A little non-bicycle action
February 3, 2019 § 6 Comments
I’m reading “Capital in the 21st Century” by Thomas Piketty. In many ways it is the first serious, non-polemical update of Karl Marx’s revolutionary work, “Das Kapital,” published in 1867.
If you have ever wondered about inequality, what it is, what it stems from, how it can be measured, and its relationship to capital, this book will blow your mind. It’s written by a brilliant French economist, for people like me who don’t know much about economics or the fundamentals of how wealth is distributed.
I’m less than halfway through the book and it’s already clear: Marx was wrong about some basics, but right about others. Capital, at least as it is regulated–that is, taxed–in the modern world will ultimately devour everyone who depends not on capital to live but on labor. And as Piketty’s research makes clear, it has been this way since at least the 18th Century, if not before.
There are no flaming, revolutionary declamations, only the cool recitation of equations, statistics, analysis, and political facts that show how everyone who works for a wage is being, and will always be, fed to the maw of capital.
Happy reading!
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Cycling in the South Bay 
Delightful
It’s almost as if you’re sat there waiting to approve comments…
You are reminding me of the laffer curve….at some point you become satisfied with a certain amount of wages and aren’t motivated to work any harder….kind of rare in LA
Can you summarize it in the length of a tweet, please?
We r fuked.
Sad!