Piketty Capital @ Der Doom

Doom for democracy? Judt, Habermas, and Piketty warn that our system of government is irrational, dysfunctional, in trouble. Has it always been? We are all doomed


“It is an arduous thing to plead against abuses of a power which originate from your own country,” said Burke. By that standard, David Bromwich has had a very arduous decade... Nothing New Under The Sun

Over the past 80 years, U.S. gross domestic product has grown, in real terms, by a factor of 16. But more wealth has not meant more leisure. Cue the yuppie Kvetching

Accountants and tax advisers have blown the whistle on multimillionaire clients exploiting tax concessions in self-managed superannuation funds, urging the federal government to act against "tax leakage". Tax leakage: Multimillionaires exploiting superannuation.

Prophesy of Piketty ~ There are 4,400 words here, mostly on the FT kerfluffle, and Neil Irwin summarizes it here: “The short version: He doesn’t give an inch.

The Continuing Debate Over Thomas Piketty'sCapital in the 21st Century

Following up on my previous posts on the new book by Thomas Piketty (Paris School of Economics),Capital in the Twenty-First Century (Harvard University Press, 2014):

Wall Street Journal op-ed:  Piketty's Numbers Don't Add Up, by Martin Feldstein (Harvard):

Thomas Piketty has recently attracted widespread attention for his claim that capitalism will now lead inexorably to an increasing inequality of income and wealth unless there are radical changes in taxation. Although his book ... has been praised by those who advocate income redistribution, his thesis rests on a false theory of how wealth evolves in a market economy, a flawed interpretation of U.S. income-tax data, and a misunderstanding of the current nature of household wealth.