This is really weird because I was reading reviews about the book yesterday. Yeah, apparently capital has a higher rate of return than the growth rate of national income. There's a long but great review of the book by an "A.J. Sutter" on Amazon.

One of the gripes from some reviewers is that Piketty didn't write about the environment, or different types of growth (qualitative instead of quantitative). People are also wishing he'd talk about - as you can see in the youtube comments - ownership/risk sharing among workers.

Not really a reply I guess. But my advice is to marry a rich baroness.

Yeah, from his talk it sounded like Piketty doesn't know much about the state of the environment / food production etc. His offhand comments about future population growth (like the US reaching 900 million) were a bit absurd.

It's interesting how little our political discourse has to do with what we know about economics, even taking more right-wing economists into account. "Mainstream" positions taken by a politician about economic issues would often be lunatic fringe positions if they were spoken by an economist.

Thanks for posting this, deadpan.

@astar, yes I believe you could extend that statement to almost all knowledge: science, the environment, psychology etc etc.
Unfortunately it seems that politicians and the electorate are for the most part just woefully ignorant.

Essentially your average misinformed, hopelessly ignorant, tabloid reading voter is not going to vote for some "know it all" more enlightened person.

Also one thing thats never mentioned is the inequality between affluent countries and poor ones. I would imagine that this inequality is even more extreme and also a larger problem. For example the lower classes in affluent countries are usually not *starving*