This is the Cater Daily Podcast for Friday, June 27, 2014.

I'm Caleb Brown.

Thomas Picketties Capital in the 21st Century provides a wealth of data about the history of wealth and who earns it today,

but his predictions about the future may be found wanting.

Don Boudreau, a professor of economics at George Mason University and a Cato adjunct scholar offers his thoughts.

Big picture, what are the assumptions that underlie Pekety's argument that he doesn't really

totally make clear.

Oh, there are a few.

One and the most troubling one for me is that wealth

and prosperity are largely independent of human volition.

These things grow independently of what humans do.

They do grow, but it's not because of the decisions that humans make economically. It's not because of different economic institutions and changes in economic institutions is just this this glob of stuff that grows a little bit every year.

Another assumption is that the main differences among people are defined by how successfully some people grab more of this clob of stuff than other people,

and the people who grab the largest chunk of glob, larger chunks of glob than other people.

They will grow more prosperous over time, they and their descendants, than will people who

grab smaller globes of the, chunks of the glob.

So for him him the role of entrepreneurship the role of investment

It's largely absent it it appears at best in the background. He says very little about it.

It's not really an economics book.

Some reviewers have pointed this out.

I don't recall the names off hand,

but several reviewers have said it's more like an accounting book. He has this

...