1. The poll asked whether the post-1970s increase in inequality in the U.S. is due to r>g. No one* agreed with that statement. Piketty does not agree with that statement.
2. What this makes clear is that Piketty is making a claim about the future. That is, in the future, we will have rising inequality because r>g.
3. Supporters of Piketty can say that the poll asked the wrong question, and those of us who jumped on the poll should have known that.
4. Still, in my opinion, the poll serves to highlight that there is no necessary link between (i) rising inequality and (ii) r>g. You can have (i) without (ii), and you can have (ii) without (i). Yes, we already knew that. You can argue that it does not refute Piketty, because he would never come out and insist that (i) entails (ii) or that (ii) entails (i). However, his book is making a rhetorical attempt to link the two propositions (he would hardly have written it otherwise). I think that the poll illustrates that the rhetoric cannot overcome the economics.
*except for Hilary Hoynes
This has nothing to do with “supporters of Piketty”, but if the question polled is representative of one of Piketty’s position or not. You can completely disagree with everything Piketty says and still be able to see that this is, beyond any doubt, not the case. We now that, because:
According to the poll question Piketty suggests an observation is explained ‘mostly by mechanism A’, while in fact both he disagrees with this assessment AND we have an explicit quote by him stating that it is explained ‘mostly by mechanism B.’ That is, we really have a logical impossibility of the poll question’s implicit assertion being Piketty’s. No talk about “supporters of Piketty” will make this fact go away. Neither will it undo the fact that you got it wrong and amazingly cannot even bring yourself to clearly admit it, instead – again amazingly – passing the buck to Piketty “making a rhetorical attempt to link the two propositions.”
Also, as Weissmann pointed out, a couple of the repondents actually DID respond to Pikett’s actual question in their comments. There you can see, for example, that Acemoğlu disagrees (which is no surprise, he has argued so in a paper), but Saez does agree with it (which is also not a surprise) – and contrary to his answer to the actual question. Whatever the others would have answered to Piketty’s actual question, you are in no position to suggest that the poll answers another question than it actually did: you have no information on this.
Your probably not forthcoming mea culpa for your srew-up – because you apparently forget your first blog post completely when it comes to Piketty – could also include an apology to Hoyne who might, who knows, have responded to Piketty’s actual position. You know, rather than immediately denigrating her for her allegedly little impressive resume or narrow body of work she might, contrary to you, actually have understood Piketty’s position and have responded to that. Or not. But really, at this point, your position for judging anybody on the panel is rather weak.
Point (2) is key. It basically boils down to Piketty saying, “I have no evidence in history for the claim I am about to make, but I do have a speculation about what will happen in the unknown future.”
A prediction about the future, explicitly not based on anything that has been observed to occur in the past, is not science. I am OK with that, not everything has to be science–most of the important truths aren’t–but it is important to realize that is in no way a scientific claim.
I think it’s more charitable to Picketty to assume that liberals who haven’t read him have misinterpreted the book to think he’s saying r>g explains postwar inequality. It strikes me as uncharitable to the point of paranoia to argue that he’s deliberately trying to rhetorically trick those people into believing something he not only hasn’t said, but has said is wrong.
I also think the more charitable view is accurate. The book is super clear that Picketty thinks r>g may explain the gilded age, but in the post war period it hasn’t been as important.