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2015-01-08 Home Front: Culture Wars

Lefty Econ book based on faulty premise, bludgeoned data

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Posted by CrazyFool 2015-01-08 00:00|| || Front Page|| [9 views ] Top

#1 The reality is that governments in the West and in particular the U.S. have been borrowing money since the '70's to artificially prop up a level of lifestyle equality that is unnatural and unsustainable for individuals and families who are involved in unskilled and semiskilled labor, government employment, and skilled labor for which there is an oversupply. Although this has been done primarily by the left, politicians of both parties are guilty of this.

Piketty is a class warfare arsonist. He and his wealthy supporters are pouring gasoline on a fire composed of envy and officiousness and relative deprivation in a public that has suffered from moral breakdown and cultural and economic amnesia. What we now define as working class or middle class would be thought of as rich at all times in human history before 1930.

At some point the credit-supported utopia made by cynical and dishonest politicians, that was created by purchasing votes from citizens in exchange for a lifestyle is not justified by the level of value that their labor produces and that they could never achieve by free association in the economic realm, must collapse, because it is mathematically impossible to sustain. Piketty and his type are doing everything they can to prop up this system even if only for a a few more months because they know that they, not the people they purport to care about, are the ones who largely profit from this system.

Motivations as well as facts are suspect as well. Piketty and the rest of the wealthy blue-state model types are the primary benefactors of the big-business/big government redistributive state, and know that the standard of living and status they can achieve in a more free enterprise type of society would be vastly diminished. To believe that they do what they do out of some vast upwelling of compassion or lofty sense of fairness is ridiculous on its face.

Further, all the efforts at mitigating so-called "unfair" equality inevitably result in a widening of the gap between the super wealthy and everyone else. The classic example is the New Deal in the 1930's.

Piketty and his ilk must lie, because the facts on the ground objectively prove that the default state of growing and robust economies is one of less, not more, government interference and attempts at central redistribution of wealth. Like Michael Bellisles in the realm of gun control, Piketty had to cobble together a bunch of unrelated and fabricated data in order to prove something he WANTED to believe and something he has made a lot of money by promoting, rather than what actually works in the real world.

Posted by no mo uro 2015-01-08 06:23|| 2015-01-08 06:23|| Front Page Top

#2 Asked about the above issues, Piketty told FoxNews.com that there may be some typos in the book but said he did not think they affected his central conclusion.

Factual inaccuracies do not impact conclusions ?

Posted by Besoeker 2015-01-08 06:39|| 2015-01-08 06:39|| Front Page Top

#3 Piketty switched between data sets in a way that was biased in favor of his argument
Yes it does sound a lot like mann made data.

Posted by Shipman 2015-01-08 07:24|| 2015-01-08 07:24|| Front Page Top

#4 "Factual inaccuracies do not impact conclusions?"

Of course not, Besoeker.

Just ask Dan Rather, Michael Bellisles, Jared Diamond, or Professor Piketty.

Fake but accurate - the mantra of today's left.

Posted by no mo uro 2015-01-08 07:54|| 2015-01-08 07:54|| Front Page Top

#5 Through the 1940s and 1950s, the highest tax rates were up in the 90 percent region. Only in wartime and shortly thereafter have tax rates been extremely high--mostly coming on the rich. There is an implicit assumption that sticking it to the rich is that somehow they didn't earn their money fair and square or that they can afford to foot more of the bill since they have it. It is application of those socialistic social justice and redistribution concepts that the lefties love so much.

Posted by JohnQC 2015-01-08 08:45|| 2015-01-08 08:45|| Front Page Top

#6 Clickable version of the graph at wiki site if you scroll down.

Posted by JohnQC 2015-01-08 08:47|| 2015-01-08 08:47|| Front Page Top

#7 no mo uro, funny you mention Michael Bellisles. He was my first thought as well. If I remember correctly he sited sources saying they said things they didn't (and in some cases sources that were long destroyed) with the understanding that nobody would check, or if they did check his book would have been through the bestseller sales charts and gone before they did.

And then the damage is done as most people don't see the correction, they just remember the trivia and incorrect facts.

Posted by rjschwarz 2015-01-08 08:57|| 2015-01-08 08:57|| Front Page Top

#8 An underlying Motto of the Left - Fake but True.

Posted by Procopius2k 2015-01-08 09:18|| 2015-01-08 09:18|| Front Page Top

#9 Taxation of incomes causes underemployment and thus unemployment.
The government then encourages debt to increase to try to correct this.
You can see why the rent-seeking establishment might not mind "progressive" taxation, it creates their rents.

Posted by Bright Pebbles 2015-01-08 10:00|| 2015-01-08 10:00|| Front Page Top

#10 Nobel-prize winner Paul Krugman called “the most important economics book of the year

That alone strongly suggests Piketty is full of beans.

Posted by SteveS 2015-01-08 12:21|| 2015-01-08 12:21|| Front Page Top

#11 Not just Krugman - The NYT has pretty much lashed itself to Piketty's mast.

Posted by Pappy 2015-01-08 14:12|| 2015-01-08 14:12|| Front Page Top

#12 "Lefty Econ book based on faulty premise, bludgeoned data"

Marx was the first

Posted by Bright Pebbles 2015-01-08 15:18|| 2015-01-08 15:18|| Front Page Top

#13 Funny how they say 'Nobel prize winner' as if it really meant something.

Posted by CrazyFool 2015-01-08 15:47|| 2015-01-08 15:47|| Front Page Top

#14 Deflation is the only effective tax on wealth.

Posted by phil_b 2015-01-08 17:05|| 2015-01-08 17:05|| Front Page Top

#15 I wonder if anybody ever done the stats on who has better prediction accuracy record: economists or astrologers?

Posted by g(r)omgoru 2015-01-08 18:19|| 2015-01-08 18:19|| Front Page Top

#16 I wonder if anybody ever done the stats on who has better prediction accuracy record: economists or astrologers?

I read somewhere that Krugman predicted seven of the last two recessions.

Posted by badanov 2015-01-08 18:45|| http://www.chriscovert.net 2015-01-08 18:45|| Front Page Top

#17 "Former ENRON Advisor, Paul Krugman™"

Posted by Frank G 2015-01-08 18:50|| 2015-01-08 18:50|| Front Page Top

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