Before this rather transparent hatchet job on Picketty, I had thought the FT was a fairly respectable publication - mainstream and bourgeoisie to be sure, but one with some standards for integrity, more NY Times than Fox News.
So why did the FT go after Picketty in such a crude manner? http://crookedtimber.org/2014/05/27/political-economy-is-political/ ------------------------------snip The reason that Piketty’s book has gotten such a reaction – both from its advocates and its critics – is because it threatens to upset the current equilibrium in economic thinking. As Mike says, it threatens to open up new questions – questions which are profoundly and *politically* uncomfortable for dominant approaches in economic thinking. The result is that it isn’t only the rich that are freaking out. I would guess that one can explain the immediate reaction of 85% of economists and public writers to the book by looking to their priors on this question – whether they like to emphasize efficiency questions over distributional concerns, or vice versa (another 10% can be explained by whether the writer in question thinks that he/she and his/her mates do or don’t get sufficient citations and respect). People who might have found the book interesting had it been an academic exercise, and perhaps even agreed with large parts of it, are freaking out because they worry that it has serious implications for political debate. If people start debating whether capitalism is inherently rigged, so that those with a lot of capital will naturally do better than those who won’t, … well who knows where they might go next. [...] Practical economists, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any political influences, are usually slaves of some defunct political philosopher.
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