Thursday, July 03, 2014
Piketty
I haven't read Thomas Piketty, Capital in the Twenty-First Century, tr. Arthur Goldhammer (Cambridge: Belknap Press, 2014), and probably I never will, for two reasons. First, it's popular, a best-seller, and my inclinations veer rather toward the unfashionable and unpopular, just as surely as the needle of the compass swings northward. Second, I don't think I could understand it. I have seen a few reviews, however, from which I gather that the theme of the book can be summed up in just two words: habenti dabitur, i.e. "omni enim habenti dabitur et abundabit: ei autem qui non habet et quod videtur habere auferetur ab eo" (Matthew 25:29). In English (KJV), "For unto every one that hath shall be given, and he shall have abundance: but from him that hath not shall be taken away even that which he hath."
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