balzac

He talks about Balzac and Jane Austen a lot and devotes a small amount of time handwaving about the micro-scale of inequality.

A common quote from balzac, inaccurate though.

I'm only part way through the book, but to give a counterpoint from it, one of Piketty's examples is from a Balzac story, which describes a situation where basically those in the top 1% of jobs earn nothing compared to those with the top 1% of accumulated capital.

Balzac, Proust, Dostoeyvsky– all of them did this whole agonizing woe-is-me thing, or represented it powerfully in their work.

If it's about inequality caused by inherited capital, Piketty only supports this claim in the historical era (Jane Austen/Balzac/etc).

Balzac is a better example, he had a frivolous mother and was left alone in a room most of the time.

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.

If someone can hadoop a wordcount, I'll bet that the word "Balzac" appears more frequently than "China".

When I first heard this claim, it was about the French author Honoré de Balzac.

Reading this also reminds me of Balzac's Lost Illusions.

Balzac's story makes me wonder if I'll make it to 50.

I'd say on the contrary: seeing beauty in math is borderline psycho and an anomaly, just like seeing music graphically or being haunted with stories (Balzac was).

If someone can hadoop a wordcount, I'll bet that the word "Balzac" appears more frequently than "China".

"Balzac was on to something 200 years ago, but to be fair to modern day multi-millionaires, the only real way to accumulate wealth prior to the 18th century was to steal it, or tax it," Will we ever go back to the economy where the only way to accumulate wealth is to steal it or tax it?

Balzac, Proust, Dostoeyvsky– all of them did this whole agonizing woe-is-me thing, or represented it powerfully in their work.

If it's about inequality caused by inherited capital, Piketty only supports this claim in the historical era (Jane Austen/Balzac/etc).

Balzac is a better example, he had a frivolous mother and was left alone in a room most of the time.