At Christian Science Monitor Husna Haq takes note of two books critiquing the findings 2014’s rock star economist Thomas Piketty:
“He cherry-picks, the data sometimes don’t match the sources that he cites, and he changes the data to make the charts look better without accurately documenting it,†Mr. Hassett said of Piketty’s research.
But while Hassett has said that so many things are off in the book that it affects the book’s conclusion, Piketty is standing by his research.
I think Piketty’s critics are spitting into the wind. His supporters don’t support him because his methods are solid but because they like his conclusions and prescription.
Speaking as someone who’s unlikely to read Dr. Piketty’s book and based solely on media reports I think that both the support and opposition fall into the “where you sit is where you stand” category. I think that his central claim (the relationship between capital and income) is wrong, the claims of issues of income inequality are right, and his policy prescription is wrong.
I also think that he suffers from a problem common to economists: lack of practical experience, particularly in Dr. Piketty’s case of practical experience with the United States. Government in the United States just doesn’t function the way it does in Europe, we don’t expect it to, and we don’t trust it (or at least some of us don’t). While I’m prepared to believe that France, Germany, or the UK can redistribute their way to greater income equality, I don’t believe that would work out in the U. S. where redistributing from the rich and the poor to the upper middle class represents a best case scenario. More common is redistributing from the poor, the middle, and one group of the rich to a different group of the rich, which hardly promotes greater equality. It just re-arranges the deck chairs.
