Numbers Matter

Thomas Piketty's book "Capital in the Twenty-First Century is only 685 pages (200 pages less than Wolff's).  It is exactly why Introductions and Conclusions are the best starting points for determining whether to even fan through the pages or even look at the table of contents.

What fun for an latent Economist/Mathematician/Statistician to see after chart of empirical data captured from best available historical sources.  However a sample size of less than 300 years is a difficult foundation to theorize mathematical/economic premises.  Piketty uses the intuitive r>g (return on capital greater than rate of growth of income/output) to conclude that divergence in inequality of wealth will likely outpace convergence.

I did enjoy Piketty's justification for a bias to the French data (vs USA) based on lower population growth and other factors.  Also entertaining was his comment about the discipline of economics in "childish passion for mathematics and for purely theoretical and often highly ideological speculation, at the expense of historical research and collaboration with the other social sciences."   I admit in my studies, I hated the expression "with all other things being equal".

It's always interesting to read the last words.  Usually it ends up being what the author really wants you to understand.

"Yet is seem to me that all social scientists, all journalists and commentators, all activists in the unions and in politics of whatever stripe, an especially all citizens should take a serious interest in money, its measurement, the facts surrounding it, and its history.  Those who have a lot of it never fail to defend their interests.  Refusing to deal with numbers rarely serves the interests of the least well-off,"

In my Vistage 2011 presentation on Risk/Luck I said "Manage your investments or they will Damage you".  It was my way of saying if you don't pay attention to your money your interests will not be served. 

"Manage your money,  or it will manage you"