{"id":16865,"date":"2014-04-17T14:42:00","date_gmt":"2014-04-17T18:42:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/?p=16865"},"modified":"2014-04-17T15:11:43","modified_gmt":"2014-04-17T19:11:43","slug":"philip-pilkington-misdirection-galbraith-on-thomas-pikettys-new-book-on-capital","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/2014\/04\/17\/philip-pilkington-misdirection-galbraith-on-thomas-pikettys-new-book-on-capital\/","title":{"rendered":"Philip Pilkington: Misdirection \u2013 Galbraith on Thomas Piketty\u2019s New Book on Capital"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I just got word that Thomas Piketty will be speaking at<a title=\"Piketty talk\" href=\"http:\/\/www.harvard.com\/event\/thomas_piketty\/\" target=\"_blank\"> Harvard Bookstore tomorrow<\/a>. I vaguely recalled seeing his name in a headline I had seen.<\/p>\n<p>Naked Capitalism has the post <a title=\"Naked Capitalism post\" href=\"http:\/\/www.nakedcapitalism.com\/2014\/04\/philip-pilkington-galbraith-on-thomas-piketty.html\" target=\"_blank\">Philip Pilkington: Misdirection \u2013 Galbraith on Thomas Piketty\u2019s New Book on Capital<\/a>.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Galbraith also makes clear that Piketty\u2019s policy proposals \u2014 mostly dealing with higher taxes on the rich \u2014 are probably not fit for purpose in a globalised, financialised economy. Rather Galbraith asks us to consider alternative approaches.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>If the heart of the problem is a rate of return on private assets that is too high, the better solution is to lower that rate of return. How? Raise minimum wages! That lowers the return on capital that relies on low-wage labor. Support unions! Tax corporate profits and personal capital gains, including dividends! Lower the interest rate actually required of businesses! Do this by creating new public and cooperative lenders to replace today\u2019s zombie mega-banks. And if one is concerned about the monopoly rights granted by law and trade agreements to Big Pharma, Big Media, lawyers, doctors, and so forth, there is always the possibility (as Dean Baker reminds us) of introducing more competition.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n<pre><\/pre>\n<p>As mentioned in the article, Galbraith&#8217;s critique <a title=\"Galbrath's critique\" href=\"http:\/\/www.dissentmagazine.org\/article\/kapital-for-the-twenty-first-century\" target=\"_blank\"><em>Kapital<\/em> for the Twenty-First Century?<\/a> is in <em>Dissent Magazine<\/em>. There is an excellent discussion on the difference between productive wealth creation and non-productive wealth creation.\u00a0 The taxes that would fix the problem with the non-productive wealth creation might hinder the productive wealth creation. Hence, Galbraith&#8217;s suggestions above.\u00a0 Worth the price of admission of reading his critique.<\/p>\n<p>Perhaps it would be worth it to go to the talk and throw this criticism at him.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I just got word that Thomas Piketty will be speaking at Harvard Bookstore tomorrow. I vaguely recalled seeing his name in a headline I had seen. Naked Capitalism has the post Philip Pilkington: Misdirection \u2013 Galbraith on Thomas Piketty\u2019s New Book on Capital. Galbraith also makes clear that Piketty\u2019s policy proposals \u2014 mostly dealing with [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[166],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-16865","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-stevegsposts","7":"czr-hentry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16865","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16865"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16865\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16870,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16865\/revisions\/16870"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16865"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16865"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16865"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}