Department of “Huh?!”: Yet Another Thomas Piketty Edition
Let’s quote Thomas Piketty:
…in the United States. The increase was largely the result of an unprecedented increase in wage inequality and in particular the emergence of extremely high remunerations at the summit of the wage hierarchy, particularly among top managers of large firms…
…They’re intrigued, but not convinced. Perhaps Mr. Piketty has isolated the forces that will drive wealth inequality in the future, but for now, they’re not convinced the forces he focuses on are central to understanding the recent rise in wealth inequality. At least that’s my reading of the latest survey run by the University of Chicago’s Initiative on Global Markets. I’ve written before about their Economic Experts panel, which is intended to be broadly representative of opinion among elite academic economists…. The expert economists were asked whether
the most powerful force pushing toward greater wealth inequality in the U.S. since the 1970s is the gap between the after-tax return on capital and the economic growth rate.
To translate, does the T-shirt slogan “r>g” explain why wealth has become more unequally distributed?… 18 percent… uncertain. The clear majority either disagreed (59 percent) or strongly disagreed (21 percent)….
But what was the point of this? We saw from the Piketty quote up at the top that Piketty does not think that “r>g” has been driving the rise in American inequality. Why is it an interesting question to ask?
Justin, in my view, buries the lead, for he does indeed point out later on in his article:
If surveyed, it is likely that he would have joined the majority view in disagreeing with the claim the survey asked about. In Mr. Piketty’s telling, rising incomes among the super-rich are responsible for the recent rise in wealth inequality…
Shouldn’t the IGM Forum at the Booth Business School of the University of Chicago have found somebody who had actually read Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century to decide on what questions to ask?
I am sure that it was always such–that intellectual standards in the academy were always not that high, and that a great many of the people making arguments always were people who hadn’t done their homework. But I do seem to be reminded of it more and more these days, especially since the beginning of the financial crisis back in 2007…