While Piketty presents some interesting statistics, his analysis is ...
584173
While Piketty presents some interesting statistics, his analysis is deeply flawed and his conclusions are simply insane.  His principle thesis, that r > g and thus the wealthy will always get wealthier, is overly simplistic and ignores income mobility and creative destruction.  He presents no credible reasoning for his conclusion that income inequality, or rather "too much" income inequality (whatever that might mean) is harmful, and his policy prescription, universal capital taxation, completely ignores the function of investment in economic growth.  The fact that he has become the darling of the progressive (???) redistributionists simply demonstrates the intellectual bankruptcy of that mindset.
4251871
Joseph Stiglitz provides a wealth of evidence to demonstrate that the current gross financial inequalities pervading American (and other)society are seriously harmful to the well-being of that society and the individuals who compose it.  The book is generally written in language designed to be understandable to readers not deeply in economic theory.  There is a superabundance of notes at the back, but these can be skimmed or even disregarded for those anxious to economize on time.
3743294
Interesting stories and statistics about how "life is not fair".

We all know that is true, but the details are often quite interesting.  For example, most professional athletes are born in the first half of the year. Poor children learn about as well as rich kids during the year, but fall behind during the summer. Deference to authority can lead to plane crashes.

The main thesis of this book is that we should reject the myth of the "self-made man" because there are precise factors that lead to anyone's success: being born in a certain year or being given a rare opportunity. And I think Gladwell is correct in this.

But he tells stories of success only. What about the stories or failures or of criminals? Can't we make the same argument for those people? If that's the case how do we justify punishing people for their crimes when their circumstances were beyond their control.

It may be that Gladwell would agree on a more compassionate justice system, but by only focusing on the outliers on one side of the tail the book feels shallow and unsatisfying.

Still, I give it 4 stars because I think it is worth the read and it is entertaining.
3900971
Paul Krugman is a world class economist.  He foresees and understands economic trends better than most.  His explanation of fiscal policies, international trade, and macroeconomic concepts are entertaining and clear.
Unfortunately, nothing he foresees comes true.  In this book, he makes a case that because of recurring budget deficits causing a decline in our national savings rate, our investment rate will drop.  This will cause a decline in productivity, and a resulting decline in the growth of our economy (GDP) and our living standard (GDP per capita).  Thus, this will result in "The Age of Diminished Expectations."
The rest is history as they say.  The nineties did not turn out the way Paul Krugman envisioned them.  The economy increased rapidly, and so did living standards.  He did not foresee the huge net foreign investments that bridged the gap between our low domestic savings rate and our high investment rate.
Well, nobody is perfect.  Economic forecasting is challenging at best.  Overall, it is still a very interesting and informative book.  Everything he said in it will eventually be true, it is just a matter of when.  But, it certainly was not true during the nineties which was his timeframe target at the time he wrote the book.
604440
The writer has an interesting style.  I like the way he breaks down the chapters into subsections and uses lots of illustrations.  He shares some good statistics and recommendations.  But he tends to accentuate differences for emphasis.  I am not convinced that every observation is valid, but enough of them make sense that I plan on sharing the book with several people.
2564886
If the economic crisis has proven anything it's that broad theoretical approaches to economics, while interesting food for thought, are ultimately of little utility.

Rational Choice Theory, the underpinning of most modern economic theory, is clearly a bust as we consider the majority of humanity chasing bubbles and waging war to artificially extend the lives failed oligarchical ideologies.

The field in which economic behavior actually operates is one of emotion, desperation, even hysteria  and yet the phenomena economic philosophy seeks to describe is numerical. Failure to acknowledge this problem is a problem  especially considering the fact that "On Inequality" presents itself as a counterargument to Thomas Picketty's&nbsp;<a data-hook="product-link-linked" class="a-link-normal" href="/Capital-in-the-Twenty-First-Century/dp/067443000X/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_rvw_txt?ie=UTF8">Capital in the Twenty-First Century</a>&nbsp;"Capital in the Twenty-First Century" which exhaustively analyzes huge amounts of undisputed data going back centuries. Attempting to refute refute Picketty's massive agglomeration of facts with no facts, as Frankfurt does, is a dubious exercise.

After the 2008 crash and Alan Greenspan's subsequent admission that he had "found a flaw" in the dominant economic philosophy, any economic assertion without airtight, verifiable, longitudinal data to support it is automatically suspect. This book certainly is one such unsupported assertion. It's greatest success is not as philosophy, but as plutocratic propaganda. The sort of arguments contained herein have frequently been advanced on behalf of the power elite who have definite agendas, very measurable agendas which are almost always concealed. Yet this book is a failure if considered alongside the actual data, which you can luckily find in Picketty's book, here:&nbsp;<a data-hook="product-link-linked" class="a-link-normal" href="/Capital-in-the-Twenty-First-Century/dp/067443000X/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_rvw_txt?ie=UTF8">Capital in the Twenty-First Century</a>&nbsp;Capital in the Twenty-First Century
2118250
R.J. Rummel has spent his career assembling data on genocide, politicide and other government mass murder (studying more than 8,200 reports with estimates). He introduced a concept he calls "democide" which includes genocide, politicide, mass murder, and indiscriminate killing of civilians. It does not include battle deaths or collateral damage. He is using a scientific methodology that he applies consistently to come up with consistent mid-range estimates for democide. His findings are horrifying. 170 million people were murdered in the 20th century alone. Later he revised this number to 262 million. For comparison, it is estimated that 70 million people died from famine in the 20th century, 25 million has died from AIDS, 250 million died from Malaria in the 20th century, and 300 million from small pox. In conclusion democide killed considerably more people than war, famine, and AIDS and as much people as the two worst 20th century diseases. It should also be noted that previous centuries were just as democidal.

Rummels book "Statistics of Democide" presents his findings in great detail (very long lists of statistics), and additional information can be found on his web site. This book "Death by Government" gives some statistics on the topic, but the focus of the book is not on the statistics but descriptions of the democides and the regimes that perpetrated them. Therefore this book is easier to read and perhaps a bit more interesting (but just as gruesome) compared to "Statistics of Democide". However, "Statistics of Democide" is a better factoid resource.

In this book he describes the following murder regimes and their democides in more detail: Soviet Gulag State (62M), Chinese Communist Anthill (35M later revised to 78M),  The Nazi Genocide State (21M mostly genocide), The Depraved Nationalist Regime, KMT (10M), Japans Savage Military (6M), The Hell State Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge (2M), Turkeys Genocidal Purges (1.9M), The Vietnamese War State (Vietcong) (1.7M), Poland's Ethnic Cleansing after the war (1.6M), The Pakistani Cutthroat state (1.5M), Titos Slaughter House (1.1M), Orwellian North Korea (1.7M), Barbarous Mexico (1.4M), Feudal Russia (1.1M). M=million killed.

The descriptions of the democides are horrific and very sad. The big questions are how can these things happen? People can be very cruel and brutal towards each other that is for sure, but regimes that hold a lot of power over their citizens are the regimes that will commit these crimes. To quote from Rummels web site: "Why do dictators kill and make war? Is it for glory; for things, for beliefs, for hatred, for power? Yes, but more, because they can". Regimes that can't do it won't. Democratic regimes, especially liberal democracies commit very little democide.
4311461
This short book discusses the history of the use of numbers to describe the world. The author starts off with a discussion on how numbers began to be used to describe physical items. Eventually, the discussion focuses mainly on the evolution of the use of numbers in the social sciences - hence, the birth of statistics. The book contains some fascinating information on how social statistics evolved, with an entire chapter devoted to Florence Nightingale. It should be emphasized that the focus is mainly on how numbers came to be used and not necessarily on the actual results obtained; thus, if the reader is expecting to see a discussion of the results, he or she may be disappointed at times. But this is a minor shortcoming. The book is well-written and clear. The author (deceased prior to the book's publication) was a well-seasoned expert on the history of science with a good number of publications to his credit.
610613
Thomas Sowell sees people's world views as coming from some conceptual constructs which are often based on faulty premises and faulty thinking. He not only smashes lots of common notions, but tries to expose the ideas which lead people to accept those false ideas.

He does this in a fair and to a large part objective manner. So, for example, if he is looking at how discrimination factors into earnings differences between men and women, or blacks and whites he will examine many factors which contribute to those differences. Reasoning that if we can identify 3 or 4 other causes of earnings differences, and those factors account for some of the difference, then discrimination and other unidentified factors could only account for what is left.

He also exposes factors which make some the the statistics we normally see misleading. So, for example, if the average age of one group of people is 30 and another is 35 and a third is 43, then we would expect that their incomes would also be different, with the older groups making more money. This is what we see with Blacks (30), all Americans (35) and Japanese Americans (43). So at least some of the income differences are explained by age.

The book examines:
- Urban Facts and Fallacies where interesting facts about city planning come to light
- Male-Female Facts and Fallacies
- Academic
- Income
- Race
- Third World poverty

The book is jam packed with information, and insights. You are bound to have ideas you held to be true shown clearly to have overlooked important variables.

After reading this book, you will have a better understanding of the reality of these topics and the statistics used to support various views.
3555593
Malcolm Gladwell calculates and and analyzes statistics that create a norm for the very successful; the outliers in society. The problem is that many parents are so abuzz with these patterns that they are attempting to make successes out of their children. (Darn shame happiness doesn't get factored in) Gladwell does not present statistics or examples of outliers of his formulas, of which I'm certain there are many. So this is an interesting but simplistic presentation. It is enjoyable reading. But as you read, consider the outliers of his formulas!
1941513
Here are some errors left and right wing economists have identified:

First of all, the conclusions he draws from his empirical research are not justified. Many well-known economists - notably Larry Summers, Brad DeLong, Nick Rowe etc - have all identified these errors. The main error in Piketty's analysis is that he confused gross and net returns on capital, which gives him a larger estimate of the elasticity of substitution. If the elasticity of substitution is greater than 1, Piketty is right. If it is less than 1, Piketty is wrong. One study Piketty sources is Karabarbounis and Neiman (2014), in which they estimate an elasticity of 1.25. Matt Rognlie, the MIT grad, noted the error and concluded "But K&N estimate an elasticity in standard units, and their baseline estimate is 1.25! In Piketty's units, this is just 0.625."
[...]

In Larry Summers recent book review, he states "I know of no study suggesting that measuring output in net terms, the elasticity of substitution is greater than 1, and I know of quite a few suggesting the contrary."
[...]

Secondly, above all of this, there is a major problem with Piketty's general theory of capital and interest. He treats interest as being determined by the marginal product of capital, when common economy theory and basic logic says that it's not. He also treats capital as completely homogeneous, when it is far more complex and heterogeneous.
[...]

We can also see Piketty has intentionally gotten basic history wrong, regarding tax rates and minimum wages, in an effort to serve his political agenda. For example:
[...]
[...]

Piketty's book is riddled with errors. I can't believe anyone takes this seriously.
2691126
The stage is set pretty well in the introduction. So this is going to be a data slog but should be well worth it. Here I go.... Well, so far this book has been pretty interesting though I gather I have not yet reached the actual argument. Instead it starts out in part one as more of an economic primer to set the definitions of the terms that will be used in the argument. In this, the terms are kept pretty abstract and general. Virtually everything is ambiguous and "average" is the main concept. There are promises aplenty that this will change later in the book. I also gather there is not agreement among economists over the use Piketty makes of these terms. I am not sure he is going to defend his preferences but we shall see.
Moving on to part two I am glad to note that the book has remained interesting and for me easy to follow. I have to admit I am puzzled by how moderate his depiction of growth is compared to comments such as those by Frances Fukuyama. I am reminded that statistics can be used to prove anything - though I have yet to see statistics that show that. It is also interesting that up until around page 150 he continues to point out that there is a wide gap between the few wealthy and most everyone else but he does not stray from talking average wealth in his figures. He is critical of those who do that, yet seems so far to keep doing it himself. Around page 221 things got me scratching my head a little. But I will return to it later. I am finally getting into the issue of individual wealth distribution which I thought was going to be the main argument. Part three of the book has continued to be as easy to follow as it becomes clear from his presentation and data that if anything the interrelationships between capital and income and the upper decile and centile results from complex but normal factors that become more and more obvious as he lays out his information. Most is on France but other modern European countries are included. An odd point is that Columbia has the greatest disparity according to his information. The political factors that can influence how things evolve is certainly going to be the main factor. Taxing all forms of wealth seems to be a necessary way to prevent the disparity from reaching too great a point where it becomes hard to imagine the society continuing as a stable one. But where would the discipline for this come from? One last comment: once you finish this book do not go directly to read&nbsp;<a data-hook="product-link-linked" class="a-link-normal" href="/Infinite-Jest/dp/0316066524/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_rvw_txt?ie=UTF8">Infinite Jest</a>. The total switch will just blow your mind.
2345749
This book is interspersed with a few stunning facts and a hundred graphs, but the author doesn't necessarily make a good case when you compare what was predicted and what actually occurred.
352559
Kirkpatrick Sale is a first rate historian, but as an analyst of history he tends to be blinded by his own so-called "Neo-Luddite" leanings. He does correctly identify that the Luddite movement was not about machinery, per se, but rather about social tensions arising in Europe, and that attacking machinery was simply an easy target. But his misses much in his economic analysis.
Like many neo-luddites and "left anarchists", Sale believes in small government, but his (and their) small government is not small in power; it has the power to compel decentralization and to resdistribute income. It is, like Chomsky's 1970s-variety anarchism, Socialism under a different rubric.
Sale believes that large corporations, large cities and any large scale human endevor must be artificial, created in order to exploit man and nature, which rather puts him at odds with the experiences documented through most of written history. He rejects the efficiencies people have traditionally found in both trade and scale, and prefers instead an enforced village. The are a good many inconsistencies in his rationale; he decries the large corproation, but wants to redistribute the wealth produced by such  entities. One wonders where the wealth will come from once he destroys the wealth producers; I am reminded very much of the recent history of Zimbabwe.
In summary, then: Not his best work, but worth reading for the historical material, and for some of the social analysis. Just take the economics with a large dose of salt.
3870261
Many interesting data and connection between them, many thoughts to wonder about BUT the style and typography of the book almost discredits its content. I'd never have thought that a pretentious, claptrap oral presentation style can be transplanted into a book. What a pity!
Well, it's a quick read, contains some noteworthy ideas, but now some data are outdated and most forecasts proved to be wrong.
4325077
This is about voting patterns rather than any aspect of spokesmanship. Jusko is not naive about representatives carrying out the desires of their constituencies. Definition of poor is arbitrarily assigned to the bottom quarter of incomes. There is no telling how that skews statistics over condition of the truly poor. As with most current analysts, She rates people by economics rather than class, and by implication, race, although when Jesse Jackson says poor folks he means black folks and a reported 93% of blacks voted for Obama in 2012.
There's the obvious but significant observation that when more than half of the electorate have under average wealth, they will vote for high taxes and redistribution policy. Low income coupled with high electoral power leads to generous public benefits. The most interesting statistic is distribution of income with highest average salaries being in brokerage and insurance, followed closely by public servants.
A peculiar feature of the book is extensive reference to the original populist era and the People's Party in 1892 as a basis for the analysis. This is extended to contemporary times with a sudden jump in chronology from the populism of 1892. It leads me to think that the analysis, especially new party formation, is out of date.
After comparing, unfavorably, US poverty with that of Sweden, Australia and other countries the book peters out with statistical complications and lack of conclusions.
While I appreciate the attempt at rational analysis rather than the usual mindless ain't it awful social commentary, this one falls short of making a point, probably because consideration of the poor lies more in the realm of morality than in economics or statistics. The most significant aspect of the book is in the detrimental effects of the politics of party formation. Also interesting is how well or badly social credits work under different administrations.
4572967
A great many words are employed to say information on Chinese economic reporting is mostly derived by government edicts, editing; ergo,politically-prompted juggling. When reports come out, so says this amazingly-lauded number-fabricating and crunching explanation of the way growth, spending, commodity prices and predictions of growth in the world's most populous country, investors and financial media mavens don't jump. They wait to see how the Chinese government will react.

The numbers derived seem practically (how will investors react?) and politically (what do we want them to think?). I am no numbers' person, but reading about their collecting and developing numbers I just think "This just can't be right".

One example of many, many boggling examples of Chinese developing financial figures, the People's Bank of China "...selects 50 representative cities from around the country. In each city, 8 banks are selected as the focus and 50 depositors are chosen from each bank...  The survey asks participant views on the current situation and future outlook for consumer prices, wages, house prices and choice between spending and saving."

Then values are assigned to positive, neutral and negative responses. The selection criteria are not explained. Government pollsters asking somebody something is repeated in a variety of financial venues. And too, in other fact gathering, questions are asked of business managers, farmers and producers of all kinds. In provincial areas, according go this book, there's a lot of lying done to make the Government think the individuals are doing a heck of a job. Numbers are inflated, projections optimistically cited. Seems to me the whole process is chaotic. Ironically it's said that when producers hype their output, they're taxed on it. And go out of business thanks to the inflated numbers.

Is China growing? Unemployment shrinking? Inflation poised? Will China shift from an industrial economy to a service economy? It seems we won't know until 'way after any shift plays out. And neither will the Chinese number-crunchers. For blind-flying speculators and investors, tossing a coin seems the right strategy.

The example cited seems subjective. Maybe because analysis isn't explained and subject to change,depending on expediencies. I called my  former money manager and current friend to ask for his take on this situation. I told him I'd send him this $50 book to read and comment on; he didn't reply. He always replies to my queries. As he does business in China I think his silence spoke loudly.

A great many articulate words are said to simply say "The problem of a sample set that is incapable of telling the truth to anyone in an official badge remains, and that adds to the difficulties the NBS (National Bureau of Statistics) faces.