Piketty’s 696-page record of him tilting at windmills has brought out of the creepy shadows every crypto-socialist alive. They’re all hoping for a new bible to usher in yet another attempt at Utopia.

Piketty can be refuted in one sentence:

The return to capitalists never can exceed total profit and total profit never can exceed sales since return to capitalists is a share of profits after all wages to laborers get paid, all expenses get paid and politicians take all their taxes from sales.

I show where L > G and P > G too! Said another way, compensation to laborers grows faster than GDP during many years and politicians' spending grows faster than GDP during many years.

It's all in Thomas Piketty, 696 Pages Of Foolery Destroyed In Less Than Five Minutes

and

Ut Oh, Someone Better Tell Thomas Piketty About L > G Too

and

More Bad News For Thomas Piketty P > G Too!

To answer you when you ask, In all honesty, if you have substantial argument to counter- why do you not supply it if you take the time to read here? that is the purpose of the site. Click the link. Find out.

Anyone produces in hopes of the gain of profit in a purchase and sale. Without profits there can be no purchase of another thing. People pursue profits to buy chattel, services and rights of action.

Profits provide buying power because people seek buying power to buy the things they want from the surpluses they produce owing to efficiency. Otherwise, people would live at bare subsistence content to make little of a few things they need to survive. Under such a state, trade would not exist, nor would credit.

People work to get profits. And to get those profits, people work to make property (right of ownership) in surplus constrained by the Axiom of Profit — the sum of sales must at least equal the cost of production, otherwise the producer goes to run — with prices set by the infrangible, one true law of trade, the Law of Prices — the winning bids of purchase and sale in the face of what is on offer set the price.

People don't work to make savings. To believe that people work for savings rather than profits is to reject reality.

Cash and bank credits are means to ends. People trade for property in stuff because before people can enjoy stuff, they must own it.

Savings is mere rhetoric. People don't put savings in a savings bank or any other kind of bank. Depositors buy bank credits and sell cash, other bank credits or debt in a purchase and sale.

In a purchase and sale, selling cash or perhaps other bank credits and buying an interest-bearing account, a bank customer is a capitalist who buys a share of future bank profits, which gets called interest. It's mere deceptive rhetoric to call such a capitalist "a saver" or one "who has savings" even when the bank customer capitalist is a wage earner who has buying power through profits when his wages less living expenses is positive.

Bankers and other capitalists deal in property with confidence in forthcoming profits, transmuting property that lacks saleability into property that does, enabling the adventurer-entrepreneur to transmute property as capital of production into property as wealth for trade.

Academia economics is mythology and fails to comport to reality. Academia economics, regardless of neoclassical school, fails to deal with the phenomena of trade — property and profits. Instead, academia economics focuses upon utility and scarcity, both of which have nothing to do with commerce, which is also called trade.

The Austrian School once was known as The Psychology School. The entire theory of the school gets predicated on pseudo-scientific psychology never proven in reality and not needed at all to explain the trade of property in purchases and sales in the pursuit of profits.

There is no room for psychology in an accurate, authentic theory of commerce. An authentic theory gets predicated on property and profit.

The application of psychology in the art of commerce is another field. That is called marketing.

The psychology of chat amuses and how it ever reveals group dynamics. Always, there are those lower on the totem pole of status who as toadies, seek favors from others of the group with greater status. In so doing, they attack an outsider while seeking pats on their heads from their superiors.

Keep amusing and good luck!

Golly Steve, saying so doesn't make it so. You are free to believe all the silliness that you do. No one shall stop you, Steve.

The "Austrian School" is a school of neoclassical economics and thus arises from the same fallacies as all of the other neoclassical schools, which in turn arose from the classical fallacies of Smith and Ricardo.

Many who react that way do, hostile and immature, do so owing to cognitive dissonance, which triggers reactionary, angry behavior. Often such is seen in people suffering from hyper-indoctrination as members of a cult.

Mises earned a degree in law and didn't even work as an economics professor. NYU administrators let him teach but never paid Mises. A board of trustees member had to dig into his own pocket to give Mises private subsidy, in essence. Mises was little better than a sociologist.

Mises and Rothbard made many errors because of being lifetime academicians neither of whom ever ran any business much less a profitable one. Without proper entrepreneurial experience, Mises and Rothbard lacked referential experience to understand how capital works.

And that is why Mises spewed a silly, false theory around time preference to explain interest. Mises swallowed hard on a giant waste of time, the work of Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk.

Even Menger, the father of the Austrian school of Neoclassical Economics had this to say:

“The time will come when people will realize that Böhm-Bawerk’s theory is one of the greatest errors ever committed.” ~ Carl Menger, founder of the Austrian School of Neoclassical Economics

It's unlikely that you know that at one time, the Austrian School was known as The Psychology School. The entire theory of the school gets predicated on pseudo-scientific psychology never proven in reality and not needed at all to explain the trade of property in purchases and sales in the pursuit of profits.

There is no room for psychology in an accurate, authentic theory of commerce. An authentic theory gets predicated on property and profit.

The application of psychology in the art of commerce is another field. That is called marketing.

Good luck!

Perhaps it is you who displays illiteracy with respect to reality, Steve. Clearly, you can parrot the jargon and the false teachings of the mythology that is economics.

There is no such thing as "savings." There is only profit and loss.

People don't work to get savings. People work to get profits. Profits provide buying power because people seek buying power to buy the things they want from the surpluses they produce owing to efficiency. Otherwise, people would live at bare subsistence content to make little of a few things they need to survive.

Cash and bank credits are means to ends. People want property in stuff because before people can enjoy stuff, they must own it. People don't work and produce to make savings. To believe so is to reject reality.

People trade their property (rights of ownership) in chattel, services and rights of action (credit). People don't trade biens (goods) as the Physiocrats called them nor do they trade utilities as the Mill from Bentham utilitarians called them.

The whole mythology of production and distribution comes from the Physiocrats and their effort to support false claims that only farmers and the land produces while all other classes are unproductive and thus should be the ones upon whom taxes should be borne.

Wealth never accrues. What a silly belief you have that "wealth accrues." Wealth is property in trade. What ceases to be traded ceases to be wealth. A fart-filled used couch tossed to the curb isn't wealth. Yet, according to your false beliefs, it's accrued wealth.

Your commentary drips from someone who hasn't studied at all the history of economics, the various doctrines and what economics is all about. Clearly, you can't grasp the reality of trade, the only reality, which is based on property (right of ownership) put to production, which is capital, to produce in surplus, property made for trade, which is wealth. It is through the purchase and sale of property as wealth, or trade, which is the reality.

I get economics. It's a mythology. Academia economics is mythology and fails to comport to reality. If economics were correct, there wouldn't be bubbles, manias and collapses.

For the rest who are interesting in disabusing themselves from the mythology of economics, which guys like Steve and that other joker seem heavily indoctrinated by, read Bizarro Theater.

OK, so you have decided to insult. That's fine if that is the self-conceit you have come to rely upon in efforts to survive.

Howe you must ask yourself, so plant and equipment comes from "the entrepreneur [who] saves a chunk of his earnings early in his career" and not ever or even mostly from, say, venture capitalists and their profits?

So you would have us believe that no one goes to bankers for bank credits conjured on the expectation of a share of future profits for payment even when bankers only keep but a fraction of cash and liquid assets in reserve? How do you explain how the bankers do so without any "savings"?

This bit of yours is gold: Where do the funds in the capital market come from? THE SAVINGS OF OTHER PEOPLE, YOU MORON. ~ Kratoklastes77

From where do you think these "savings" come? What you wrongly believe as savings is is accrued purchasing power from profit.

Without profits there can be no purchase of another thing. People pursue profits to buy chattel, services and rights of action.

Bankers nary care a whit about savings. Bankers discount commercial paper because of expectation of profit at foreseeable prices. Bankers never discount commercial paper because of expectation of savings from anyone.

Bankers deal in property with confidence in forthcoming profits, transmuting property. Through banking, bankers transform hard to market property as wealth into property as capital thus bringing forth trade that would not otherwise happen.

Savings is mere rhetoric. People don't put savings in a savings bank or any other kind of bank. Depositors buy bank credits and sell cash, other bank credits or debt in a purchase and sale.

Depositors get deposits as evidence of their right of action against bankers when in a purchase and sale, selling their cash, other bank credits or debt. Bankers become owners of said cash, bank credits from other bankers and debt bought in a purchase and sale from depositors.

Do you know anything about how banking and trade works? It doesn't seem so from your comments.

Good luck!

"The only way to create wealth is to produce it." ~clearpoint

Actually, the only way to create wealth is to create property as capital and then sell that property as capital in a purchase and sale. Only during that moment when property (right of ownership and never what is owned) as capital trades in a purchase and sale is that property and thus anything, wealth.

The transfer of extant property in trade merely transforms potential extant wealth into actual wealth. So when someone sells an already-built house for re-sale, that fails to create new property as wealth.

Ultimately, it's property that gets created. Humans trade property, their rights of ownership in chattel, services and rights of action.

Cultist Miseans such as yourself always amuse. Better than even money says you are a twenty-something.

To dispense with you easily enough, so plant and equipment comes from "the entrepreneur [who] saves a chunk of his earnings early in his career" and not ever or even mostly from, say, venture capitalists and their profits?

So you would have us believe that no one goes to bankers for bank credits conjured on the expectation of a share of future profits for payment even when bankers only keep but a fraction of cash and liquid assets in reserve? How do you explain how the bankers do so without any "savings"?

This bit of yours is gold: Where do the funds in the capital market come from? THE SAVINGS OF OTHER PEOPLE, YOU MORON. ~ Kratoklastes77

From where do you think these "savings" come? What you wrongly believe as savings is is accrued purchasing power from profit.

Without profits there can be no purchase of another thing. People pursue profits to buy chattel, services and rights of action.

Bankers nary care a whit about savings. Bankers discount commercial paper because of expectation of profit at foreseeable prices. Bankers never discount commercial paper because of expectation of savings from anyone.

Bankers deal in property with confidence in forthcoming profits, transmuting property. Through banking, bankers transform hard to market property as wealth into property as capital thus bringing forth trade that would not otherwise happen.

Savings is mere rhetoric. People don't put savings in a savings bank or any other kind of bank. Depositors buy bank credits and sell cash, other bank credits or debt in a purchase and sale.

Depositors get deposits as evidence of their right of action against bankers when in a purchase and sale, selling their cash, other bank credits or debt. Bankers become owners of said cash, bank credits from other bankers and debt bought in a purchase and sale from depositors.

Do you know anything about how banking and trade works? It doesn't seem so from your comments.

There might be a moron here, but it isn't me. Enjoy the never-ending flow of Koolaid from Mises.org. Keep amusing!

Kudos for your writing effort Brian Roberts. However, nothing that you wrote about has anything to do with 'Social Justice'.

You've conflated Social Welfare and Socialism with Social Justice.

Social Justice is a name that labels the concept that arose during the Civil "Rights" era of the U.S.A. being pushed by Martin Luther King.

In short, those seeking Social Justice were seeking laws to punish whites, en masse, who engaged in segregation, discrimination, and religious bigotry.

You have let your enemies, the socialists, gain the upper hand by accepting their rhetoric, their purposeful misuse of the label 'Social Justice' to mask their agenda of bureaucracy-control redistribution of income through socialism.

Socialists have co-opted the label 'Social Justice' precisely because the phrase contains the word, 'justice', which to any man or woman means fair, 50-50, punish the bad guys and the like.

In short, Brian Roberts, you do not help the cause of those seeking Freedom instead of Officialdom, of those seeking to live by individualism instead of living by political collectivism.