"I did not find the work of U.S.economists entirely convincing..."
Of course the objective has never been to convince -- only to repeat and repeat and repeat. On Mon, Mar 24, 2014 at 10:22 AM, Louis Proyect <[email protected]> wrote: > Piketty, who teaches at the Paris School of Economics, has spent nearly > two decades studying inequality. In 1993, at the age of twenty-two, he > moved to the United States to teach at M.I.T. A graduate of the élite > École Normale Supérieure, he had recently completed his doctorate, a > dense mathematical exploration of the theory behind tax policies. Plenty > of bright young European scholars move across the Atlantic, of course, > and many of them end up staying. Piketty was not to be one of them. "It > was the first time I had set foot in the United States," he recalls in > the introduction, "and it felt good to have my work recognized so > quickly. Here was a country that knew how to attract immigrants when it > wanted to! Yet I also realized quite soon that I wanted to return to > France and Europe, which I did when I was twenty-five. Since then, I > have not left Paris, except for a few brief trips." > > Part of Piketty's motivation in returning home was cultural. His parents > are politically engaged Parisians who took part in the 1968 riots. When > he was growing up, his intellectual role models were French historians > and philosophers of the left, rather than economists. They included > members of the Annales school, such as Lucien Febvre and Fernand > Braudel, who produced exhaustive analyses of everyday life. Compared > with this scholarship, much of the economics that Piketty encountered at > M.I.T. seemed arid and pointless. "I did not find the work of U.S. > economists entirely convincing," he writes. "To be sure, they were all > very intelligent, and I still have many friends from that period of my > life. But something strange happened: I was only too aware of the fact > that I knew nothing at all about the world's economic problems." > > full: > > http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/books/2014/03/31/140331crbo_books_cassidy?currentPage=all > _______________________________________________ > pen-l mailing list > [email protected] > https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l > -- Cheers, Tom Walker (Sandwichman)
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