Further notes on Piketty's Capital

I published a first set of notes on the book a little while ago. I still have not finished it, but am now much further. It's still an excellent read that I would recommend to anyone.
Some of the slightly odd trends are maintained, but also the further developments answer several of the questions that came out of the first chapters.

An emergence of sense?

It had long been one of my examples of the world going mad. Supermarkets in the UK -certainly the ones around here- would be open 24/7 (except for weekends and bank holidays, when opening times would be less).

But it appears that this is no longer the case. Now opening hours are 6am to 1am. Still plenty of time, but at least a little bit of a break, and that is closer to something sensible!.

I wonder what caused the change. And what will be the explanations from the few economists who wrote articles explaining that 24/7 was pretty much a pre-determined conclusion from economic forces.

In defense of the tree-huggers

Paul Krugman has recently published a blogpost and a chronicle talking about the evolution of the economics of fighting climate change. In it he states that people of both the left and the right are guilty of fallacies -to be fair he also says that the fallacies of the right are much more serious and damaging.

But we have come to expect that. So let's see what are the fallacies of the left:
"there are some people on the left who keep insisting that economic growth is incompatible with reduced emissions, and that therefore we have to turn our backs on growth." is from the blog post.

Strictly understood, and in a theoretical economics framework, this is of course a fallacy, as you could have plummeting emission intensity (ie, emission per unit of GDP).

Now, let's look at what it means in practice, and when you are not just in an economics framework:

First notes on Piketty's Capital in the 21st Century

This has already been published on the European Tribune, but I guess I should have it there as well -especially as I expect there will be further notes.

Since being published in English (its original publication, in French, came a year sooner), Thomas Piketty's Capital in the XXIst Century has been heavily discussed - and reviewed.
I would like to comment and start discussions on some of its contents and assumptions. Since there have been questions about it, I will start writing even though I am yet to finish the book. Well, if I were to do it all in one go, it would be far too long a diary in any case. Please note that I am reading it in French, and thus cannot exactly quote the English version. At the point where I am in the book, little has been said of inequalities, which are the subject of part 3.

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Is that a fair test?

Via Paul Krugman, I read Ezra Klein's opening tribune on his new, independent website venture.

And it purports to show that politics makes us brain dead because, when presented with a political problem that fits our prejudice (or goes against them), we tend to reply according to the prejudice rather than according to our abilities, in this case a simple maths proportions problem (yes, I am surprised that most people failed the problem in the first place, and that it be called "difficult", go take a look).

But the killer is that, while the study reports that it happened to liberals and conservatives alike, it also reveals that the question meant to go against the liberal prejudice (and thus that they would get wrong by answering against the data) used correct numbers presented incorrectly. That is, they showed crime rates to be higher in cities that banned handguns, whereas the actual data said the opposite.

Unfit models

In a recent conference about data analysis, I highlighted the importance of being well aware of one’s model’s assumptions. That all models are wrong should not be a reason never to use them, but you must be acutely aware of what their use implies.

I trust that you would agree with such an observation (OK, some will not want to use imperfect model at all, but that is going too far, and would have prevented any progress in human knowledge). But if you do, you should be pretty worried. Because most developed countries (and probably even more so less-developed ones) are now run on the basis of models whose assumptions are wildly violated –to the point where the rules of such models have made their way into their constitutions.

Anachronic music

A propos of nothing, I recently came to reflect that the last time Jacques Brel performed live was 47 years ago. And, since that was way too early for people like me to be there, for those who have to go by live recordings, the last one was in 1964. Fully 50 years ago.

Yet I cannot play the famous Olympia 64 without being immediately taken by a shiver -though I have played it many, many times. I immediately feel the presence. Where last year's pop star hit can already feel embarassingly outdated, this feeling seems to have eternity thrust upon it.

Music being the art that probably most directly touches us without bothering to go through the intellect, could the fact that much of the music I listen to dates back quite a bit be not only consequence, but even cause, of my frequent impressions of not being in synch with the times? Not that I don't listen to any contemporary artist (and, OK, Bob Dylan is still very active, but going on 73), although those I tend to enjoy would typically not be the main household names. But, typically, as I type, a 1963 Dylan recording of Moonshiner is playing. And it can still bring tears to my eyes after many hundred times.