Here he is at Bloomberg View having read Thomas Piketty's new . . . um . . . novel, Capital in the 21st Century, and found it wanting:
There's a persistent tension between the limits of the data he presents and the grandiosity of the conclusions he draws. At times this borders on schizophrenia. ... Aside from its other flaws, "Capital in the 21st Century" invites readers to believe not just that inequality is important but that nothing else matters. This book wants you to worry about low growth in the coming decades not because that would mean a slower rise in living standards, but because it might cause the ratio of capital to output to rise, which would worsen inequality. ... In Piketty's view of the world, where inequality is all that counts, capital accumulation is almost a sin in its own right. ...
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As much as I love the rest of what Clive Crook has to say on behalf of capital accumulation, I think that's it right there. More than anything else, Thomas Piketty is an anti-Calvinist of the French type, an heir of Jacobinism who is more interested in leveling society than in lifting it.
