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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsPaul Krugman -Is Piketty All Wrong? (No)
reat buzz in the blogosphere over Chris Giless attack on Thomas Pikettys Capital in the 21st Century. Giles finds a few clear errors, although they dont seem to matter much; more important, he questions some of the assumptions and imputations Piketty uses to deal with gaps in the data and the way he switches sources. Neil Irwin and Justin Wolfers have good discussions of the complaints; Piketty will have to answer these questions in detail, and well see how well he does it.
But is it possible that Pikettys whole thesis of rising wealth inequality is wrong? Giles argues that it is:
There is no obvious upward trend. The conclusions of Capital in the 21st century do not appear to be backed by the books own sources.
OK, that cant be right and the fact that Giles reaches that conclusion is a strong indicator that he himself is doing something wrong.
I dont know the European evidence too well, but the notion of stable wealth concentration in the United States is at odds with many sources of evidence. Take, for example, the landmark CBO study on the distribution of income; it shows the distribution of income by type, and capital income has become much more concentrated over time:
more
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/05/24/is-piketty-all-wrong/
riderinthestorm
(23,272 posts)I think its only going to make their case more strongly in the public if this argument goes viral. More of the general public will finally get exposed to the truth (since way too many of them will never read Piketty's book).
K&R!
Warren Stupidity
(48,181 posts)I'm about half way through his book. He is quite careful to point out that the data is no always accurate, and looks at the issues from as many different data sets as he can.