By the way, that’s a nice elevator summary of Piketty

Left-wing politics is dismissive of economics, except when it sings a tune that they find pleasing.

When they do find this tune pleasing, some of the expositors of these pleasing tunes shows surprisingly deep knowledge of economics. This knowledge could not have been required on the spot for that purpose, and was previously well hidden.

Once I worked this out, I became somewhat less tolerant of people who sprouted nonsense, especially when they had these islands of deep knowledge of economics crop up from time to time in conversation.

Most of the criticisms seemed to be that he wasn’t “left” enough. It was definitely a very rhetorically left wing audience and panel, which I’m not.

I’m critical of the Piketty text, but for different reasons – I just felt his explanation wasn’t the most plausible way of explaining his stylized facts. And even if it was, his policy conclusions didn’t necessarily follow. He was clear with his assumptions in the text though – I appreciate that.

Hey, thanks – yes I felt we said far too little about defining the problem. I think the panel was too large, and it was too unstructured sadly.