Lex Anteinternet: The Distrubing Thesis of Capital in the Twenty Fir...

Almost a year ago I was writing about Thomas Piketty's disturbing thesis in this entry:

Lex Anteinternet: The Distrubing Thesis of Capital in the Twenty Fir...: I haven't read it yet, but I've been reading a lot about Thomas Piketty's new book, Capital In The Twenty First Century. The b...

This morning, in reading my local newspaper, George F. Will reviews a new book with a counterveiling thesis, that being John Tanny's new  "cheerful, mind-opening book, “Popular Economics: What the Rolling Stones, Downton Abbey, and LeBron James Can Teach You About Economics.".  Will's article is boldy entitled "How income inequality benefits us all".

Will characterizes Tanny's book which I also haven't read, as boldy presentign a new thesis, but it what it apparently does is bodly defend an old one, that being that Adam Smith was right and we need not worry about jobs being exported overseas.  The book apparently expertly cites numerous examples, with the basis nature of them being that when jobs like making Iphones go overseas, the price lowers so much that in real terms all of our incomes rise.  The book isn't limited to that type of analysis, however, and also, apaprently, defends monopolies.

This is obviously quite the opposite of Piketty, whom I still haven't read, but it strikes me that in some odd ways they may both be correct and incorrect at the same time.  Will's Tanny is correct, that buying at Wall Mart or from monopolies, and from companies that manufacture in the cheapest possible fashion, means less of our income goes into purchases, but it also can't be denied, as Piketty demonstrates, that the wealth that's generated gets concentrated in fewer and fewer hands, who are by extension more and more powerful. 

The overarching thing, however, is that Will's cheerful defense ignores something, which Froma Harrop has been exploring in her recent articles. Nobody wants to be poor, but at some point an economy that serves only to produce wealth and do so efficiently is really soulless and concentrates people into jobs that they might not really like.  In other words, what if some people, indeed a lot of people, are just flat out happier working as a machinist on the factory floor, rather than in some clerk job in the cubicle forest?