The discipline of economics has yet to get over its childish passion for mathematics and for purely theoretical and often highly ideological speculation, at the expense of historical research and collaboration with the other social sciences.
Interpretation
Piketty critiques economics for prioritizing abstract mathematics over practical historical analysis and collaboration with other fields.
In this quote, Thomas Piketty expresses his concern that economics has become overly enamored with mathematics and theoretical speculation, neglecting the importance of historical context and the insights that can be gained from collaborating with other social sciences. This critique underscores the importance of grounding economic theories in real-world evidence and interdisciplinary approaches to better understand economic phenomena.
In practice
During a lecture on the future of economics, this quote can be used to emphasize the need for a more historical and collaborative approach.
Contrary to a tenacious myth, France is not owned by California pension funds or the Bank of China, any more than the United States belongs to Japanese and German investors. The fear of getting into such a predicament is so strong today that fantasy often outstrips reality. The reality is that inequality with respect to capital is a far greater domestic issue than it is an international one.
The main force pushing toward reduction in inequality has always been the diffusion of knowledge and the diffusion of education.
Over a long period of time, the main force in favor of greater equality has been the diffusion of knowledge and skills.
There is one great advantage to being an academic economist in France: here, economists are not highly respected in the academic and intellectual world or by political and financial elites. Hence they must set aside their contempt for other disciplines and their absurd claim to greater scientific legitimacy, despite the fact that they know almost nothing about anything.
When the rate of return on capital exceeds the rate of growth of output and income, as it did in the nineteenth century and seems quite likely to do again in the twenty-first, capitalism automatically generates arbitrary and unsustainable inequalities that radically undermine the meritocratic values on which democratic societies are based.
Having a decent share of the national wealth for the middle class is not bad for growth. It is actually useful both for equity and efficiency reasons.
What good is all this free-thinking, modernity, and turncoat flexibility if at some gut level you are still a Christian, a Catholic, and even a priest!
Criticism alone can sever the root of materialism, fatalism, atheism, free-thinking, fanaticism, and superstition, which can be injurious universally; as well as of idealism and skepticism, which are dangerous chiefly to the Schools, and hardly allow of being handed on to the public.
I desire only to know the truth, and to live as well as I can...And, to the utmost of my power, I exhort all other men to do the same...I exhort you also to take part in the great combat, which is the combat of life, and greater than every other earthly conflict.
The mind in its foolishness thinks that it is working in this body. Why should I be bound by one system of nerves, and put the Ego only in one body, if the mind is omnipresent? There is no reason why I should.[Source]_x000D_ _x000D_ The root of that degeneration is egotism - to think that one is just as great as any other, indeed!
O sun, to tell thee how I hate thy beams That bring to my remembrance from what state I fell, how glorious once above thy sphere.
Life is elsewhere. Cross frontiers. Fly away.
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