[my emphasis, not in original]
As compelling as Piketty’s thesis is for the Left, he’s wrong. Matthew Rognlie, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology doctoral student in economics, dismantles Piketty in his paper, “A note on Piketty and diminishing returns to capital.” Rognlie’s contention:
“Recent trends in both capital wealth and income are driven almost entirely by housing…” Ronglie deploys sarcasm with effect, suggesting Piketty’s book would have been more accurately named, “Housing in the Twenty-First Century.”
Rognlie then makes an interesting insight;
housing prices are going up because of artificial scarcity caused by land-use regulation. Put another way, the concentration of wealth is not an issue of the “1 percent” winning while the rest of us lose—
it’s an issue of homeowners benefitting from government restrictions on property rights that prevent a free market in homebuilding, restricting supply and driving up prices.
http://thefederalist.com/2015/07/27/...ng-inequality/
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
