presidential primary season, I’ve yet to hear it, but that hardly matters, because global capitalism is taking a pounding from all quarters, a…
Larry Summers so very smart and Larry Summers not so very smart
Larry Summers, star-crossed former president of Harvard and, more recently, head of President Obama’s National Economic Council, has written an excellent review of Thomas Piketty’s endlessly reviewed (even by me) best seller, Capital in the Twenty-First Century, praising Piketty for both his timing (publishing a massively researched book on inequality when the topic is all…
Marx + Foucault = Piketty
With the possible exception of Chelsea Clinton’s baby bump, no one is getting more press these days than Thomas Piketty, author of Capital in the Twenty-First Century, which has lefties like Paul Krugman all in a lather. “Inequality is the new black!” they exclaim. “We’re going to win this mother!” Piketty’s basic pitch, delivered through…