Saturday, April 12, 2014

Paul Krugman — Why We’re in a New Gilded Age


Weekend reading: Krugman reviews Piketty
Before I get into that, however, let me say right away that Piketty has written a truly superb book. It’s a work that melds grand historical sweep—when was the last time you heard an economist invoke Jane Austen and Balzac?—with painstaking data analysis. And even though Piketty mocks the economics profession for its “childish passion for mathematics,” underlying his discussion is a tour de force of economic modeling, an approach that integrates the analysis of economic growth with that of the distribution of income and wealth. This is a book that will change both the way we think about society and the way we do economics.
The New York Review of Books
Why We’re in a New Gilded Age
Paul Krugman

2 comments:

Roger Erickson said...

make that "gelded" age, and count Paul as one of the passive surgery-support crew

David said...

Pretty good article by Krugman. I think these discussions of labor vs. "capital" would be more meaningful if "land" were restored as a "factor of production." Although physical land is not such an important factor in modern American inequality as it surely was in the "Belle Époque," the phenomenon of inflated salaries of CEO's is, in a sense, rent. In a joint monopoly the proprietors are at liberty to conspire to name their own price. I heard a lot in the '90's about "the Michael Jordan factor" or the "franchise player" theory of CEO wage inflation. I would say "it looks like self-dealing to me." It seems I was right.