REVIEW: CAPITAL IN THE 21ST CENTURY Thomas Picketty

TOM'S REVIEW

Capital in the 21^st Century (2014):

I don’t read much non-fiction because:

·         It is usually not as well written as quality fiction

·         It is usually less truthful than quality fiction

·         It says everything it has to say in the first 50 pages

If ever there was a book that affirmed my bias, this is it. 

For whatever reasons that only media types know, this book was all the rage in the financial press the first half of 2014.  The buzz was that it was the DAS KAPITAL of the 21^st C.  I haven’t read DAS KAPITAL and so I cannot say whether this book is its equivalent.  But then, as I have since discovered, neither can the financial press reviewers of this book, who have likely never read Karl Marx and have even more likely not read much of this book.  I admit that I say this based on a limited sample of reviews and one very telling statistic—and this book if nothing else is all about statistics—from a survey of Kindle readers, which reports that this is the most unread big seller of all time.  Only 2% of readers have made it to the end.  I may not be among the 1%ers on which this book turns its innumerable charts and graphs, but by God I am one of the 2%ers who finished this bastard.   

CAPITAL makes a noble effort at exploring the timely issue of wealth and income inequality and its implications for current and future social order.  The 21^st C French economist with the oddly 19^th C English name of Thomas Picketty analyses the extreme wealth and income inequality of France and England from the time of the French Revolution to the end of the First World War, the relative wealth and income equality of the 20^th C through 1980, and the increased polarisation between the haves and have-nots in the wake of the 1980s economic policies of Reagan and Thatcher. While the book is not overtly political, it also does not attempt to mask its leanings. 

Give Picketty credit for trying to garner a wide audience with an intrinsically dry subject.  There are innumerable graphs for the economists, sociologists and academics.  There is a sop to humanities majors with repeated references to Jane Austen and Honoré de Balzac. Picketty goes full-on populist by citing the social hierarchy in Titanic.  And he even offers a solution to the problem of wealth and income equality for all the dreamers and idealists.

The solution is of course unworkable in the minds of anyone but the most doctrinaire European Parliamentarian.  It calls for an annual tax of up to 1% on assets over a certain threshold—say $5 or $10 million—to be administered globally. Proceeds from the tax would be used to provide decent food, shelter, education and medicine to those who cannot afford them.  Picketty does not bother with questions of corruption and misappropriation of funds but chooses only to accentuate the positive--that a global asset tax would eliminate tax havens, increase transparency, improve data accuracy and address poverty.   You have to love his optimism.  Wish I could say the same for his book. 

Two stars

EDITOR'S NOTE

Tom deserves great accolades for this review for many reasons, not the least of which he was the ONLY person to read the entire tome.  Thus no one else has the right to say anything about this book in this forum, but generally the reception was the same, as people voted with their sloth:  Q.E.D.

PS: The boo birds were out for Joe, who chose the book, but had a forgetful moment and had another engagement such that he could not attend. 

Par contre, the pork pies were of their usual high quality.