I didn’t want to read Piketty’s book Capital, and probably wouldn’t have, but now comes a development that removes every trace of all my guilt and shame. I didn’t want to read it because he believes in way-progressive tax rates, which is grabby, grabby, grabby, and grabby, grabby, grabby is contrary to the spirit of the gospel. You know. Second, he wants a global tax, which means a global tax collector. Ick. Poo. Gakk.
But now, I am saved by the bell. No need to worry about it. It appears that the numbers were cooked.
Postscript: But . . . since we are talking about economic numbers for the whole world, it should not be surprising that there is room for some discussion. You can read more here and a response from Piketty here. So maybe the numbers aren’t cooked. Maybe they are just half baked.
This is good news.
Money is, after all, a measure of the value of something real. Proverbs instructs us that a dishonest (weight) measure is hated by God.
That law seems to be commutative as we are witnessing that the dishonest measure of a dishonest measure has just bit the dust.
However, lying on the enemies self destruction is not a sound strategy as something needs to be put in place when they finish making a hash of the dollar.
Should the Church have in place its own money? Why is this tool left solely to the secular realm?
@ Timothy, I’ve never considered the idea of the church having it’s own currency. Very interesting to say the least. I could see a well managed currency bringing denominations together that didn’t agree on much else. Especially if some churches started it and allowed any other church that wanted to use it do so. But as with anything in the hands of church leaders these days it could (more than likely) be very destructive. Lots of cross denominational checks and balances would be necessary. On the other hand, the “tool” wasn’t left to a secular realm originally. It was in… Read more »
Aren’t they always? I recall reading, when trade deficits were the crisis du jour, that when the trade deficits or surpluses for each country were all added up, a deficit remained–a ‘trade deficit with Mars?’ Or the projection, when operators had to make phone connections manually 100+ years ago, that all the women in the country would become phone operators in a few years.
I’m a little puzzled by the inclusion of the postscript. If you read those links in the postscript articles, it would seem that the initial charge is completely false. In which case, why not just take down the post altogether?
Brad, no, I didn’t read the first response as saying the charges were “completely false.” More like “overstated.” And I will be interested to see what the FT has to say in response.
Where in the Economist link do they say the claims are completely false?
The charge that was “completely false” is not that there are errors in the data (that, in any case, was pretty much unavoidable in such an enormous compilation of data from many different sources using very complex methodologies) but that “the numbers were cooked,” which in usual parlance, implies deliberate manipulation in order to deceive. Given that Piketty made all of his numbers public and invited people to cross-examine them, the latter accusation is somewhat absurd a priori, and in any case seems a posteriori false. In any case, there are thousands of numbers in the book, and the FT… Read more »
You will note that Pastor Wilson did not make the charge that the numbers where cooked; he merely said that “they appear to have been…” while providing a link to the FT where the initial charge is made.
Pastor Wilson bears no responsibility for correcting anything. Perhaps you should direct your request to the FT.
As you note, the records are open–a good thing, btw– one would assume that even Christians should feel free to browse them.
Now if Michael Mann would only release his source data….