tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1740670447258719504.post3423364907288239270..comments2024-03-27T03:00:27.024-04:00Comments on Facts & other stubborn things: Yes, Acemoglu and Robinson's review of Piketty is very strangeEvanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12259004160963531720noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1740670447258719504.post-5718724565595777002014-08-28T07:50:16.383-04:002014-08-28T07:50:16.383-04:00The selective quoting is not limited to your examp...The selective quoting is not limited to your example, it occurs throughout the review. As I posted over on Marginal Revolution:<br /><br />AR quote Piketty:<br /><br />“The reason why wealth today is not as unequally distributed as in the past is simply that not enough time has passed since 1945 (p. 372).”14<br /><br />In footnote 14, they say:<br /><br />“Capital is not always clear about the reach of this fundamental force (or general law). For example, the last sentence is immediately followed by “This is no doubt part of the explanation, but by itself it is not enough,” leaving the reader to ponder what else is required for the claim to be true.”<br /><br />Yet Piketty completes the relevant paragraph with:<br /><br />“[contemporary] top earned incomes (for a given distribution) roughly balance top capital incomes (we are now in a society of managers, or at any rate a more balanced society). Similarly, the emergence of a “patrimonial middle class” owning between a quarter and a third of national wealth rather than a tenth or a twentieth (scarcely more than the poorest half of society) represents a major social transformation.”<br /><br />In other words, the two major reasons for lower inequality are that (1) there has been significant redistribution and (2) labour incomes have become more important, both of which AR later reference as counterpoints to Piketty’s thesis.Unlearningeconhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13687413107325575532noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1740670447258719504.post-26935476410029540872014-08-27T11:25:19.179-04:002014-08-27T11:25:19.179-04:00I have not been following this controversy, and ha...I have not been following this controversy, and have not read Piketty's book. But reading this post, I am confused by the framing. The first French Revolution went into a conservative period with the Thermidorian Reaction in 1794, then was formally ended as a popular movement by Napoleon's coup d'état in 1799, and finally was overthrown completely by the Treaty of Vienna that restored the Bourbon monarchy in 1815. Since it failed on the face of it to establish its more radical goals, and then even its more moderate ones, why would anyone expect the French Revolution to have been a turning point for income distribution in France? <br /><br />(Since "the French Revolution" in common usage means the one that started in 1789 and was widely debated in the US and elsewhere, I assume that's what Piketty, Acemoglu and Robinson are talking about. But if they were defying common usage and referring to the July Monarchy established in 1830, or the short-lived Second Republic of 1848, or the Third Republic that came out of the civil war in 1871, similar objections would apply, since all of these events failed to establish or even reversed radical participants' plans for changes in income distribution). <br /><br />WillAnonymousnoreply@blogger.com