{"id":33288,"date":"2017-09-09T01:00:02","date_gmt":"2017-09-09T05:00:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=33288"},"modified":"2017-08-29T08:20:47","modified_gmt":"2017-08-29T12:20:47","slug":"qotd-pickettys-unsupported-inequality-claims","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2017\/09\/09\/qotd-pickettys-unsupported-inequality-claims\/","title":{"rendered":"QotD: Picketty&#8217;s unsupported inequality claims"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote><p>Piketty\u2019s definition of wealth does not include human capital, owned by the workers, which has grown in rich countries to be the main source of income, when it is combined with the immense accumulation since 1800 of capital in knowledge and social habits, owned by everyone with access to them. Once upon a time, Piketty\u2019s world without human capital was approximately our world, that of Ricardo and Marx, with workers owning only their hands and backs, and the bosses and landlords owning all the other means of production. But since 1848 the world has been transformed by what sits between the workers\u2019 ears.<\/p>\n<p>The only reason in the book to exclude human capital from capital appears to be to force the conclusion Piketty wants to achieve. One of the headings in Chapter 7 declares that \u201ccapital [is] always more unequally distributed than labor.\u201d No it isn\u2019t. If human capital is included \u2014 the ordinary factory worker\u2019s literacy, the nurse\u2019s educated skill, the professional manager\u2019s command of complex systems, the economist\u2019s understanding of supply responses \u2014 the workers themselves, in the correct accounting, own most of the nation\u2019s capital \u2014 and Piketty\u2019s drama falls to the ground.<\/p>\n<p>Finally, as he candidly admits, Piketty\u2019s own research suggests that only in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Canada has income inequality increased much, and only recently. In other words, his fears were not confirmed anywhere from 1910 to 1980; nor anywhere in the long run at any time before 1800; nor anywhere in Continental Europe and Japan since World War II; and only recently, a little, in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Canada. That is a very great puzzle if money tends to reproduce itself as a general law. The truth is that inequality goes up and down in great waves, for which we have evidence from many centuries ago down to the present, which also doesn\u2019t figure in such a tale.<\/p>\n<p>Deirdre N. McCloskey, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cato.org\/policy-report\/julyaugust-2015\/how-piketty-misses-point\" target=\"_blank\">&#8220;How Piketty Misses the Point&#8221;, <em>Cato Policy Report<\/em><\/a>, 2015-07.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Piketty\u2019s definition of wealth does not include human capital, owned by the workers, which has grown in rich countries to be the main source of income, when it is combined with the immense accumulation since 1800 of capital in knowledge and social habits, owned by everyone with access to them. Once upon a time, Piketty\u2019s [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[32,4,6,25,41,13],"tags":[86,1026,315],"class_list":["post-33288","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-britain","category-cancon","category-economics","category-quotations","category-usa","tag-criticism","tag-microeconomics","tag-wealth"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-8EU","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33288","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33288"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33288\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":33289,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33288\/revisions\/33289"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33288"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33288"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33288"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}