When it was all the rage back in 2014, I was asked and asked and asked and asked again what I thought about Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century. After a few months of the incessant question, I read it.
All the way through.
Every single word.
I also read more reviews of it than I think I have ever read
about a contemporary book. The reviews had an interesting pattern.
The first wave of reviewers were the enthusiasts and the
haters. Neither set had read the book (more about that anon).
Then along came the economists. They read the book and
starting doing what economists do best; they take it apart into tiny little
pieces and hold up each piece to see if it is a good piece. No book ever
survives that kind of scrutiny. Capital did not survive
that kind of scrutiny. There are many reviews like that out there now—my
favorite was Larry Summers’ review because Summers liked the book and took it
apart anyway.
My first temptation after reading the book was to join the
chorus. Lots of details in the book annoyed me; some things really
annoyed me; some things I thought were interesting; some are really
interesting.
But, the sort of technical review is just treating this work
like it was a technical bit of economics. But, technical bits of
economics don’t make bestseller lists and, more importantly, nobody ever asks
me what I think about them.
So, how good is Capital? Not as a
technical paper in economics, but as a book. I never saw it
reviewed on that criterion. Is this book any good?
Sadly, the book as a book is terrible. I have seen it
praised for being readable, but the comparison set being used is articles
written by economists.
So, let’s state up front: this book is much easier to read
than an article selected at random from The American Economic Review.
Normal people (i.e., not economists) could, theoretically, read Capital.
But, compare this book to books normal people read and there is no doubt: it is
an awful book. Unreadable. It is a slog, a real slog and the
punchline is already known.
You don’t have to take my word for it, by the way.
The Wall Street Journal had an interesting article after the book
came out in which they used data from Kindle to estimate how far people got
when reading books. Clever idea. Kindle records when people
highlight passages. So, you can look where people stop
highlighting. Best-selling novels: people are still highlighting close
to the end. Nonfiction: people don’t get as far. Capital?
The lowest of the books they looked at: 3% of the book.
That seems about right—I suspect few people have read past
page 25. If someone made it to page 100, they must be determined.
If they read the whole thing, they are almost certainly an academic economist
who is thinking about the technical economics and is
determined to get through the whole book and has too much time
on their hands.
Most economists don’t read regular books, so most economists
may not know this, but anyone who says this book is really readable and good
needs to read more non-economics books.
Let me repeat—this is not an assessment of the economics
in Capital; it is an assessment of the book as a book. In
other words, I would have liked this book vastly more if Piketty had just taken
the interesting data and put it all in a 100 page article in the Brookings
Papers on Economic Activity. But, then, if he had done that, he
wouldn’t be a star, so you have to admire his choice at that level.
How bad is the book? Well, let’s take the much
discussed fact that Piketty uses literary references in his work.
The fact that it is shocking that Piketty mentions
literature shows how low economists have sunk in being generally
readable. Look! An economist who has read a novel! Serious Carnival
Freak Show material here!
But here is the dirty little secret nobody mentions when
saying how exciting it is that Piketty mentions literature. From the
evidence of this book, one can safely conclude that he has read exactly one
novel (Pere Goriot) and some summaries of a couple of Jane Austen
novels.
Now, I am sure Piketty has read more novels than that.
But, for all the discussion about the literature in this book, it is surprising
how few literary references there are.
And even what literature is actually mentioned was
incredibly poorly used.
The endlessly repeated literary reference: there is a character in Pere Goriot who tell another character that it is better to marry a rich woman than to try to work your way up through the professions.
Piketty uses this quote to show that in the Old Days, the only way to wealth was to marry rich, that working people could never get rich, and so they all would be better off just marrying rich.
This, Piketty argues, is Bad, really Bad. And, Piketty says, those Olden Times are Back. Piketty doesn’t like that fact. So he quotes that passage from Balzac. A lot.
But, here is the thing: that character in Balzac’s novel is
wrong. Even if we grant that marrying a wealthy woman will make you
richer than, say, going to law school ever could, that doesn’t mean you should
skip law school. Because, you see, there are a limited supply of available
wealthy women. Sorry to break this to you, but not everyone can marry a
wealthy woman.
If your main goal in life is to become wealthy and you have
the chance to marry a multi-billionaire, then don’t hesitate. No matter
what era, no matter what else is going on in the economy, don’t hesitate.
But, again, sorry to break this to you, but not only are
there few multi-billionaires available for marriage, the ones that exist do not
want to marry you. So, you might want to go ahead and work
after all.
Piketty doesn’t seem to have enough literary sense to
realize that just because a character in a novel says something, that doesn’t
make it true.
A similar sort of thing happens with his economics.
There is a great deal of bluster in this book. Bluster is not the sort of
thing which is normal in economics articles, but this book is full of
bluster.
Piketty knows the answer, and thus he sees evidence for his
conclusions everywhere, even when it isn’t there. Again, at one level
this is the sort of technical stuff the economists are picking apart.
But, as a book, it makes the argument shockingly weak.
Anyone who actually read this thing with a critical eye
would notice holes in the argument everywhere—there is way too much of the “As
we all know” sort of thing going on.
As we all know, inherited wealth is immoral, but wealth you
earn by working is moral. You knew that, right? Because, that is
the sort of thing that is underlying the entire tone of this book. And
Piketty never pauses to even notice that simply because Piketty thinks wealth
acquired by writing long economics books is moral and wealth inherited from
your parents is immoral doesn’t in fact mean that this is true.
Unless, of course, Piketty is God and gets to set the moral
standards for the rest of the universe. What if, crazy thought, there is
nothing inherently immoral about inherited wealth. Then is there still a
problem here? That is the sort of question which Piketty doesn’t manage
to address in 577 pages of text.
Anyway, I could go on and on and on. I have lots of
marginalia in this book. But, as I said, watching economists be
economists is a bit dull for the rest of the world.
So, instead I’ll say this. If you haven’t read Capital,
you are safe to skip it.
