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4.26 AVERAGE
4.26 AVERAGE
challenging
informative
medium-paced
Sophomore slumps are the bane of writers with a prominent debut. Apparently some reviewers seem to think Piketty’s second major work falls under this category. This scattered unfair reception should come under scrutiny given the simple thought experiment of asking what the response would have been had this not been preceded by Capital in the Twenty-First Century. Had this been the case Capital & Ideology would have been hailed as the important major work that it is.
Most of the criticism hones in on the final chapter in which Piketty proposes some very high level counterbalances to the existing political/economic structure that has flourished to date and allowed gross inequality to thrive. These criticism seemingly ignore the prior 1000 pages that brilliantly lay out the ‘social, intellectual, and political history of inequality regimes’. It’s too bad that this is largely overlooked as the bulk of the book is a master class in showing just how societies across the world have evolved similar trends in political-economy: those that evolve to funnel and protect capital for a select few at the expense of the many.
Piketty’s explanation of the reasoning behind many voting against their economic interests are some of the most convincing written recently (even more so than what Ezra Klein put forward recently on ‘Why We’re Divided’): ‘The conservative revolution of the 1980s, the collapse of Soviet communism, and the development of neo-proprietarian ideology vastly increased the concentration of income and wealth in the first two decades of the 21st century. Inequality has in turn heightened social tensions almost everywhere. For want of a constructive egalitarian and universal political outlet, these tensions have fostered the kinds of nationalist identity cleavages that we see today in practically every part of the world… When people are told that there is no credible alternative to the socioeconomic organization and class inequality that exist today, it is not surprising that they invest their hopes in defending their borders and identities instead.’
With respect to Piketty’s proposals in the final chapter, it’s not as if he is harking back to a soviet style system or only putting forward a hackneyed version of “millennial socialism” (although one would think he were having only read the Economist’s book review): he openly states that these are overarching and not specific proposals to deal with these very real problems that he has so expertly laid out in the book.
One note on the audiobook – reading simultaneously the electronic version and listening to the audiobook, while a beneficial experience one needs to take into the account that the endnotes are read as part of the book, thus one has a jarring experience of having that material inserted into the main text. Net-net it would have been better had the endnotes been a separate section IMO.
Most of the criticism hones in on the final chapter in which Piketty proposes some very high level counterbalances to the existing political/economic structure that has flourished to date and allowed gross inequality to thrive. These criticism seemingly ignore the prior 1000 pages that brilliantly lay out the ‘social, intellectual, and political history of inequality regimes’. It’s too bad that this is largely overlooked as the bulk of the book is a master class in showing just how societies across the world have evolved similar trends in political-economy: those that evolve to funnel and protect capital for a select few at the expense of the many.
Piketty’s explanation of the reasoning behind many voting against their economic interests are some of the most convincing written recently (even more so than what Ezra Klein put forward recently on ‘Why We’re Divided’): ‘The conservative revolution of the 1980s, the collapse of Soviet communism, and the development of neo-proprietarian ideology vastly increased the concentration of income and wealth in the first two decades of the 21st century. Inequality has in turn heightened social tensions almost everywhere. For want of a constructive egalitarian and universal political outlet, these tensions have fostered the kinds of nationalist identity cleavages that we see today in practically every part of the world… When people are told that there is no credible alternative to the socioeconomic organization and class inequality that exist today, it is not surprising that they invest their hopes in defending their borders and identities instead.’
With respect to Piketty’s proposals in the final chapter, it’s not as if he is harking back to a soviet style system or only putting forward a hackneyed version of “millennial socialism” (although one would think he were having only read the Economist’s book review): he openly states that these are overarching and not specific proposals to deal with these very real problems that he has so expertly laid out in the book.
One note on the audiobook – reading simultaneously the electronic version and listening to the audiobook, while a beneficial experience one needs to take into the account that the endnotes are read as part of the book, thus one has a jarring experience of having that material inserted into the main text. Net-net it would have been better had the endnotes been a separate section IMO.