Wednesday, May 14, 2014

PBS NewsHour— Debating Piketty’s theory on how wealth begets wealth, widens the economic gap


Gwen Ifill interviews Heather Boushey of the Washington Center for Equitable Growth and Kevin Hassett of the American Enterprise Institute.

PBS NewsHour — video and transcript
Debating Piketty’s theory on how wealth begets wealth, widens the economic gap

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Not a very good performance by Boushey. Hassett says that according to Piketty, capital will get all the income. But Piketty says nothing of the sort. And yet Boushey does nothing to counter this egregious error, and lets the impression stand.

Piketty says first that the capital/income ratio beta stabilizes at s/g over the long run. The total capital share is r*beta. So the question then depends on r. He considers various possibilities for the future dynamics of r, but in the end says that r*beta could reach "30 or 40 percent."

Not 100%!

The point is, that with a capital share that high, inequality can increase dramatically, along with the importance of inherited. Explaining the dynamics of these phenomena are the subject of most of Part Three of the book, which very few people appear to be reading.

Anonymous said...

I just posted at Rugged Egalitarianism on this Hasset-Boushey debate.


http://ruggedegalitarianism.wordpress.com/2014/05/14/how-hassett-gets-piketty-wrong

Tom Hickey said...

Promoted it.