{"id":207747,"date":"2020-02-23T17:01:26","date_gmt":"2020-02-23T14:01:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ww-vb.mine.nu\/w108\/thomas-piketty-why-frances-rock-star-economist-still-wants-to\/"},"modified":"2020-02-23T17:01:26","modified_gmt":"2020-02-23T14:01:26","slug":"thomas-piketty-why-frances-rock-star-economist-still-wants-to","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hameed.nwar.uk\/sa\/thomas-piketty-why-frances-rock-star-economist-still-wants-to\/","title":{"rendered":"Thomas Piketty: Why France\u2019s \u2018rock star economist\u2019 still wants to"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Seven years ago a French economist named Thomas Piketty published a book entitled Capital in the Twenty-First Century<\/em>.<\/em> It was 700 pages long and featured in-depth empirical analysis of various historical tax systems, amounting to a forensic argument against widening inequality. You wouldn\u2019t say that it spelled international bestseller, and yet it has sold 2.5 million copies to date.<\/p>\n

Hailed as a modern successor to Karl Marx\u2019s monumental Capital<\/em>, it rejuvenated radical leftwing critiques of capitalism and earned Piketty (it rhymes with spaghetti) the epithet of \u201crock star\u201d economist. Seldom has a media cliche been more misleading.<\/p>\n

With Yanis Varoufakis, the brooding, motorbike-riding former Greek finance minister, the term \u201crock star\u201d might serve a shorthand descriptive purpose. But when I meet Piketty in Paris, he looks like George Osborne\u2019s slightly fleshier twin brother (they were born two weeks apart in 1971). What\u2019s more, his preferred pastime is to bury himself in comparative assessments of incremental capital returns in late 19th-century economies. It\u2019s not exactly throwing televisions out of hotel windows.<\/p>\n

In one respect, however, there is an element of danger about Piketty that has recently come back to haunt him. In November last year he was promoting his latest book Capital and Ideology<\/em>, about which I\u2019ve come to interview him, at the University of Toulouse when he was suddenly taken by surprise. During a question-and-answer session, he was asked by a female student about a complaint of domestic violence filed against him in 2009 by his former partner, Aur\u00e9lie Filippetti, then a Socialist party MP, later to become minister for culture.<\/p>\n

Thanks to an agreement brokered by the Socialist party at the time, Piketty apologised for his actions and Filippetti quickly dropped the charges. Although the original allegations surfaced in the British press in 2014, the details of the incident had never been publicly discussed. So Piketty was unprepared when the student asked him what he, as someone who had admitted to beating his ex-girlfriend, thought about appearing at the university just three days before a march against violence towards women.<\/p>\n

The economist did not respond with his customary eloquence. He seemed ruffled and defensive, informing his inquisitor that hers was an \u201cindecent\u201d question and that the case was closed a long time ago. Then he went further and said that the relationship the student referred to was with someone (he didn\u2019t mention Filippetti\u2019s name) who \u201cwas extremely violent towards my daughters\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cI put her out of my home,\u201d he told the stunned audience. \u201cI pushed her outside, which I regret, but I can assure you that given the behaviour towards my daughters, I think that a lot of people would be much more het up than that.\u201d<\/p>\n

He explained that Filippetti fell through a half-open door but that his actions, while regrettable, did not prevent her from going to work.<\/p>\n

Shortly afterwards Filippetti\u2019s lawyer served a writ for defamation, asking for damages and the publication of the ruling in the media of her choice. This latest episode had not been reported in the British press, so I arrived at the Paris School of Economics \u2013 France\u2019s answer to the LSE which Piketty helped to set up \u2013 ignorant of the Toulouse outburst.<\/p>\n

Instead, our discussion is to be focused on the English translation of his latest tome, which weighs in at a forbidding 1,093 pages.<\/p>\n

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