Average Income Lower Than Previous Year

[Tiberius]

 

The clarification was to tell everyone to STFU about misinterpreting his conclusions, which is another way of backtracking, especially when people pointed out the flaws in his thesis. Kudos for him to acknowledge it. Can't say the same about idiots like you.

Oh please, only a clod like you would interpret that as a STFU. You are so weak.

[GG]

Oh please, only a clod like you would interpret that as a STFU. You are so weak.

 

And you are still an idiot who can't understand written English.

[Tiberius]

 

And you are still an idiot who can't understand written English.

Whatever you moron

[Greg F]

you make it sound like being a nyt bestseller makes the work illegitimate. this book has been discussed in virtually all economics periodicals and cited in muyltiple academic papers already and it's relatively new. i suspect there isn't a university economics department in the world where it's merits haven't been debated. it's a major work.

 

oh and my sentence states that the phenomenon is a nearly universal truth. i stand by the statement.

 

It has some fundamental flaws.

[Very wide right]

 

It's absolutely logical. That's not why I laugh.

 

I laugh, because the ACA was supposed to drive down health "care" costs, but health insurance costs are going up due to the mandates of the ACA that were supposed to prevent it.

 

Also not germane to your original post, so I'll drop the subject here.

The Germans have nothing to do with it.

[birdog1960]

 

It has some fundamental flaws.

as i said, there is great debate surrounding this book: http://www.chicagobooth.edu/capideas/magazine/spring-2015/how-piketty-is-wrong-and-right

being named business book of the year by the Financial Times.

The debate has drawn in a host of world-class economists, among them Chicago Booth faculty Kevin M. Murphy, George J. Stigler Distinguished Service Professor of Economics, and Robert H. Topel, Isidore Brown and Gladys J. Brown Distinguished Service Professor; and Claudia Goldin and Lawrence F. Katz of Harvard.

not everyone agrees. but that speaks to its position as an important work in he field. where there's smoke, there's usually fire,

Edited April 8, 2015 by birdog1960

[Greg F]

as i said, there is great debate surrounding this book: http://www.chicagobooth.edu/capideas/magazine/spring-2015/how-piketty-is-wrong-and-right

being named business book of the year by the the Financial Times.

The Financial Times is essentially a business magazine. Economist are not business men and business men are not economist. Unfortunately a lot of people conflate business with economics as if they were one in the same in the same way they conflate popularity with importance. About the only thing you can say is Piketty popularized the debate.

 

There has been a great debate going on long before this book was published. Interestingly enough if you had read the link I supplied the following from your link should have raised a red flag:

 

Piketty, who often criticizes American economists’ reliance on equations, expresses that dynamic in simple algebra: r>g, where r is the return on capital and g is economic growth.

 

 

 

In the link I provided, under the "The “Central Contradiction of Capitalism”" (starting on page 2), the simple algebra of Piketty is destroyed both logically and empirically. I suspect you didn't even bother to read it. Nor did you notice that the growing gap is addressed in "V. Capital versus Wealth" due to land valuations.

 

... the rich get richer and the poor get poorer and now the middle class are getting poorer as well.

 

 

Here is something to ponder. Go to the Forbes 400 richest Americans. Consider how many of them are heirs to their wealth. More important notice, with the exception of the 2nd generation Waltons, the dominance of first generation wealth. This doesn't scream the rich get richer, it screams the rich get replaced. Thomas Sowell has been pointing out for decades that the people in the different income groups don't stay in the same income groups.

 

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kTZyUE33pbA

[birdog1960]

The Financial Times is essentially a business magazine. Economist are not business men and business men are not economist. Unfortunately a lot of people conflate business with economics as if they were one in the same in the same way they conflate popularity with importance. About the only thing you can say is Piketty popularized the debate.

 

There has been a great debate going on long before this book was published. Interestingly enough if you had read the link I supplied the following from your link should have raised a red flag:

 

 

In the link I provided, under the "The “Central Contradiction of Capitalism”" (starting on page 2), the simple algebra of Piketty is destroyed both logically and empirically. I suspect you didn't even bother to read it. Nor did you notice that the growing gap is addressed in "V. Capital versus Wealth" due to land valuations.

 

 

Here is something to ponder. Go to the Forbes 400 richest Americans. Consider how many of them are heirs to their wealth. More important notice, with the exception of the 2nd generation Waltons, the dominance of first generation wealth. This doesn't scream the rich get richer, it screams the rich get replaced. Thomas Sowell has been pointing out for decades that the people in the different income groups don't stay in the same income groups.

 

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kTZyUE33pbA

perhaps you missed that the link was from the booth school and cited several prominent academics at univ of chicago and harvard. the inclusion of the financial times info was meant to support my previous assertion that this book is hotly debated in both academia and business. i did not conflate the 2. do you deny great debate among academics (including economists - https://www.aeaweb.org/aea/2015conference/program/preliminary.php?search_string=piketty&search_type=last_name&association&jel_class&search=Search#search_box) re this book? i don't have access to the arts and humanities citation index but if you publish in the field you likely do. how many times do you guess pikkety's book was cited in scholarly journals last year?

 

the forbes 400, is hardly the definitive reference on the prevalence and importance of inherited wealth. this article (in another business periodical - despite its title) supports pikkety's conclusion on the extent of its importance http://www.economist.com/blogs/buttonwood/2014/03/inequality. interestingly, america, from which the 400 are collected, is reportedly not very strong on data on the subject of inherited wealth.

 

finally, while you cite a rather enthusiastic critic of the work, there are many prominent supporters:

 

Nobel prize-winning economist Paul Krugman called the book a "magnificent, sweeping meditation on inequality"^[19] and "the most important economics book of the year—and maybe of the decade."^[18] He distinguishes the book from otherbestsellers on economics as it constitutes "serious, discourse-changing scholarship".^[20] Krugman also wrote:

At a time when the concentration of wealth and income in the hands of a few has resurfaced as a central political issue, Piketty doesn’t just offer invaluable documentation of what is happening, with unmatched historical depth. He also offers what amounts to a unified field theory of inequality, one that integrates economic growth, the distribution of income between capital and labor, and the distribution of wealth and income among individuals into a single frame. [...]

Capital in the Twenty-First Century

is an extremely important book on all fronts. Piketty has transformed our economic discourse; we’ll never talk about wealth and inequality the same way we used to.

[19]

Steven Pearlstein called it a "triumph of economic history over the theoretical, mathematical modeling that has come to dominate the economics profession in recent years", but also added: "Piketty’s analysis of the past is more impressive than his predictions for the future are convincing."^[17]

Branko Milanović, a former senior economist at the World Bank, called the book “one of the watershed books in economic th…"

even assuming a flaw in pikety's algebra does not necessarily result in his conclusions being incorrect. mendel likely fudged multiple experiments in genetics yet he was fundamentally correct.

Edited April 8, 2015 by birdog1960

[GG]

[broken record - on]

 

Do you even understand the economics topics that you link & quote?

 

[broken record - off]

 

Why do you link articles from before December 2014, when Picketty went out of his way to remind everyone that many people misused his findings? And please, spare use the Nobel winning praise for Krugman. The garbage he's been spouting since he became a celebrity NYT blogger is in stark contrast to the work that won him the Nobel. If you could understand that.

[birdog1960]

[broken record - on]

 

Do you even understand the economics topics that you link & quote?

 

[broken record - off]

 

Why do you link articles from before December 2014, when Picketty went out of his way to remind everyone that many people misused his findings? And please, spare use the Nobel winning praise for Krugman. The garbage he's been spouting since he became a celebrity NYT blogger is in stark contrast to the work that won him the Nobel. If you could understand that.

the link from the boston economics conference documents that an entire session was devoted to piketty's book with him giving the final lecture. it occurred in Jan 2015, after the dissenting paper linked above was published. it seems an entire conference of leading academics in the field disagreed that the merits of the books conclusions have been settled.

Edited April 8, 2015 by birdog1960

[GG]

the link from the boston economics conference documents that an entire session was devoted to piketty's book with him giving the final lecture. it occurred in Jan 2015, after the dissenting paper linked above was published. it seems an entire conference of leading academics in the field disagreed that the merits of the books conclusions have been settled.

 

And what exactly are his conclusions? That people who inherit wealth generally have a better shot at a better lifestyle than the ones that don't? Or that the political and economic institutions in 19th century Europe were conducive to wealth concentration among the noble elites? Or that what happened in the 19th century Europe has very little bearing over 21st century America? Or that the wealth/income inequality debate is a manufactured crisis by idiots who don't know the difference between income & wealth?

[DC Tom]

the link from the boston economics conference documents that an entire session was devoted to piketty's book with him giving the final lecture. it occurred in Jan 2015, after the dissenting paper linked above was published. it seems an entire conference of leading academics in the field disagreed that the merits of the books conclusions have been settled.

The thing is, you're not discussing economics. You're discussing book reviews.

[birdog1960]

The thing is, you're not discussing economics. You're discussing book reviews.

i'm discussing a paper that concludes that massive wealth inequality is the natural and inevitable result of our current economic system and that things will only worsen without intervention.

[Jauronimo]

as i said, there is great debate surrounding this book: http://www.chicagobooth.edu/capideas/magazine/spring-2015/how-piketty-is-wrong-and-right

being named business book of the year by the Financial Times.

The debate has drawn in a host of world-class economists, among them Chicago Booth faculty Kevin M. Murphy, George J. Stigler Distinguished Service Professor of Economics, and Robert H. Topel, Isidore Brown and Gladys J. Brown Distinguished Service Professor; and Claudia Goldin and Lawrence F. Katz of Harvard.

not everyone agrees. but that speaks to its position as an important work in he field. where there's smoke, there's usually fire,

In conclusion, you don't understand a lick of his work, else you'd discuss his theories rather than his reviews, you know many other academics disagree or have issues with his work, and you know that its near universal truth. Seems pretty tight to me.

Edited April 8, 2015 by Jauronimo

[Jauronimo]

perhaps you missed that the link was from the booth school and cited several prominent academics at univ of chicago and harvard. the inclusion of the financial times info was meant to support my previous assertion that this book is hotly debated in both academia and business. i did not conflate the 2. do you deny great debate among academics (including economists - https://www.aeaweb.org/aea/2015conference/program/preliminary.php?search_string=piketty&search_type=last_name&association&jel_class&search=Search#search_box) re this book? i don't have access to the arts and humanities citation index but if you publish in the field you likely do. how many times do you guess pikkety's book was cited in scholarly journals last year?

 

the forbes 400, is hardly the definitive reference on the prevalence and importance of inherited wealth. this article (in another business periodical - despite its title) supports pikkety's conclusion on the extent of its importance http://www.economist.com/blogs/buttonwood/2014/03/inequality. interestingly, america, from which the 400 are collected, is reportedly not very strong on data on the subject of inherited wealth.

 

finally, while you cite a rather enthusiastic critic of the work, there are many prominent supporters:

 

Nobel prize-winning economist Paul Krugman called the book a "magnificent, sweeping meditation on inequality"^[19] and "the most important economics book of the year—and maybe of the decade."^[18] He distinguishes the book from otherbestsellers on economics as it constitutes "serious, discourse-changing scholarship".^[20] Krugman also wrote:

At a time when the concentration of wealth and income in the hands of a few has resurfaced as a central political issue, Piketty doesn’t just offer invaluable documentation of what is happening, with unmatched historical depth. He also offers what amounts to a unified field theory of inequality, one that integrates economic growth, the distribution of income between capital and labor, and the distribution of wealth and income among individuals into a single frame. [...]

Capital in the Twenty-First Century

is an extremely important book on all fronts. Piketty has transformed our economic discourse; we’ll never talk about wealth and inequality the same way we used to.

[19]

Steven Pearlstein called it a "triumph of economic history over the theoretical, mathematical modeling that has come to dominate the economics profession in recent years", but also added: "Piketty’s analysis of the past is more impressive than his predictions for the future are convincing."^[17]

Branko Milanović, a former senior economist at the World Bank, called the book “one of the watershed books in economic th…"

even assuming a flaw in pikety's algebra does not necessarily result in his conclusions being incorrect. mendel likely fudged multiple experiments in genetics yet he was fundamentally correct.

Really? How likely is it that Mendel fudged multiple experiments and what do you base this opinion on?

 

Your whole f@#$ing world view is predicated upon use of the words "clearly" and "likely" to back specious arguments.

[DC Tom]

i'm discussing a paper that concludes that massive wealth inequality is the natural and inevitable result of our current economic system and that things will only worsen without intervention.

No, you're discussing the popularity of that paper.

[birdog1960]

Really? How likely is it that Mendel fudged multiple experiments and what do you base this opinion on?

 

Your whole f@#$ing world view is predicated upon use of the words "clearly" and "likely" to back specious arguments.

'likely" is an admission of the uncertainty and relativity of nearly every belief and opinion. very few things are certain.

 

i can't produce a mathematical proof for light wave duality, nor can most that have taken undergrad physics. that doesn't mean that i (or they)can't grasp the concept or accept it as a satisfactory explanation for observed physical phenomena. i trust the experts to fight out the details just like in climate change or wealth distribution economics.

[Magox]

'likely" is an admission of the uncertainty and relativity of nearly every belief and opinion. very few things are certain.

 

i can't produce a mathematical proof for light wave duality, nor can most that have taken undergrad physics. that doesn't mean that i (or they)can't grasp the concept or accept it as a satisfactory explanation for observed physical phenomena. i trust the experts to fight out the details just like in climate change or wealth distribution economics.

How about debating the merits of "wealth distribution economics" and how if implemented would increase overall economic output rather than just accepting it as is? Whenever I pose an argument I inject my reasoning in laymen's terms. Can you do the same?

[Jauronimo]

'likely" is an admission of the uncertainty and relativity of nearly every belief and opinion. very few things are certain.

 

i can't produce a mathematical proof for light wave duality, nor can most that have taken undergrad physics. that doesn't mean that i (or they)can't grasp the concept or accept it as a satisfactory explanation for observed physical phenomena. i trust the experts to fight out the details just like in climate change or wealth distribution economics.

Physics is backed with evidence which is then used to form theories which explain observed phenomenon. When there is no absolutely no empirical evidence to suggest that a particular scientist fudged experiments how the !@#$ is it likely?

 

Ostensibly plausible or even possible does NOT equal likely. I don't know how many times I can explain this to you.

Edited April 8, 2015 by Jauronimo

[GG]

i'm discussing a paper that concludes that massive wealth inequality is the natural and inevitable result of our current economic system and that things will only worsen without intervention.

 

Equity holdings are a major component of net worth. Those values are set by a global market. How would you intervene to prevent Mark Zuckerberg's ascension to the top 400 list?