Jason Hirthler — Piketty, Odessa, and the March of Profit

But does any sensible person really doubt that capitalism is a battle between labor and capital, where the enrichment of one is had by the dispossession of the other? Or perhaps this is underground knowledge, known only to deranged leftists and free-range libertarians. (At this point in our story a Lilliputian academic in oxford-cloth cornflower blue materializes to claim that economics is a nonzero sum game, brandishing Wealth of Nations and The Road to Serfdom, but never bothering to note the declining-rate-of-profit mechanism that instances dispossession in the first place. A philosophical “externality”, perhaps.) 

No matter. It appears Piketty has produced a post-hoc data-set for what Citigroup announced back in 2005 when its brightly titled report, “Plutonomy” and the much-anticipated sequel, “Revisiting Plutonomy” were unfortunately leaked to the rabble. These signal reports essentially divided the world into “the Plutonomy and the rest,” the rest later adopting the more dramatic moniker, “the Precariat.” Unfortunately, Citigroup hastily attempted to suppress its reports when it was discovered their authors had been so dreadfully honest about everything. Nor did Citigroup provide any colorful illustrations of its two-tiered world, as it might have done. Perhaps some Raphaelite vision of a high cloud populated by mincing dandies in horse-drawn carriages, while far, far below a burning wasteland of scavengers, tramps, and thieves collected the crumbs that overspilt the cloud of plenty. Such a rendering might have popularized the reality Citi was describing. Instead, nobody read the text-heavy communiqués from on high. Thus poor Piketty was left to labor away trying to transform his awe-inspiring mountains of data into an exceedingly simple three-symbol formula, the better to demonstrate to the myopic ivory tower and the huddled masses just how our destinies diverge. (John Calvin has already usefully explained why they diverge.)

But, of course, ivory towered academia already knows all this, too. What are the words “market efficiency” but a description of a good scenario for capital and a bad one for labor? What is the word “liberalization” or “labor flexibility” but descriptions of a good scenario for capital and a bad one for labor? What is the suspicious absence of the word “externality” from the logic of the invisible hand but an absent-minded oversight for capital and a life-debilitating elision for labor?

Download Citigroup plutonomy reports here.

Dissident Voice
Piketty, Odessa, and the March of Profit
Jason Hirthler