French socialist Thomas Piketty became a left-wing celebrity two years ago upon publication of his updated version of Karl Marx’s Das Kapital entitled “Capitalism in the Twenty-First Century.” His main claim, after sifting through mountains of mind-boggling statistics, is that the middle class got only “a few crumbs” from capitalism over the past century, starting with 1910, the year Piketty chose as his starting point.
Economist Tim Kane completely demolishes Das Kapital II by illustrating the astronomical increases in myriad measures of human improvement caused by capitalism over the past century. As with Das Kapital, Capitalism in the Twenty-First Century tells a tale that is the opposite of reality. (Thanks to Peter Lorenzi).
Reading that article makes me want to kick Piketty between the legs. Not very libertarian and I'm not violent, but that's what I feel. Piketty is nothing but proof of how powerful an emotion envy is.
ReplyDeleteI have found that too many on the left confuse crony capitalism with free market capitalism. Raising taxes on the so-called Rich while doing nothing about the system of crony capitalism is no solution.
ReplyDeleteI was an anti-war leftist in 1973 and realized I did not know anything about economics and the "socialism". When I first discovered Rothbard (where my first reaction was pure horror at the idea of various public projects being performed by "firms"), it took me about a week to realize that NO leftist/"progressive"/Democrat could or would keep straight the essential difference between a voluntary transaction and a crony relationship. It was all "capitalism". They permanently lost all credibility in my eyes.
DeleteSaying "TOO MANY on the left confuse crony capitalism with free market capitalism" understates the problem. THEY ALL confuse it, every day, all of the time, purposefully.
That was a good article. I don't subscribe to the author's argument that IP is or encourages positive externalities, but the rest of the article is well written and argued. I also liked the series of photographs he presented as evidence of the great strides humanity has made in a single century, all thanks to capital investment, risk taking and production.
ReplyDeleteKane's article would make a good TED talk.
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