Discovering Thomas Piketty

It is obvious that lack of adequate investment in training can exclude entire social groups from the benefits of economic growth.
Thomas Piketty, CAPITAL in the Twenty - First Century, p. 22

The Oracle of Ottawa first came across Thomas Piketty at his local Chapters retailer. There was a dozen  brand new hard cover copies of Capital in the philosophy section. Go figure, the Oracle of Ottawa can only surmise that Heather Reisman does not want what is between the covers to become common knowledge in Canada. The book is beautifully printed by the same publisher that published the works of John Rawls, Harvard Press. At just under 700 pages it could also hold up a pretty large window or stop a very large door.

Thomas Piketty at Cambridge...

The Oracle knows that the main push of the book is about economic inequality, but the Oracle of Ottawa bought the book for the insights into the actual mechanics of capitalism itself. As an avid stock picker you can't know too much about the actual workings of capitalism.The writing style is very easy to read and absorb.The two laws of capitalism are worth the price of the book.

At the time of this writing Capital is number two in Amazons Top 100 Books list! It was number one until just recently. It has come up in the Province of Ontario election already. Which is not hard to understand, since Kathleen Wynne is no doubt an avid reader. The NDP were too busy singing Koom By Ya and the Conservatives never read books at any time, hence Kathleen Wynne has a pretty big edge with this monster tome under her belt.

This Thomas Piketty lad has learned all about academia very young. He got his Phd. at the age of twenty two! He was awarded the prize for the most promising young economist in France in 2002. Just come up with a theory that cannot be entirely proved or disproved. You get to be a legend by default. Just like Sigmund Freud. Whatever works....

The Oracle of Ottawa's favorite economists are John Maynard Keynes and Karl Marx, as all my many international readers already know. They too were fascinated with wealth and inequality. They were also obsessed with how wealth was created. And to study the acquisition of wealth they actually tried it themselves. Especially John Maynard Keynes. He got so good at it that his original portfolio is still compounding in timeless bliss at Cambridge. There was never any doubt about Keynes, he had a ton of his own skin in the game all his life. Thomas Piketty should try that, maybe his next book will be about as long as The General Theory instead of the length of Das Kapital Buch Ein....