FT’s Giles Finds Piketty’s ‘Wealth Inequality’ Work Riddled With ‘Data Problems’ — And Wrong
French economist Thomas Piketty has become a darling of the left for allegedly “proving” that, as paraphrased by Chris Giles at the Financial Times, “wealth inequalities are heading back up to levels last seen before the first world war.” The Media Research Center’s Julia Seymour has described Piketty as a “‘rock star’ of the far-left,” an accurate assessment given praises heaped upon his book and especially his public policy prescriptions by the likes of Alternet and Vox’s especially gullible Matthew Yglesias. Seymour also notes that Piketty’s work has received a great deal of favorable notice in the establishment press, and that he has met “with the Treasury Secretary” and “(President) Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers.”
Of course these “oligarch groupies,” as Jeffrey Lord describes them, love him. Piketty favors an 80 percent tax on incomes above $500,000 and a progressive global tax on real wealth (i.e., after subtracting debt). The problem is that FT’s Giles, having done a deep dive into the economist’s data and spreadsheets, has found serious problems in the professor’s work which nullify his conclusions.