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Related: About this forumFor us Common Folks...Thomas Piketty at Harvard Book Store Explains about "Decline of Capitalism"
(For those of us who aren't Economy Wonks...this appearance by Piketty at Harvard Book Club..is very "Down to Earth." And the "Question & Answer" is a Great Watch at the end...if you think his dialog starts to get too wonky or you have trouble with his accent because of your speaker quality (I had a bit of that myself with static interference).
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Thomas Piketty: Capital--History of Income and Wealth
Published on Apr 19, 2014
Harvard Book Store welcomes Paris School of Economics professor Thomas Piketty for a discussion of his seminal new work Capital in the Twenty-First Century.
What are the grand dynamics that drive the accumulation and distribution of capital? Questions about the long-term evolution of inequality, the concentration of wealth, and the prospects for economic growth lie at the heart of political economy. But satisfactory answers have been hard to find for lack of adequate data and clear guiding theories. In Capital in the Twenty-First Century, Thomas Piketty analyzes a unique collection of data from twenty countries, ranging as far back as the eighteenth century, to uncover key economic and social patterns. His findings will transform debate and set the agenda for the next generation of thought about wealth and inequality.
Piketty shows that modern economic growth and the diffusion of knowledge have allowed us to avoid inequalities on the apocalyptic scale predicted by Karl Marx. But we have not modified the deep structures of capital and inequality as much as we thought in the optimistic decades following World War II. The main driver of inequalitythe tendency of returns on capital to exceed the rate of economic growthtoday threatens to generate extreme inequalities that stir discontent and undermine democratic values. But economic trends are not acts of God. Political action has curbed dangerous inequalities in the past, Piketty says, and may do so again.
cantbeserious
(13,039 posts)Last edited Sun Apr 20, 2014, 09:07 PM - Edit history (1)
eom
KoKo
(84,711 posts)Can we Shout it from the Rooftops? The F'ing Economists Never Got ANYTHING CORRECTLY!
Love it that he does Historical Background with his NEW DATA. And makes it so we can understand it!
Democracyinkind
(4,015 posts)... for some! How dare he!
KoKo
(84,711 posts)What I've come to realize is that not all in Financial Community are happy with Bank Bail Outs and what they see as eccesses in their own "Industry."
There is Push Back and this Study and Book has give voice to those who don't want their "profession" to be included in the Graft and Greed of Wall Street and they want CHANGE....for their own professional reasons, too.
I hope his buzz will cut through that drone of Friedman Alan Greenspan (Mr. Andrea Mitchell, (Ayn Rand Accolytes), Bernanke, Yellen and before them Robert Rubin, Larry Summers and those even before that pushing Failed Suppy Side Economics who have now recanted.
They are Numbers Folks...and this NEW VIEW might change the dynamics for Policy Makers, too.
I'm ever hopeful...but, he's really got a voice for a new way of thinking about Economics that seems to be catching on with Moyers and others giving voice to his "Historical" and not just "Theoretical Numbers Analysis that we've had to deal with for Decades in the brains of those who've driven our failed Economic Policy leading to Deregulation allowing Wall Street Crooks to in essence Pillage our American Financial Policies leading to Privatization of Everything and Economic Decline for everyone under the 2% in our country decimating the Middle Class who have always been the engine of growth so that "Inherited Wealth" and Billionaires who provide nothing but viewers to Internet Sites like "Facebook" now have so much money they don't know what to do with it...and little sense or conscience as to how to spend the money when they do.
We are an "Out of Whack Economy" and it's going to lead to civil unreast and terrible consequences if our Policy Makers don't wake up...
Joe Shlabotnik
(5,604 posts)I hope my local library gets a copy, but I'm not holding out much hope. (If it were a fad-diet book, or yet another biography of someone famous, then they'd get it.)