Palley's review of Piketty's book is pretty good. At last a left of center economist lays out the theoretical foundation of the book, which certainly has to be a primary consideration in assessing it. Now no doubt the mainstream economists who have reviewed the book, including Krugman, are well aware of these foundations, but they accept them as obvious and see no need to delve into just how problematic they are. Non-economists who have reviewed the book tend to focus on Piketty's tremendous empirical work (though as Palley points out, Piketty isn't the only economist who has done great work in this area, just the major mainstream economist who has done it), probably because the theoretical stuff is not something they know much about. Yet, as Palley points out, the theoretical foundations of the book are thin gruel, neoclassical growth theory long since discredited even on its own terms and missing altogether the nature of capitalism. I think that Palley may be correct to predict that economics will fold Piketty's now famous inequality into its textbooks and lectures, while the truth that economics is essentially a complex set of equations that obscures the reality of class power and gives ideological cover for exploitation will continue to go unchallenged. Il leopardo (gattopardo) non può cambiare le sue macchie. Indeed. Gattopardo can be translated as ocelot, which is also called a dwarf leopard.
I keep hearing that we are in a new era, since economists like Krugman have moved left. Now we have Piketty. Maybe this is so, but I am skeptical. Better, I think for leftist to push the critique of capitalism, over and over as hard and relentlessly as we can. If some economists like Krugman want to ally with the left, good. But I wouldn't count on it. _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
