Episode 218: Why (r > g) Matters

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Who can we trust in the “sciences”? In this episode, I offer academic research—later discounted by evidence—for years considered sacrosanct simply because it protects a hidden agenda of political economy. Hence, today's Episode 218: Why (r > g) Matters.

In this episode, I read from: a book by Chuck Collins called The Wealth Hoarders (which I will no doubt be relating more in coming episodes); Thomas Piketty's book Capital in the Twenty-First Century; and two Wikipedia pages, one on The Kuznets Curve, the other on The Gilded Age.

I play: a snippet from the television series cartoon version of the comic Dilbert, where Nobel-prize winners gathered on a bus have a disagreement on what kind of academic research does——and what does not——constitute a science. As I mentioned in Episode 20, that is still a hot but smoldering controversy. Musically, I open the show with Henry Giroux backed by KMFDM's "Attak"; I close today with Julie & Rolf & The Campfire Gang doing "Over The Rainbow".