Giles On Piketty: The Lady Doth Protest Too Much

Mistakes? Surely. But the reasoning and conclusions stand. If anything, Piketty understates the problem.

Is Piketty All Wrong?

"And there's also the economic story. In the United States, income inequality has soared since 1980 by any measure you use. Unless the affluent starting saving less than the working class, this rise in income disparity must have led to a rise in wealth disparity over time. The point is that Giles is proving too much; if his attempted reworking of Piketty leads to the conclusion that nothing has happened to wealth inequality, what that really shows is that he's doing something wrong. None of this absolves Piketty from the need to respond to each of the individual questions. But anyone imagining that the whole notion of rising wealth inequality has been refuted is almost surely going to be disappointed."

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/05/24/is-piketty-all-wrong/