piketty

The critique is well put, the author notes the Piketty ignores the workers movements that shaped capital.

As another HN thread notes: Piketty mentions that Germany got a lot of their own debt written off after WW2.

Strangely enough, that's exactly what Piketty was talking about in a recent interview with the digital edition of Le Monde.

Thomas Piketty is arguing along the similar lines but it think from the perspective that the creditors austerity policy has failed.

I also agree with Piketty about the way the crisis served to highlight systemic issues in the EU.

As Thomas Piketty pointed out, 60% of German debt was cancelled in 1953.

Along those lines, I am very unhappy that Piketty chose to give this interview on this topic.

The only example of 'external debt' Piketty is talking about is war reparations.

I'm not qualified to judge whether Piketty is correct but I can offer this analogy.

So, Piketty wants to forgive debt, and he thinks it's a bad idea to kick states out of the Eurozone, since that supposedly will hurt confidence.

Nor is Piketty saying they are the exact same thing.

At the least, Piketty is being intellectually dishonest.

I wonder if this will end up being "The Interview" in Piketty's career.

Piketty seems like he is in favor of repaying this debt by "inflation, a special tax on private wealth, and debt relief." But, he is against Greece leaving the Eurozone.

Obviously going to be lots of "tl;dr" here, so I'll summarize: Piketty's capitalism is all about numbers, Marx's was about social relations.

Piketty may be "correct" in some twisted view in which paid-in-full war compensations are not actually recognized as such¹ and more importantly - he wants to be correct in an even more twisted context that puts on the same footing a subject of dictated-upon debt and the one of self-inflicted debt.

This should not take away from this correct analysis of Piketty's ignorance of social movements and change.

How come so many left wing advocates (Piketty, Krugman, etc) are coming out advocating for Greek bailouts?

Piketty may not have updated information, but it is also possible that he deliberately ignores some facts in order to stir a bigger debate.