… is from page 210 of Deirdre McCloskey’s superb 2019 volume, Why Liberalism Works: How True Liberal Values Produce a Freer, More Equal, Prosperous World for All:
His [Thomas Piketty’s] ethics is a narrow ethics of envy. His politics assumes that governments can accomplish anything they propose. And his economics is flawed from start to finish.
DBx: I, too, read Piketty’s 2014 tome carefully, cover-to-cover. And I, too, conclude that it’s a torrent of mistaken – often hilariously so – assumptions mingled madly with questionable interpretations of data, and all sifted through the mind of someone who hasn’t a clue about sound economics.
Worst of all, Piketty’s book is one that aims not only to elevate envy into an admirable emotion, but to establish envy as the basis for government policy. I can imagine bases for government policy that are as absurd, abominable, destructive, uncivilized, and unjust as the one proposed by Piketty, his colleagues, and his fans, but I cannot imagine a basis that is more absurd, abominable, destructive, uncivilized, and unjust.
