Chhota Pegs

The Times of India recently reported , not without a certain self-congratulatory air, that: "The latest wealth index by New World Wealth that looks at multimillionaires — an individual with net assets of at least $10 million — has ranked India eighth in the global rich list, below countries such as the US, China, Germany and the UK but above Singapore and Canada." This has certainly sent Indian cyberspace into a little tizzy. A common celebratory headline: "India has more multimillionaires than Australia, Russia and France!” And given that the largest number of the world’s poor also live in India , a common admonitory reaction is: "See? Told you so! India is just a corrupt society." This isn't the first time we've been gobsmacked by the sort of numbers India can generate. Recently, farmer suicides did the rounds, with the already large numbers (around 300,000 since 1995) helped along by the Indian numbering system: read here for why some parti...

Branko Milanovic  has commented in some detail  on a  recent post of mine , about Piketty's  Capital in the Twenty First Century.  My initial urge was not to reply. But I see that Branko's post is getting a fair amount of attention on the net, with a wealth of approving accompanying comments about theorists who know nothing of that grand place, the Real World.  So here is an attempt to point out why Branko's post is problematic. Not that it will help much with the general public who are (to some extent understandably) distrustful of academic arguments. And we all know it never ends: the title of this post puts me in mind of the little old lady who snapped, "Young man,  it's turtles all the way down !"  Preamble. At various points Branko claims that I bring to bear a ahistorical, abstract set of arguments on what is a vibrant historical process. In doing so I'm apparently missing all the nuanced depth of Piketty's Laws. It is hard to convey just h...