The daily Piketty

Robert Kuttner points to what Piketty omitted and is looking forward to a sequel.
Yves Smith from the left and Tyler Cowen from George Mason University are not happy with Piketty. Yves Smith thinks that the following piece is 'dead on' Piketty Dikitty Rikitty. Tyler Cowen has several pieces in Marginal Revolution which I will leave out. Apparently, Piketty is not that popular in France. The Economist explains "Perhaps the chief reason, though, is that questions about inequality, the centrepiece of Mr Piketty’s research, have long been central to the political debate in France, a country that already has an annual wealth tax on assets. This has been true for the right as much as" for the left. Jacques Chirac, a Gaullist, was first elected president by campaigning to mend the country’s “social fracture”. Mr Hollande was at his most passionate on the campaign stump when denouncing the world of finance as his “chief adversary”, and the super-rich as “grasping and arrogant”. In short, drawing attention to resurgent inequality has a sense of novelty in America, but in France it is a political given.
More at Brad Delong including this questions and answers.

Alla Rakha Jayanti

Google celebration
It is probably not well known that he was a MD for several Hindi films during forties and fifties. It was under the name A.R. Qureshi and some similar names.
Here is one by Surinder Kaur from the film Sabak 1950 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cmwrlr2BHuo
One by Sudha Malhotra from Alladin Laila 1957 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IoaoWs4AH7Y
One by Naseem Akthar from Waqim Azra 1946 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ofpj20gmOq4
And a video is available for one from 1952 film Bewafa

A duet and dance from 'Amar Singh Rathod' 1957

The daily Piketty

as Brad Delong put it. Dean Baker links to a couple of his posts about Piketty and discusses some of the left's reactions that Piketty may be appropriated by the right Paul Krugman and the Economic Fringe
"In short, there are some grounds for us fringe types to be unhappy about the current course of mainstream economics, but to my view it’s better to look for allies than enemies. For this reason, I remain happy that Piketty has renewed public focus on inequality, and I will pass over the technical grounds on which he has rightly been criticized by my fellow fringists."

On Chundur case

Sometimes written (Tsundur) does not seem to be making to many blogs except some dalit blogs.
Some background in the first two links here. Here are some YouTube links, one in Telugu.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BjaazZOVG9Q
https://www.youtube.com/watch?list=UULCQXxHl_5iedP-tmNCUFPw&v=EgQAHNDu6xE#t=515
https://www.facebook.com/benjamin.kaila
More at the timelines of Benjamin Kaila and Kuffir 

Links

The wisdom of (little) crowds by Carl Zimmer
Why all babies love peekaboo from MindHacks
Alcohol could have cognitive benefits-depending on your genes
How I get all my students to be good at math by Elizabth Cleland
Mathew Gentzkow, Clark Medallist and an interview with him

Michael Hudson on Piketty

Michael Hudson in Piketty's wealth gap wakes up:
"He’s started the discussion by showing the fact of vast inequality. What needs to be done now is to explain how did this inequality come about and what do you do about it? ....

One of the things that Piketty does not discuss when it comes to making fortunes is the role of debt, that most of these fortunes that have taken off since 1980 have taken off because of the increased debt leverage. As interest rates have fallen since 1980, you’ve had more and more bank credit going in to just bid up real estate prices, stock prices, bond prices, every kind of price, not to mention fine arts trophies that have gone with this. So, just as you’ve had the rising ratio of wealth to income of the 1%, you also have a rising ratio of debt to income. And so this indebtedness and the net worth again is very unequally distributed. Most peoples’ families, the major asset they have is in their home but these homes are also very heavily mortgaged and the mortgage payments they make, basically the 99% makes interest payments to the 1%.

And what to me really has been accelerating wealth at the very top is the financial sector, is the ability of the 1% to get the other 99% in debt to them by saying “Look, we’re controlling the access point to buying a home, to buying basic needs, in America to getting an education, and you can’t afford to buy a home or get an education or even a car without borrowing money. And we’re going to charge you enough interest so that everything you earn in effect you’re going to be paying us for interest”. And that’s the same thing that is leading the corporate raiders and the activist shareholders to try to raid corporations and say “Pay up more of your money as dividends”.

.......

So you’ve actually had a dismantling of tangible wealth and an increase in what used to be called fictitious capital or fictitious wealth, which is all basically debt leveraged wealth.......

When he talks about the rate of return the largest sector in the United States, and other countries also, is the real estate sector. If you look at from 1945 to today, the real estate sector doesn’t make an income. As you know, real estate by the billionaires is run as a personal charity. They don’t pay any income – if they made an income, of course, they would pay an income tax and declare it, but they don’t make any income. Almost all the rent they make is paid out either as interest or they charge depreciation as a cost. So what Piketty is referring to is not earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation, but one portion of declared earnings excluding taxes, excluding interest, excluding depreciation and amortisation. The next highest wealth industry is oil and gas, they don’t declare any income because either they have a depletion allowance that makes them tax-exempt or they make all their income offshore in the flags of convenience countries. So the actual returns that are made, including the capital gains and total returns, simply are not available in the statistics that he looks at.

Secondly, what is growth? If you look at the American National Income & Product Accounts, for instance, 40% of all corporate profits in America a year ago when the statistics came out were made by the banks, by the financial sector. Now, these returns are basically a transfer payment. They don’t really add to growth. Financial services are not a service, unless you believe that a hold-up man that comes up to you in front of an ATM machine and says “Your money or your life” is giving you the service of giving you your life; it’s actually a transfer payment. He’s taking your money....

Well, what Piketty has done is make this wealth seen.....But one would really have to spend even more time reworking the statistics to untangle them to find out what is the actual reality behind this. "

And more in the post. It seems that Piketty's estimate of the wealth ap may be an underestimate even without taking tax havens into account.

Check also Ten ways to fight inequality without Piketty's wealth tax.

The Piketty Pessimist

Felix Salmon writes in The Piketty Pessimist
"Which means that my reading of Piketty is ultimately pessimistic. The dynamics of the world economy are bad, and they’re getting worse; inequality is natural in human history, and right now we’re reverting to a state of affairs which is highly unfair but also both sustainable and, in its own way, unsurprising. Piketty has diagnosed a nasty condition. But I don’t think there’s a cure."
That is roughly my opinion too ( may be we are evolving to a system where about 40 percent will be about subsistence level and virtual slavery and the middle classes doing their own things and fortifying the top, and the state too powerful to change) but I will continue to follow the discussions.Brad DeLong keeps us uptodate.

Brad DeLong explains

"One thing that I had not fully realized before yesterday was just how much heavy a lift Piketty has in trying to persuade the American neoclassical growth-economics community within economics departments. Their--our--default view of the world is--very strongly--that it is characterized by a Cobb-Douglas aggregate production function, in which the rate of profit moves inversely with the L ratio and in which as a result the capital income share of total income is constant.

You may say: but if you have a model in which you assume the capital income share is constant, you then have no chance of ever explaining fluctuations in income distribution. How can you use a model in which fluctuations in income distribution do not happen to criticize anyone trying to explain why they do? And this is a more than fair cop. But that the habit of thought is not rational doesn't keep American neoclassical growth-economists in economics departments from doing it: their--our--first reaction to Piketty is: "t That can't be right, because in our model the capital-income share of total income is invariant to shifts in the wealth-income ratio." And they--we--typically do not take the second step in the argument and say: "wait a minute: in our model nothing causes shifts in income distribution, so we need to model"... from The daily Piketty:Thursday focus, April 24, 2014

See also Paul Krugman's response to Thomas Palley in 'Gottopardo Economics' "So by all means let’s continue to debate how we do economics. But inequality really isn’t a wedge issue in that discussion. You can be perfectly conventional in your economics — or, my own attitude and what I think is Piketty’s, willing to use conventional models when they’re convenient and seem useful without treating them as irrefutable truth — while still taking inequality very seriously."

A follow up of Solow review of Piketty

by Joshua Gans The Capital Creators: Piketty and Growth Theory discusses a point which will be much discussed.
"Thus, we could have a situation where r > or < g. r > g corresponded to having a relatively low capital stock whereas r < g corresponded to having a relatively high capital stock.

Those who have read Piketty will note that we run into an issue here. If one wanted to rationalise the Solow growth model with the data, Piketty argues that r > g most of the time (indicating the existence of scarce capital) except during the Great Depression and World War II (at least for Europe) and the 1950s (for the US) where correspondingly, the amount of capital would be relatively abundant. Maybe that is a classification issue (just which capital was productive when) but Piketty’s account and the Solow model do not appear to sit comfortably together. Indeed, Solow said as much when he argued that diminishing returns would eventually cause r to fall at a greater rate than g:[quote from Solow]

Before doing so, I wanted to point out that these implications of the Solow model for income and wealth distribution had been explored before. Luigi Pasinetti drew some of the chords together but it was aPhD student at MIT in the mid-1960s that was most obsessed about the implications of the Solow model for income distribution. What the young Joseph Stiglitz found in a paper subsequently published inEconometrica was that there were actually strong forces bringing about a more equal distribution of income but that there was also the possibility of a steady state growth trap that had with it an associated increasing inequality of income as the capital share of income grew. This happened when the capital to labour ratio was relatively low. There is certainly a plausible case that the US in the 1950s found itself on the good steady state and that something has shifted it to the bad steady state today.

Piketty did not refer to this work and the papers that followed it at all. That is one of the costs of bypassing the system. But that is too bad because, if he did, he would have seen that Stiglitz justified the very sort of taxes Piketty is now advocating and demonstrated how they might be employed to both bring about a more equal income and wealth distribution and a higher rate of growth. Instead, Piketty has been left open to the fair criticism that his proposed wealth tax is simplistic and not thought out. By contrast, there was past research that did some of this work.

Actually, it is worth noting here that Piketty does more than not use theory to justify his approach, predictions and policy recommendations. He argues (at least in my reading) that he shouldn’t be required to do so. That is one of the benefits of being less restricted but it comes at considerable cost. One cost is that without theory, it is hard to justify both predictions of the future and also policy recommendations and their likely effects (another form of prediction). Only theory can help make that argument and help us understand what we need to know in order to act.

But the other cost is that theory helps ensure that our explanation of the past is internally consistent. As noted earlier, Piketty’s argument relies on there being a lack of diminishing returns to capital. The alternatives are obvious — increasing returns to capital as my co-blogger Erik Brynjolfsson has been arguing for so forcefully recently. In other words, Piketty’s argument requires there to be capital creators — that is, people who find ways to deploy the wealth of the rich in ways that forestalls the otherwise likely effect of diminishing returns. But who are the capital creators and, if they are there, aren’t they also likely to be the ones increasing g? Put simply, if you don’t believe in diminishing returns, how is it that you are also pessimistic about the long-run rate of growth? It seems to me there is an inconsistency here."

Robert Solow steps in

Thomas Piketty is right says Robert Solow. It seems from the review that Robert Solow could have written a shorter and better book except that Solow says that nobody made the connection (between r and g) before.
P.S. Mark Thoma starts a discussion in Economist's view on the above article.
Meanwhile, there is an interesting article Adam Smith is not the antidote to Thomas Piketty. It seems that Smith's views were not too far off, seems even more radical  "The economic fundamental underlying these views was crystal-clear: For Smith, high profits were bad. They were “always highest in the countries which are going fastest to ruin,” because profit was “naturally low in rich, and high in poor countries.” High profits were not condemned for normative reasons, but efficiency ones: de facto, in countries that thrive, profits are low (except in new economies)."
P.P.S. Brad DeLong discusses Robert Solow review "To sum up: a very good book, a very, as Solow says, serious book. It has certainly moved me from thinking that the odds that two generations hence we will have a much more unequal and plutocratic society were 2-1 against to thinking that they are 3-1 for..."

A forgotten dancer?

Yog Sunder: A true prince of dance by Ashish Mohan Khokar

Archives of documentaries

Shivam Vij and others have pointed to this YouTube uploads of British Pathe documentaries
There are similar documentaries from Russia http://www.net-film.ru/en
Minai has written earlier about both. Two of her posts: One about Uday Shankar and others and the second about Tara Choudhri and others.

Links

Andhra High Court strikes down all sentences in Dalit massacre case
A 1991 article by K.Balaopal Post-Chundur and other Chundurs
Obama not meeting Anwar in Malayasia. Obviously more interested in trade treaties than democracy.
Chris Blattman links to The CIA guide to sabotage
Why the fall in human capital inequality has not been sufficient to reduce income inequality. From the conclusion "...other forces have offset the effects of lower education inequality."

Masters of the Indian art 1954

I missed this post of Minai. She guides us through the video 'Masters of the Indian art' (1954) which has some beautiful dances and graceful poses.

Rare Video of Dancers Tara Chowdhary, Guru Gopinath, & Indrani Rehman, Sitarist Ravi Shankar, & More (all thanks to Net-Film!)

 http://cinemanrityagharana.blogspot.com.au/2013/03/rare-video-of-dancers-tara-chowdhary.html

Links

US related but there may be lessons for others too.
Conservative heavy weights have solar industry in their sights "The institute has warned power companies that profits could erode catastrophically if current policies and market trends continue. If electricity companies delay in taking political action, the group warned in a report, "it may be too late to repair the utility business model.""
Is America an oligarchy? "Americans do enjoy many features central to democratic governance, such as regular elections, freedom of speech and association, and a widespread (if still contested) franchise. But we believe that if policymaking is dominated by powerful business organizations and a small number of affluent Americans, then America’s claims to being a democratic society are seriously threatened."
Biotech's hard bargain "...one traditional argument against price controls is looking weaker: biotech companies claim that prices need to be high to reward risky and expensive innovation, but the fact that they’re churning out drugs and profits so consistently seems to undermine that claim. Biotech, in other words, may become the victim of its own success: the bigger the profits, the bigger the likelihood of regulation....he uproar over Sovaldi may, somewhere down the line, help contain drug prices. But in the short run it could well make drugs even more expensive. And that’s what you call a serious side effect. "
Collusion of the Tech giants? "Some of tech's biggest names— Steve Jobs, Eric Schmidt, Sergey Brin, Bill Campbell —conferred and squabbled and made peace privately for years, documents in a current Silicon Valley antitrust case reveal. But they were unable to pull a new company into the club, the court documents show: Facebook FB +3.90% declined their friend request."

Tyler Cowen is not convinced

His review of Piketty21 here. Summary and discussion in Why I am not persuaded by Thomas Piketty's argument. Another negative review discussed in The Economist "Capital" and its discontents. Some of these points are also discussed in Piketty's Huffington Post interview linked before. Possibly some of the points will be clarified in these discussions. It is time for my second reading of Piketty in the liht of these discussions. Check also Ten questions for Thomas Piketty.

Two songs from Awara

I think I saw this movie in 1952. We used to have a tution teacher in whose house we used to sleep for the night. We let him sleep and ran about six miles to a town called Repalle to watch the late night show of the film. Two moon light songs and scenes are still very vivid.

My granddaughter Ava and Dalel Benbabaali

Piketty Interview at Huffington post

P.S. From 34 minutes, he discusss the criticisms of James Galbraith and Dean Baker.

Some advice about reading books from Tyler Cowen

How to read (any book like) Capital in the Twenty-First Century
In my case I did find Branko Milanovic review useful. In the middle, I tried to do do some exercises and made basic mistakes. Then I found browsing 'Capital is back' by Piketty and Zucman helped in correcting the mistakes, though I did not fully understand the paper since I do not have any background in economics.. Probably I will reread it soon. The mistakes I made were by misreading the book. I think that anybody can read the book. I think Paul Krugman's review in New York Review of books is good. And the one by Timothy Shenk puts in a broader context. There is a discussion of Tim Shenk's review as well as one from Manhattan Institute's Scott Winship here. The paper of Lane Kenworthy used by Scott Winship is also discussed by Steve Roth in a different fashion.

Paul Krugman discusses Piketty with Bill Moyers

My Head Talks Piketty with Bill Moyers

Recent British Pathe uploads

like this (via Shivam Vij). Minai has uploaded some Indian dances and others from the same source earlier.

Comments on Tim Shenk review of Piketty by Richard Drayton

It seems Doug Henwood does not like the Tim Shenk review of Piketty. Commenters bring in all sorts of jibes from status to ABD on his timeline. May be an indication why people on the left find it difficult to join forces; there is no unifying aim like making profits. Richard Drayton comments " He is a serious, if a young, public intellectual. We live in strange times if a 30 year old can't intervene in debates." 
Richard Drayton further comments on the review "I don't think that's quite fair Doug. Here's what the article is doing:
(1) explaining to readers the fact, which is far from intuitive for most people, that the idea of capitalism was first crystallized by its critics, in particular socialists,
(2) offering that the paradox of the 1989 moment was that - "nothing did more to entrench the acceptance of capitalism than the demise of the movement that had invented the concept",
(3) explaining the 2008 return to the centre of critiques of capitalism, The Occupy scene and its intellectual cross currents (Jacobin and N+1 etc),
(4) locating the significance of Piketty's Capital (and P. and Saez's earlier identification of the 1%), explaining how it brings together Kuznets and national accounting econometrics with political economy to provide a new longue duree model of inequality
(5) discusses the limits of P's vision of the past and the future
(6) ending with a rather valuable expression of hope (god knows we need episodes of optimism) that P. may become used by others who will make a 21st century post-capitalist social thought."
Tim Shenk responds "Richard, thank you for that summary. I would just add that I'm also trying to explain the longer intellectual history behind Piketty's political economy, hence all that talk about all the non-Marxist (but still socialist) attempts to transcend capitalism." From The Economist Book Club
"As we have discussed several times, a key part of Mr Piketty's story is that the rate of return on capital, r, is greater than the rate of economic growth, g. Critics have suggested that this is at odds with economic theory, but Mr Piketty is not making a theoretical point; he is observing that, empirically, r has been greater than g throughout most of history. If the theory is inconsistent with that, then that is the theory's problem." and also comments on Martin Wolf review which questions whether inequality matters.

Tracking flu levels with Wikipedia

from sciencedaily "Cn monitoring Wikipedia hits show how many people have the flu? Researchers at Boston Children's Hospital, USA, have developed a method of estimating levels of influenza-like illness in the American population by analysing Internet traffic on specific flu-related Wikipedia articles.
David McIver and John Brownstein's model, publishing in PLOS Computational Biology on April 17th, estimates flu levels in the American population up to two weeks sooner than data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention becomes available, and accurately estimates the week of peak influenza activity 17% more often than Google Flu Trends data."

Gabriel Garcia Marquez on Allende

Why Allende had to die (via Rahul Siddharthan)

Weeding

Reading Piketty and following various reviews took over forty days leading to a burst of weeds in the garden. It took six days, usually 2-3 hours a day but five yesterday, to get the backyard into some shape. Possibly, I will have to spend as much time on the front. But all the time on Piketty has been worthwhile I think. Experts will discuss the finer points but the overall picture is simple and clear. Capital is like a weed, if you don't watch for a while it will grow and spread from Iraq to Ukraine. In spite of Piketty's allergy for Marx, Marx looms in the background. May be time to read some Marxists who do not mention thesis and anti-thesis.
P.S. Here is a start. Benjamin Kunkel explains David Harvey.

Methodical sedition

says The Chronicle of Higher Education in Capital Man
And an interview with Thomas Piketty by Jonathan Derbyshire. Excerpt:
"A big difference between today and a hundred years ago is that you have 20-30 per cent of national wealth in the UK and other European countries belonging to what I describe in the book as the “patrimonial middle class”, by which I mean the 40 per cent of the population that is neither in the top 10 per cent nor the bottom 50 per cent.  The bottom 50 per cent still own less than 5 per cent of the total, so that hasn’t changed much over the past century.

So the existence of this patrimonial middle class makes a big difference to the political, social and economic landscape. The question is what happens next? Is this group going to get stronger or is it going to shrink? Is their share of national wealth going to be reduced, which is, to some extent, what has been happening in the past 30 years?"

A long, impressive review of Piketty

by Timothy Shenk Thomas Piketty and the Millinnial Marxists on the Scourge of Inequality

"The Music Room" by Namita Devidayal

Richard Singer has started reading it. My reaction on his timeline " "The Music Room" has some thing that I can only faintly comprehend. My cousins tell me that I have always been anti-authoritarian. So it is difficult for me to imagine that kind obedience and discipline. The author's other pieces are full of cliches, but here she seemed touched by some thing transcendent. It seems to be some thing that Indian music and the traditional practice seems to do. Many of those musicians seem ordinary people but that sadhana, sometimes lifelong, does some thing. They say that some of them achieve their best in their sixties and seventies. Ramachandra Guha thinks that it is one field that Indians achieved greatness. I do not understand but it is fascinating and Namita has been able to convey some of it."
And here is a brief story about Mallikarjuna Mansur:
"Mansur’s first commercial record was released in 1933 and the next two years saw more releases. The repertoire on these records consisted of khayal, Marathi theatre songs, thumris, Kannada bhajans and other songs. These recordings brought fame to Mansur and he was invited to perform in Mumbai every year....In 1935, Mansur unexpectedly met Manji Khan, son and disciple of Alladiya Khan, the founder of the Jaipur Atrauli gharana, who agreed to accept him as his disciple after listening to his record. His training with Manji Khan continued until the latter’s death in 1937. Thereafter, Mansur began learning from Manji Khan’s younger brother Bhurji Khan. When Bhurji Khan moved to Kolhapur with Alladiya Khan two years later, Mansur earned and saved enough money to rent a hotel room and learn from Bhurji Khan in Kolhapur. For many years, Mansur took training for three to four months at a stretch in Kolhapur and returned to Dharwad for a month or so. Bhurji Khan died in 1960, but subsequently, Mansur learnt compositions from Bhurji Khan’s son Azizuddin Khan."

Still sharp at 90

To me the the most interesting remarks are from Robert Solow. The first two come between 31-39 minutes and the second 53-56:30. The whole discussion is interesting.

Ian Welsh review of Piketty

The Age of the Obvious: Thomas Piketty's Capital Excerpt : "History is not inevitable: decisions are made by people that change its outcome.

As for Piketty’s prescription: a wealth tax is fine as far as it goes, but the question isn’t whether the rich should be taxed, the question is how to create a world where they can be taxed.

That question, and questions like how we could increase the technological rate of improvement, increase the power of the commons, allow national policy by dismantling so-called “free trade”, and so on, are not dealt with.

But Piketty’s book is still important, because it proves the obvious beyond a reasonable doubt.  In this it is similiar to the mountain of evidence of climate change.  We can now say that climate change is happening and anyone who denies it is a fool.  Likewise we can now say that allowing returns on unearned wealth to be higher than labor income, in a capitalist economy, leads to high inequality and doesn’t improve the economy.  We should have known that already; we did know it already; now it has been proved to the point where we can say anyone who denies it is a fool."

From the Marathi film Natarang 2010

More about the movie in Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natarang

FTalphaville on what a Modi overnment may not be able to do

From The Lok Sabha of Dreams,  "...the specific hope is that a shiny new BJP-led coalition will kick-start that virtuous cycle as projects are unblocked and investments waved through a la Modi’s creation tale of Tata in Gujarat." may be just that, a hope.
"The broad hope is that, as Goldman said a little while back, a positive cycle can be unleashed if projects get unclogged, increasing cash flow for infra companies (which account for 30 per cent of stressed loans), enabling loan repayments, and healing bank balance sheets, which can allow a fresh lending cycle to start."
But "All told, the fact that most implementation bottlenecks lie within the realm of state governments over which the Center has little leverage, and there is a significant debt overhang facing the infrastructure sector and public sector banks, suggests that expectations of a sharp and sustained pick-up appear optimistic at least in the coming quarters."

Brad DeLong has notes and exercises on Piketty

One problem in the equation r>g is that we do not know what fraction is spent and how much is reinvested again. Brad Delong has a discussion on this using four variables, four parameters and standard models. I do not understand this but such discussions are expected from experts. May be Paul Krugman will clarify at some stage.

Fabulous story from NY Times magazine

with music that sends chills down the spine The ballad of Geeshie and Elvie.

I have been trying to understand this for a long time

Hamilton's Equation,  Price Equation and other things discussed in The Good Fight by Eric Michael Johnson. It helps a bit but am not there yet.

Henry Farrell on Marxists

From what I have seen Marx seems to have said a number sensible thins which still resonate. It is not clear to me what a Marxist is. It seems that a number of people have continued to work on his main themes. Anyway, Thomas Farrell says  in his write up on "The Making of Global Capitalism: The Political Economy of American Empire" by Leo Panitch and Sam  Gindin "The mainstream of American international political economy has cast off both its more radical connections and its ambitions to speak to larger debates. Marxists and radicals continue to work on international political economy, but they are largely ignored by the dominant figures in the field.

This is a pity — as Panitch and Gindin’s book shows, there’s a lot that they could learn. And if most standard issue international political economy scholars don’t know much about Marxists, the opposite is not necessarily true. Panitch and Gindin not only know the debates among radicals, but have read very widely across the field of IPE, engaging with (and often usefully repurposing) the ideas and empirical material that they find useful.

I learned a lot from their book, and will be assigning it to my students. Still, I think there’s room for useful argument. "

S.Varalakshmi-Jikki duet from 9:10

Lyrics by Arudra, Music by Pendyala Naeswara Rao. Lyrics in Telugu:
నవనీత చోరుడు నందకిశోరుడు
అవతారపురుషుడు దేవుడే-చెలి
అవతారపురుషుడు దేవుడే

తెలియని మూఢులు కొలిచినవాడు
ఎటువంటివాడు- భగవానుడే?

పసివయసందే పరిపరి విధముల
ప్రగ్నను చూపిన మహనీయుడే

హద్దూపద్దూలేని -ముద్దులపాపడి
అల్లరికూడా ఘనకార్యమేనా ?

నవనీత చోరుడు నందకిశోరుడు...

కోనేట యువతులు స్నానాలు చేయ 
కోకలదొంగ మొనగాడటే ?

పడతుల కపుడు పరమార్ధ పధము
భక్తిని నేర్పిన పరమాత్ముడే 
నవనీత చోరుడు నందకిశోరుడు...
పదునాల్గు జగములు పాలించువాడే
ప్రత్యక్షదైవము శ్రీక్రిష్ణుడే

ఎదురేమిలేని పదవిలభిస్తే
ఎటువంటివాడూ భగవానుడే

Bhumi dunnaloy mandesam from Jeevitham 1950

Beyond Piketty

Piketty's Capital, impressive though it is, is mainly a data book I think. It does not really go into the dynamics of by capitalism and empire though financialization is mentioned. We have to look for other analyses, may be like the following which seem to make some sense of the full court press by the USA The Luchadores of Global Political Economy
P.S. The above article is one from a discussion on the book "The Making of Global Capitalism" by Leo Panitch and Sam Gidin at Jacobin

Gabriel Zucman on tax haven wealth

Paul Krugman points to this paper of Gebriel Zucman which estimates that about 8% of global financial wealth of households is in tax havens. "On the basis of plausible assumptions, accounting for unrecorded assets turns theeurozone, officially the world’s second largest net debtor, into a net creditor. It also reduces the U.S. net debt significantly. The results shed new light on global imbalances and challenge the widespread view that after a decade of poor-to-rich capital flows, external assets are now in poor countries and debts
in rich countries."
Nicholas Shaxson has been writing about tax havens. At the heart lies the City of London which explains the recent refusal by UK to go along with some of the sanctions against Russia. ICIJ has been regularly reporting and investigating about off shore transactions. See, for example, Who uses the offshore world.

Hamsa Geethe Video with English subtitles

at Minai blog And without subtitles here

A bit more about Capital21

A friend asked me for a summary. Here is my understanding of two themes which may be wrong; I made a few mistakes earlier.
I guess the basic idea is simple. That is looking at wealth to income ratio for a country, equivalently the ratio of average wealth to average in come and how it changes over time. Total income is GDP minus depreciation plus foreign income if any. Wealth or capital includes the sum total all non human assets that can be owned or exchanged in a market. it includes real estate, financial and professional capital including plants, patents etc. This ratio is denoted β is C/I where C is capital and I is income. The first grows by savings and the second by growth rate (includes the population growth too and can be measured from time to time, for example each year. Another quantity, he considers is alpha α, share of income from capital in the national income. the first accounting identity is α=rβ, where r is the rate of return on the capital. The growth rate, income, savings rate etc can be measured each year and so also α. This allows us to estimate r which is around 4-5 percent in the west for much of the time except for a period between the wars and then upto 1970 or so. The growth rates have declined, but since this includes population growth, there is some difference between stagnant countries and countries like USA. Savings rate vary, high for Japan (14% or so) and low for USA (around 7). β was around 7 in Europe before the first world war, declined to less than 3 around 1950 and went up to nearly 6 recently. In USA change is less pronounced but has similar U shape. 4.5., 3.5., 4.5. For some reason, Piketty uses percentage signs, I think that these are just numbers. Capital income α also follows a U pattern currently around 30% in most western countries.
Clearly, we do not want α, β to go up, they reinforce each other depending on r. So we need to see with possible numbers. Here is an example from Piketty Chapter 10.
"For example, if g=1%, and r=5%, saving one-fifth of the capital from income (while consuming the other four-fifth) is enough to ensure that capital inherited from the previous generation grows at the same rate as the economy. If one saves more, because one's fortune is large enough to live well while consuming less than one's annual rent, then one's fortune will increase more rapidly than the economy, and inequality of wealth will tend to increase even if one contributes no income from labor."
So either g has to increase but by diminishing returns etc, it is expected to stabilize around 1.5 or so for advanced countries. So if we do not want a Marxian apocalypse where α, β do not explode, we have to reduce. Piketty recommends progressive taxes on wealth etc. Some are suggesting minimum wages and other means.
What is impressive is that he and collaborators were able to tease out so much data which even if there are further corrections, gives the broad contours for further discussions.
That was the main message. There is one more formula which Piketty frequently uses asymptotic formula β=s/g, called Harrod-Domar-Solow formula. If we denote the corresponding quantities using subscript _t, what this means is that β_t tends to s_t/g-t,as t gets large which may be 50-60 years or even more. This formula depends on models which imply some sort of stability or convergence for β_t. If we assume convergence, it is easy to see the formula (but this is not really necessary for his main message). To see the formula, there is an easy formula β_(t+1)/β_t=(1+s_wt)/(1+g_t) where s_wt=s_t/ β_t. In general the right hand side has to be multiplied by a capital gains factor. Now if β_t stabilizes β_t tends to β. so the left hand side tends to one. So from the right hand side _t tends to s_t/ β or β in the long run is the limit of s_t/g_t. But in short term it fluctuates. This formula is not really necessary to understand his main message, Which Milanovic also emphasized. The subtle part for me is how wealth is passed onto the next generation. This is in Chapter 12 and I will have to read it again. I think that is also discussed by Gregory Clark from a different perspective in "The Son Also Rises". Criticisms and other supplementary material, I will write later on. This is all the mathematics that there is in the book and are in the paper by Piketty and Zucman "Capital is Back".
Corrections are welcome.
I guess the basic idea is simple. That is looking at wealth to income ratio for a country, equivalently the ratio of average wealth to average in come and how it changes over time. Total income is GDP minus depreciation plus foreign income if any. Wealth or capital includes the sum total all nonhuman assets that can be owned or exchanged in a market. it includes real estate, financial and professional capital including plants, patents etc. This ratio is denoted β is C/I where C is capital and I is income. The first grows by savings and the second by growth rate (includes the population growth too and can be measured from time to time, for example each year. Another quantity, he considers is alpha α, share of income from capital in the national income. the first accounting identity is α=rβ, where r is the rate of return on the capital. The growth rate, income, savings rate etc can be measured each year and so also α. This allows us to estimate r which is around 4-5 percent in the west for much of the time except for a period between the wars and then upto 1970 or so. The growth rates have declined, but since this includes population growth, there is some difference between stagnant countries and countries like USA. Savings rate vary, high for Japan (14% or so) and low for USA (around 7). β was around 7 in Europe before the first world war, declined to less than 3 around 1950 and went up to nearly 6 recently. In USA change is less pronounced but has similar U shape. 4.5., 3.5., 4.5. For some reason, Piketty uses percentage signs, I think that these are just numbers. Capital income α also follows a U pattern currently around 30% in most western countries.
Clearly, we do not want α, β to go up, they reinforce each other depending on r. So we need to see with possible numbers. Here is an example from Piketty Chapter 10.
"For example, if g=1%, and r=5%, saving one-fifth of the capital from income (while consuming the other four-fifth) is enough to ensure that capital inherited from the previous generation grows at the same rate as the economy. If one saves more, because one's fortune is large enough to live well while consuming less than one's annual rent, then one's fortune will increase more rapidly than the economy, and inequality of wealth will tend to increase even if one contributes no income from labor."
So either g has to increase but by diminishing returns etc, it is expected to stabilize around 1.5 or so for advanced countries. So if we do not want a Marxian apocalypse where α, β do not explode, we have to reduce. Piketty recommends progressive taxes on wealth etc. Some are suggesting minimum wages and other means.
What is impressive is that he and collaborators were able to tease out so much data which even if there are further corrections, gives the broad contours for further discussions.
That was the main message. There is one more formula which Piketty frequently uses asymptotic formula β=s/g, called Harrod-Domar-Solow formula. If we denote the corresponding quantities using subscript _t, what this means is that β_t tends to s_t/g-t,as t gets large which may be 50-60 years or even more. This formula depends on models which imply some sort of stability or convergence for β_t. If we assume convergence, it is easy to see the formula (but this is not really necessary for his main message). To see the formula, there is an easy formula β_(t+1)/β_t=(1+s_wt)/(1+g_t) where s_wt=s_t/ β_t. In general the right hand side has to be multiplied by a capital gains factor. Now if β_t stabilizes β_t tends to β. so the left hand side tends to one. So from the right hand side _t tends to s_t/ β or β in the long run is the limit of s_t/g_t. But in short term it fluctuates. This formula is not really necessary to understand his main message, Which Milanovic also emphasized. The subtle part for me is how wealth is passed onto the next generation. This is in Chapter 12 and I will have to read it again. I think that is also discussed by Gregory Clark from a different perspective in "The Son Also Rises". Criticisms and other supplementary material, I will write later on. This is all the mathematics that there is in the book and are in the paper by Piketty and Zucman "Capital is Back".
Corrections are welcome.

Completed the first reading of Capital 21

with the help of Capital is Back by Piketty and Zucman. Because the book is long, I lost some threads, misunderstood some and miscalculated. The paper is briefer about 35 pages long and has some of the main points. It helped but the book is clear enough. The more technical parts are being discussed by many economists which I will link off and on. A recent one by Steve Roth looks interesting. On the whole I like the book, though a shorter book might have been better. It helps us to understand some of the problems and think about them. I will start rereading parts of it again.
P.S. Here is another readable one The Short Guide to Capital in the Twenty-First Century
Paul Krugman's review is also out.

Dependence on US weakening?

Planned European communications network " The United States on Friday criticized proposals to build a European communication network to avoid emails and other data passing through the United States, warning that such rules could breach international trade laws." 
Apparently so did Indian Food Security Bill.
US threatens Russia over Petro-dollar busting deal and one of the links What about the dollar: Russia, Iran announce $20 billion oil-for good deal "The White House has said such a deal would raise "serious concerns" and would be inconsistent with the nuclear talks between world powers and Iran"

But the dollar's role as international currency may be part of the reason for US trade deficits:
"Greider hit on a number of themes in this book, but at least part of the story was one of the U.S. trade deficit creating a deficiency in aggregate demand. In properly behaved macro models, trade deficits are supposed to be self-correcting as the value of the deficit nation's currency falls and the values of the surplus nations' currencies rise. This makes imports more expensive to the deficit nation and their exports cheaper to people living in other countries. This leads to fewer imports and more exports and therefore more balanced trade.

But this adjustment has not happened, or certainly has not happened quickly. We can blame evil doers at central banks in other countries who are manipulating their currencies or frightened foreigner investors who think dollar denominated assets are the only safe place to store their wealth. The actual cause does not matter, the point is that the dollar has not fallen to correct the imbalance." says Dean Baker
Two older articles on the dollar Debtor Nation from Harvard Business Review from mid 2007
The dollar and the Deficits from FP, December 2009.