Abstract
This paper is a response to Deirdre McCloskey's review essay, published recently in this journal, of Thomas Piketty's Capital in the twenty-first century. It argues that McCloskey has set up a number of straw men to attack. Furthermore, her three main arguments against Piketty are flawed. McCloskey wants human capital to be added to Piketty's measure of wealth; she contends that Piketty does not understand the supply-response mechanism; and she accuses Piketty of focusing on the wrong problem—inequality rather than poverty. This paper explains why these are all bad arguments.
Highlights
I have known Deirdre McCloskey for a long time
McCloskey’s case against Piketty comes close to the straw man argument McCloskey herself uses against Piketty—inequality is good for McCloskey and whatever degree of inequality we find in the real world must be good
Thomas Piketty has written an important book on inequality
Summary
I have known Deirdre McCloskey for a long time. We used to go drinking at the annual History of Economics Society conferences (beer not wine) in the 1980s. After publication of The rhetoric of economics (McCloskey 1985), I wrote a rather critical piece in the Eastern Economic Journal (Pressman 1987) that elicited a “disagreeable” response from McCloskey (1987). Anyone who has tried reading Koopmans can testify to the veracity of this statement Despite his poor rhetoric, Koopmans had a good case. In her superb book on rhetoric McCloskey pointed out that, contra Koopmans, how AUTHOR’S NOTE: The author thanks the editor and three anonymous referees for their helpful comments on an earlier version of this paper. PRESSMAN / A RESPONSE TO MCCLOSKEY arguments are presented is important; good rhetoric is no substitute for a sound argument.
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