[georgeecollins]

Thomas Piketty is so important about this because he shows how exceptional America was in that it had plentiful capital in terms of land, so that labor was unusually valuable vs capital when compared to Europe. It shapes American's thinking in a positive way, but we need to acknowledge things have changed. Formerly, almost anyone who was willing to work hard and take a risk could build a homestead. Now the conditions for opportunity are available but more restricted.

[snowwrestler]

With respect to Piketty, the industries in which the U.S. is a world leader today include finance, entertainment, software, pharmaceuticals, and industrial equipment. None of these depend on the availability of land or other physical capital.

[georgeecollins]

That is totally orthogonal to his point. He isn't talking about what industries succeed. He is making that point that because land was relatively cheap, labor was relatively valuable.

[splintercell]

> Now the conditions for opportunity are available but more restricted. <

Restricted, yet it beats rest of the world hands down in terms of opportunities.

When the rest of the world looks at America, they just see a nation which got lucky with land and capital. But the fact is, America had people before it was discovered by the Europeans, and there was no great civilization here unlike almost everywhere else in the world, which leads you to believe that maybe it isn't really all about the geography.

America is a plentiful place where individuals who wanted to achieve something (the 'American way of thinking') they arrived here. This still holds true, and will continue to hold true as long as this American way of thinking remains around.

[badsock]

That belief is widespread in America, but is unsupported by data. If you look at how hard it is for an American to rise out of the conditions they were born in, they're worse off than if they'd been born in (for example) France, Germany, Canada, or Denmark:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Intergenerational_mobilit...

From: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_mobility (see the "Worldwide" section).

[georgeecollins]

Piketty's work was a history of the previous century. You are pointing out current statistics, which make his point that things have changed.

[georgeecollins]

I didn't mean to disparage the U.S.A., just to share Piketty's point that it was particularly exceptional two hundred years ago because of reasons of geography and development.