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by bildung 3909 days ago
I was under the impression that Piketty et.al. showed pretty conclusively that a) inequality indeed got worse and b) it's a matter of policy, not globalization per se. The paper you linked predates the publication of Capital in the 21st century, so the author had no chance to react on those findings.
1 comments

No, Piketty showed that inequality is getting worse in the West. Inequality is getting smaller in global and it is an empirical fact. Anyhow, his theory has serious flaws: http://www.econlib.org/library/Columns/y2014/Jasaypython.htm...
> Inequality is getting smaller in global and it is an empirical fact.

I acknowledge that inequality is getting smaller between averages of different countries, but is it truly getting smaller between individuals (that's what actually matters)? I don't think we can ascertain that, because I think Piketty would have included the historical data if he had them for developing countries.

> Anyhow, his theory has serious flaws

If I understand the critiquing author's argument correctly - is he saying that facts stated in the Piketty's book contradict his own toy model? Maybe then his model is flawed for whatever reason, but that's not a flaw of Piketty's book.

> No, Piketty showed that inequality is getting worse in the West.

Yes, I know. I was alluding to the following sentence: "Until this new Asian labour is wholly absorbed and its wages rise to Western levels, U.S. and European unskilled wages will remain depressed and the share of profits in value added will rise." - The author here talks about inequality in the West.