Thomas Piketty's "Capital in the Twenty-First Century" [2014]

Not sure whether to put this in another forum, but meh ... ;)

Just picked up this behemoth again and am doing my best to skim it. Piketty paints an exhausting picture of the minute intricacies of wealth inequality, which I can appreciate. His solutions are typical reformist hogwash.

Got an opinion?

that's about my opinion, as well. he almost treats his global wealth tax as a panacea, which is incredibly dumb.

That isn't his only solution, actually - he mentions inflation and several other alternatives. It all reeks of Keynesian-minded reformism, nevertheless.

(April 2014)

http://www.revleft.com/vb/man-just-d...ml#post2744564

lol

Well, it has dropped out of fashion among the Starbucks-sipping hipster-intellectuals who put him on the bestsellers list in the first place. I'm just a patsy. :o

The likes of David Harvey & Michael Roberts (both Marxists) have done interesting critiques. Essentially the holes in his theory, that even he recognises are there, could be remedied with just a rudimentary understanding of Marxism. Picketty admits that he has never even read Capital.

http://thenextrecession.wordpress.com/

That's Roberts' blog.

Kliman on Piketty and the ridiculous "99% vs 1%" occupy slogan:

http://www.marxisthumanistinitiative...6-of-what.html

Piketty, as Keynes, wants to rescue capitalism from capitalists. But impossible effort. Keynes was doing this with existence of the Soviet Union and bourgeoisie was scared of that. Now there is no fear.

Piketty's demands are correct to rescue capitalism and make it more sustainable. But the problem is that force ruling over this system that is bourgeoisie don't see any problem.

And this is why capitalism will collapse.