Piketty

Earlier in the week to London Bridge for a discussion of the work of one Piketty, much feasted in the media of recent weeks, the man who says that it is all because the rate of return on capital is generally higher than the rate of economic growth.

Started off at Grant Road East with the first leg taking me to Vauxhall Cross. Second leg from the Albert Embankment to the Hop Exchange. Uneventful journey, only marked by passing a trotter near Lambeth Bridge, not (for once) getting lost at St. George's Circus and joining the A3 for part of the home straight. Onto boozer 1 where I had the rare for me experience of being accosted by a lady of the night, a rather pretty one, who mistook me for a foreign businessman at a bit of a loose end for the evening. The mistake may have arisen from my asking for the most expensive white wine that the house could offer (which turned out to be £4.50 for a glass of something cheap and cheerful) and, to be fair to her, she recovered from her mistake with great aplomb and no-one, apart, perhaps, from the rather cheerful barman of colour, was any the wiser. This clearly would not do so onto boozer 2 which was rather prettily decorated with a bit of upside-down umbrella art.

Here there was a different sort of temptation in the form of a warm evening in a bar with outdoor seating and which sold quite decent looking cigars. I was more tempted to have a puff than on any other occasion since I gave up over (a life-time third) something over two years ago, and since which I have denied myself on the grounds that the odd puff always seems to lead to lots of puffs; I don't have that rare gift of being able to enjoy the occasional smoke. I remember one ex-smoker telling me how the special occasions you tell yourself are the only permitted occasions gradually become more frequent, you start to have special occasions in order to smoke, rather than allowing yourself when there happens to be one for some other reason. Another describing the process as slowly spiraling up to whatever your regular habit had been before. Which all sounded all too familiar so, for the present, I abstain.

We made up with a short discussion about the works of Piketty. I had taken on enough wine by this point to observe that in the olden days, as recorded by no less an economist than A. Trollope, the rate of return on land was and had always been 2%. That was the rent you got from your farms, after allowable expenses. Flashy people went in for speculations which might get you more - but which might also get you broke. And for a lot of the time there was no growth: things just trundled on as they always had, Piketty was trivially correct, the rate of return on capital was indeed higher than the rate of economic growth and there was indeed a lot of inequality. But then we start to invent new wheezes like mechanical looms and trade with far off places where things are different and we get economic growth. Then we start to invent doctors and we get population growth. At which point I got lost; I could no longer see how all this as going to lead to more or less equality in the distribution of wealth.

Furthermore, it was thought necessary to escort me to my platform on London Bridge, partly to make sure that I did not attempt a Bullingdon for the return trip to Waterloo and partly because I would certainly have got lost in the new layout of London Bridge station - having fairly often got lost in the course of my occasional visits in the past.

And so to bed to wonder whether I would stump up the £25 to read the 700 pages of words of the master himself. Presently, after the feasting mentioned above, out of stock at Amazon.