EVEN BERNIE ISN'T TALKING ABOUT sOCIALISM:

3. The sentence "Real wages are much higher in America than in Western Europe" does not come easily to his pen.  Nor does "The United States is a remarkably successful innovator, let's see what we can learn from that."  Or even "Raising wages is more important than merely limiting inequality."  Those seems to be banished thoughts in the Piketty intellectual universe.

4. The sections on Soviet and socialist experience can only be called "delusional."  In his account, if only a few political decisions had gone the other way, the USSR might have ended up on a path similar to that of Norway (p.603 and thereabouts).

You know, maybe you think that the inequalities of the current day are much worse than people had been expecting.  but that should not revise your view of socialism and the Soviet Union, two matters fairly well settled by historical research.

5. Give these lenses, it is impossible for Piketty to offer any commentary on recent events (about the last 400 pp. of the book) that is anything other than distorted and unreliable.  There is massive distrust of the wealthy in this book, and virtually no distrust of concentrated state power.

Tweet   @brothersjudd