Reading Thomas Piketty's “Capital in the 21st Century.”

[JEFF9K]

Just finished reading Thomas Piketty's bestseller. I've been savoring this 685-page book at a rate of several pages a day, so it took awhile. But don't be scared away by the size; it's really only 577 pages, the rest is notes and index.

I read a lot of it at Starbucks, where three different women asked about it. That was pretty cool. Am I allowed to say that, or will this thread get locked for being “sexist?”

This is a wonderful book for those whose interests include literature, economics, politics, history, and arguing with people whose advanced degrees in economics and history came from talk radio and Fox News.

“Capital in the 21st Century” can be slow-going at times with formulas, ratios, charts, and trying to keep straight terms like decile, centile, national income, national wealth, public capital, private debt, etc., etc. But it's well worth it for all the interesting nuggets of information that are included, most, if not all of which show that conservatives are wrong.

The author explains that inflation was virtually non-existent until 1914 and that consequently, literary references to exact monetary amounts were common, and easily understood in popular fiction from the 1800s.

How many armchair economists knew that Germany has its own form of capitalism which gives workers a say in how corporations are run, but which makes those companies less attractive to investors?

Piketty shows that Simon Kuznets was wrong when he said that capitalism is self-correcting and that inequalities will tend to vanish on their own. In fact, the opposite is true. The invisible hand of the market is a myth. Without intervention, things will become more and more unequal.

There are some terrific charts, like 14.1 on page 499, which shows top marginal tax rates for United States, Britain, Germany and France from 1900-2013. I used it recently to rebut someone's argument that JFK lowered the top rate to 65%. He never lowered it below 70%! Piketty points out that the average top rate in America was 81% between 1932 and 1980. His answers for inequality and the high national debt both involve taxing the rich.

Arthur Goldhammer received high praise for translating the book from French to English. I would give him “medium” praise, as I counted six misspellings and four cases of improper choice of words. I notified Mr. Piketty of this and he e-mailed me back in less than two hours with “Thanks Jeff for your message, this is very useful. Best, Thomas.” I like to think it came directly from him rather than an assistant or a bot. In case anyone has the book and wants to play “Spot the translation error,” the ones I found are on pages 219, 273, 278, 294, 314, 322, 388, 423, 456, and 504.

[northoftheborder]

1. The last time I was in Barnes & Nobles (about 6 weeks ago) I asked if they had it.....

I looked around for it (it had been released to public at least two weeks, and I had heard Piketty interviewed a couple of times on television.) The customer help desk couldn't find it, even looked it up and could not find it. I thought that highly suspicious, as it was already on the Best Seller list. I gave him several spellings of Piketty, as I didn't remember the title. They probably have it by now, but I was puzzled that it was not out on the shelves. Eliz. Warren's book was there, and they came out about the same time. Conspiracy theory?

[JEFF9K]

2. Publication date was 3-10-2014.

As I remember, it was available for pre-order at Amazon and early reviews probably put it on the Best Seller list. I bought mine on May 21st after waiting a few weeks to figure out what else to buy (book is $23.97) to meet the $35.00 minimum for free shipping.

It's in stock at Amazon where it is currently #65 in books overall and #2 in certain categories. You might want to buy it from Barnes & Noble, however, just to help keep them in business.

The book created such a stir in certain circles that I thought everyone would have heard of it, but was surprised that at our local progressive/liberal/hippie-dippy Hessler Street Fair the lady at the Communist Booth hadn't heard of it.

You may be interested to know that Amazon now has nearly 1,000 reviews for this book.

[cyberswede]

3. You know, your post might get more traction...

if you edit this irrelevant snarky part:

I read a lot of it at Starbucks, where three different women asked about it. That was pretty cool. Am I allowed to say that, or will this thread get locked for being “sexist?”

I mean, your topic is interesting...why would you want to alienate some of your readers with that inane third sentence?

[JEFF9K]

4. It's very relevant to ME!

The experience of reading this book at a coffee shop provided me with the surprising revelation that the book is something of a "chick magnet." I'm not aware of any other book having this attribute. My girlfriend found nothing offensive about what I wrote.

Honestly expressing what I consider to be important means WAY MORE to me than gaining traction.

I seriously considered adding: "If this gets locked, consider it my last thread at Democratic Underground.

[cyberswede]

5. I'm referring to...

your snarky comment about your thread being locked for being "sexist." I didn't say it was offensive, but that statement did diminish the entire message of the rest of your post.

[JEFF9K]

6. I think you are familiar with ...

... the problems I have had at this site with what I consider to be illegitimate censorship. I try to make my threads entertaining as well as informative.

If you visit my YouTube channel (JEFF9K) you will see how I try to mix humor with anti-Republican content.

[ancianita]

8. I like your factual portrayal of your reading, and the attention you enjoyed while reading it.

Lots of us here like people who are just trying to be themselves. Don't sweat the niggling.

[deutsey]

15. I thought your observation and snark were both fine.

I also appreciate your review. When I tried to buy a copy of the book online a couple months ago, it was sold out. This review reminded me that I need to get a copy pronto.

[leftstreet]

10. You made a statement about DUers, not yourself

You could easily have explained yours and your girlfriend's apparent excitement that the book was a 'chick magnate' for you - without implying DUers would alert on your post

[JEFF9K]

12. I have a history of getting threads shut down for reasons that make no sense. This had made me ...

... gun shy, and reluctant to spend a couple of hours composing a thread. I'm sure others members, and more likely FORMER members have experienced something similar.

Lately a movement has been afoot, I sense, to create new categories of illegitimate reasons for shutting down threads. So if YOU haven't spent hours creating a thread only to have it illegitimately shut down you shouldn't talk.

Funny that you are so picky about my thread, yet not picky enough to read it carefully. All I said about my girlfriend was that she didn't find anything in the original post to be offensive.

[ancianita]

7. I'm reading it now, finishing Part One. It really has every legitimate claim to being THE econ

statement for the foreseeable future.

I'm keeping a list of ideas and questions that I get as I go. At some point I'll be prepared to discuss it.

Thanks for your post!

[JEFF9K]

9. Thanks for the nice comments ...

If you're like me, you will find the book getting more interesting near the end. But don't skip anything; there are good items throughout the book. I circled things even in the Introduction and the Acknowledgements. I'm finding some good stuff even in the Notes, although that's a place where it's okay to do some skimming.

There's also a website: http://piketty.pse.ens.fr/capital21c I hope I copied that right. I should mention that in the book, the font used makes the second-to-last character look like a capital "I" rather than the number "1" so I couldn't get through the first time. Then I was embarrassed to realize that the last three characters are "21c" as in twenty-first century.

Happy reading!

[ancianita]

11. Thank you! I'm sure I'll appreciate all the ramifications his analyses bring to mind, and I love

reading footnotes and notes, too.

I have so many questions so far, but not because of his writing style or historical presentation of content, but from two places -- first, why economics hasn't dealt officially with black market economies -- which are only partly vice-driven; and second, why economics hasn't dealt officially with unvalued or uncommodified labor of women. Probably by the time I'm finished, I'll be able to articulate my questions or issues clearly.

Perhaps if he sees broad populations as his audience, which I think he does, he might entertain letters from readers like me about the above-mentioned areas.

Again, thank you for your help!

[LuvNewcastle]

13. Thanks for the review.

I'm looking forward to reading it myself. I'm going to buy a Kindle soon, and hopefully I'll be able to get a Kindle copy from Amazon. You'd think that such a revolutionary book would be discussed more, but I've heard virtually nothing about it outside of this site and a couple of other places on the internet. I wonder what the effects will be when it begins to be required reading for economics courses. Hopefully we'll see a big change in our economy, but that will probably not happen until I'm an old man.

[JEFF9K]

14. There was a lot of buzz in the beginning ...

... but it seems to have died down a bit. The casual reader may be put off by some of the jargon, formulas, references in French to eras in the history of France, and the size of the book. It certainly is revolutionary and deserves to be required reading for economics courses.

[librechik]

16. at the librechik house,we just put the book on a glorious altar and worship it

It's pretty obvious what's inside (and NOT controversial at all, except among the fierce defenders of the rich)

[JEFF9K]

17. A strange thing about the book is that ...

... at least in my case, the ink would get onto my fingers and then smudge the cream-colored cover, making it less than ideal for display purposes. Still, it is worthy of worship!