Piketty Gets A Laugh At Mankiw’s Expense

I’m not a fan of the former Bush economics adviser and Harvard economics professor N. Gregory Mankiw, so I was delighted to see Thomas Piketty make a joke about him at the recent meeting of the American Economics Association. Chuck Collins of the Institute for Policy Studies was there, attending one of the panels on Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century. One of those panels, packed with right-wing economists, was set up by Mankiw, who used it as a stage to attack Piketty. He and his fellow ideologues decided unanimously that the best thing to do is to impose a consumption tax, presumably as part of a package to lower taxes on the top earners and to keep capital gains taxes low and corporate taxes at their lowest level in decades.

Mankiw, at another point in his presentation, had still more embarrassing comments to make. Piketty, he intoned, must “hate the rich.” Piketty’s financial success with his best-selling book, Mankiw added, just might lead to self-loathing.

This is what passes for right wing humor in the economist class, though Collins reports that the obviously prepared bon mots “fell flat”. Then someone asked Piketty what he thought about the consumption tax idea. Collins reports his reply:

“We know something about billionaire consumption,” Piketty observed, “but it is hard to measure some of it. Some billionaires are consuming politicians, others consume reporters, and some consume academics.”

Sweet. A correspondent tells me that one of his friends was there and that this jibe brought the house down. Too bad more people don’t laugh at Mankiw and other toadies for the rich.

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9 replies
  1. jo6pac says:

    “We know something about billionaire consumption,” Piketty observed, “but it is hard to measure some of it. Some billionaires are consuming politicians, others consume reporters, and some consume academics.”

    LOL what does this mean the trickle down thingy and their the job creators is wrong:? WOW that is amazing and thanks for the info and I’m not surprised or shocked at the news from the repug right on just get a job fan club. Then again a list was released today on who collect WF and it looks white to me.
    Thank You

  2. miffed says:

    It is extremely easy to demonize the ‘rich’ and powerful, as there are so few of ‘them’ and so many of ‘us’.

    When one tries to demonize money and the system that creates and maintains Oligarchs….the system suddenly finds many more collaborators than traitors to the money system.

    • Ed Walker says:

      Let’s remember why we loathe oligarchs. It isn’t because of their wealth per se, except for those who obtained that wealth by fraud and cheating and rigging the system, which is certainly a fair percentage, or by inheritance with no sense of social obligation, which is a large part of the rest (Waltons, Kochs, and many more).

      It’s because they can and do rig the system to maintain their wealth for themselves and their dynasties (Bush, Koch), to defend and protect their friends (Adelson) at our expense, and because they use it to destroy the system that allowed them to become rich, by defunding every public function from physical infrastructure to education to research and development.

      • SpringTexan says:

        Exactly right. This is one of the weird right-wing delusions about leftists, that we hate rich people. Heck, some of us (not me) ARE rich people, and in general we like money as well as the next guy. We loathe exploitative money gotten not for providing anything worthwhile but for rewarding the winner for having stacked the deck, though!

  3. Linnaeus says:

    It’s interesting, though not at all surprising, how the wagons have been circling since the publication of Capital in the Twenty-First Century.

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