Marginal Christianity

  Why Thomas Piketty’s blockbuster book Capital struck a nerve in America and beyond. BY Gillian Tett Until recently, it was a safe assumption that it would be impossibly hard to sell a book by an obscure left-wing French intellectual to Americans, especially a 700-page tome. No longer. This spring Thomas Piketty, a 43-year-old Paris-based economist and expert on wealth and inequality, published Capital in the Twenty-First Century in English. The book compares how wealth patterns have evolved in different countries over the past few centuries and points out that inequality has been rising almost everywhere, including in the United States. Piketty’s academic publisher initially expected to sell only a modest number of copies. But Capital shot into best-sellers lists. Sales of the book were so high that it even beat out two literary adaptations of Frozen , the hit Disney film. When Piketty appeared at literary events to discuss his work, he attracted...

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/may/30/savage-capitalism-back-radical-challenge   Capitalists spread prosperity only when threatened by global rivalry, radical movements and the risk of uprisings at home David Graeber The Guardian , Friday 30 May 2014 14.15 EDT   Occupy Wall Street protesters in New York's Times Square. ‘A miserly 1% are presiding over a social order marked by increasing social, economic and even technological stagnation.’ Photograph: Mario Tama/Getty Images   Back in the 90s, I used to get into arguments with Russian friends about capitalism. This was a time when most young eastern European intellectuals were avidly embracing everything associated with that particular economic system, even as the proletarian masses of their countries remained deeply suspicious. Whenever I'd remark on some criminal excess of the oligarchs and crooked politicians who were privati...

http://www.religiondispatches.org/archive/politics/7837/forget_conservatives__can__piketty_porn__inspire_the_left By  PETER LAARMAN 4 COMMENTS   EMAIL   PRINT   SHARE You know you want it. Peter Laarman Peter Laarman is a United Church of Christ  minister and activist who recently retired as executive director of Progressive Christians Uniting in Los Angeles. He remains involved in numerous  justice  struggles, in particular a campaign known as Justice Not Jails that calls upon faith communities to critique and combat the system of racialized mass incarceration often referred to as The New Jim Crow.   Save us from weak resignation, To the evils we deplore. Let the search for Thy salvation, Be our glory evermore. Grant us wisdom, grant us courage, Serving Thee Whom we adore, Serving Thee Whom we adore. – From Harry Emerson Fosdick's “ God of Grace and God of Glory ,” 1930. The Piketty phe...

  MARCH 11, 2014   What if inequality were to continue growing years or decades into the future? Say the richest 1 percent of the population amassed a quarter of the nation’s income, up from about a fifth today . What about half?   To believe Thomas Piketty of the Paris School of Economics , this future is not just possible. It is likely.   In his bracing “Capital in the Twenty-First Century,” which hit bookstores on Monday, Professor Piketty provides a fresh and sweeping analysis of the world’s economic history that puts into question many of our core beliefs about the organization of market economies.   His most startling news is that the belief that inequality will eventually stabilize and subside on its own, a long-held tenet of free market capitalism, is wrong. Rather, the economic forces concentrating more and more wealth into the hands of the fortunate few are almost sure to prevail for a very long time.   It...