Brad DeLong — Reviewing Lawrence H. Summers’s Review of Piketty III: The Rise of the Robots

The way I see it, robots do play a central part in the logic of Piketty’s argument, even if their particular links in his chain of reasoning are not properly stressed and highlighted–and this is, I think, one flaw in what I do think is a great book. The Rise of the Robots is one powerful reason why Piketty believes that the large runup in the wealth-to-annual-income ratio he expects to see in the North Atlantic over the next century will not be accompanied by a sharply-falling rate of profit....

The Rise of the Robots is not the principal argument Piketty advances to support his claim that the increase in the wealth-to-annual-income ratio he forecasts is not going to be neutralized in its effects on income distribution by a fall in the rate of profit. Piketty’s main argument, I think, is that wealth dominates politics, and more wealth dominates politics more completely. Hence the modern state becomes an executive committee for managing the affairs of the ruling class, and is rather good at taking steps to keep the rate of profit from falling and different components of wealth from competing against each other too hard. But the Rise of the Robots is an argument. 

 Power and its economic result, rent. Now we are zeroing in.

WCEG — The Equitablog
Reviewing Lawrence H. Summers’s Review of Piketty III: The Rise of the Robots
Brad DeLong