Thomas Piketty seems to have stirred up a new Red Scare.
His new book, Capital in the Twenty-First Century, is being hailed as the most important book of the decade, even the century. The French economist’s 696-page tome is sold out on Amazon, where it’s the No. 1 bestseller.
Backed by centuries of data, Piketty posits that unregulated capitalism naturally widens the wealth gap between rich and poor, and will continue to do so. Returns on capital, such as real estate or stocks, grow faster than the larger economy, so the wealthy accumulate more wealth over time while the working classes divvy up a shrinking share of the pie.
"This is the central reason why we had so much wealth concentration in the past," Piketty told HuffPost Live last week. "In the 20th century we forgot about this because there were several very unusual events that made this different. But in the future, there are reasons to believe we might return to this inequality.”
Needless to say, conservatives are panicking, looking for any way to refute Piketty’s work.
“Good luck with that,” New York Times columnist Paul Krugman wrote on Thursday. "The really striking thing about the debate so far is that the right seems unable to mount any kind of substantive counterattack to Mr. Piketty’s thesis."
But thanks to the free market of ideas that is Amazon's product review section, some game-changing rebuttals have trickled down:
"History has proven, again and again, that such people are not only wrong on the facts, but completely diabolical."
"...both Piketty and Krugman are amateurs"
"Cuba/Venezuela's recipe."
"That is why we must always defend our Constitution and the freedom that brave patriots fought and died for."
"GO AFTER HIM, LIBS!!!"
"He belongs in the heap of child molesters in my book."
"Only uneducated ignorant people would like this"
"More hypocrasy from the leftist, socialist, French"
"To bad they turn their backs on the truth and worship this garbage."
"The only people who would like this trash is liberals"
"Piketty can go to H&ll as can Marx, Lenin, Obama, etc."
"This book could have been written in one sentence. 'Make everyone poor so we can all be equally miserable.'"
"If Liberals weren't so dangerous to America we could just continue to LAUGH at them."
"Not worth reading post kindergarten."
"You want to fail, read this book!! I would not waste my money or my time on this book! I saved you from both!"
"Don't waste your time, this is pure Marxist leftwing garbage. Income inequality BS."
**BONUS**
"I can't weigh in on what is clearly an important new book because, as a sane person, I refuse to pay full price for a kindle e-book."