The obligatory Piketty post

It’s Friday, the day to do those things you thought or felt compelled to do all week. The pesky “oughts” might include putting up an obligatory post on Piketty’s new book Capital – perhaps with some critique about how it misses the structural dimensions of capital inequality by focusing primarily on the ways in which the mechanisms of capitalism produce differential outcomes. Those are the sorts of critiques you can get here (Slavoj Žižek), here (David Harvey) or here.

Alternately, you could watch Stephen Colbert’s intro and interview with Piketty here (in Canada there should be an equivalent link on Comedy Central – elsewhere I’m not too sure).

I’m feeling less inclined to weigh in on the debates, or Piketty’s responses to critics [pdf], particularly the Financial Times piece. So, instead, here is a song from a comedian that I would not normally recommend but who has, in this case, captured a fair amount of what is going on, particularly if you pay attention to the layering of capital forms of insurance that play out right until the very last scene. Plus, it’s friday…