IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/wiw/wus005/6248.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

"Piketty is a Genius, but...": An Analysis of Journalistic Delegitimation of Thomas Piketty's Economic Policy Proposals

Author

Listed:
  • Rieder, Maria
  • Theine, Hendrik

Abstract

The continuous rise of socio-economic inequality over the past decades with its connected political outcomes such as the Brexit vote in the UK, and the election of Donald Trump are currently a matter of intense debate both in academia and in journalism. A significant sign of the heightened interest was the surprise popularity of Thomas Piketty's Capital in the 21st Century. The book reached the top of the bestseller lists and was described as a "media Sensation" and Piketty himself as a "rock star Economist". This paper, drawing from a major international and cross-disciplinary study, investigates the print media treatment in four European countries of economic policy proposals presented in Capital. Applying social semiotic and critical discourse analysis, we specifically focus on articles which are in disagreement with these proposals and identify five categories of counterarguments used against Piketty: authorisation, moralisation, rationalisation, portrayal of victimhood and inevitability. Providing textual and linguistic examples we demonstrate how the use of linguistic resources normalises and conventionalises ideology-laden discourses of economic means (taxation) and effects, reinforcing particular views of social relations and class as common sense and therewith upholding and perpetuating power relations and inequalities.

Suggested Citation

  • Rieder, Maria & Theine, Hendrik, 2018. ""Piketty is a Genius, but...": An Analysis of Journalistic Delegitimation of Thomas Piketty's Economic Policy Proposals," Department of Economics Working Paper Series 263, WU Vienna University of Economics and Business.
    • Handle: RePEc:wiw:wus005:6248
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://epub.wu.ac.at/6248/
    File Function: original version
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Christoph Schinke, 2015. "Capital in the 21st Century and Bias in German Print Media," CESifo Forum, ifo Institute - Leibniz Institute for Economic Research at the University of Munich, vol. 16(01), pages 35-39, May.
    2. D. Colander & H. Follmer & A. Haas & M. Goldberg & K. Juselius & A. Kirman & T. Lux & B. Sloth, 2010. "The Financial Crisis and the Systemic Failure of Academic Economics," Voprosy Ekonomiki, NP Voprosy Ekonomiki, issue 6.
    3. Wade, Robert Hunter, 2014. "The Piketty phenomenon: why has Capital become a publishing sensation?," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 60118, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    4. Christian Grimm & Jakob Kapeller & Stephan Puehringer, 2017. "Zum Profil der deutschsprachigen Volkswirtschaftslehre: Paradigmatische Ausrichtung und politische Orientierung deutschsprachiger Oekonom_innen (On the current state of German-speaking Economics: Para," ICAE Working Papers 70, Johannes Kepler University, Institute for Comprehensive Analysis of the Economy.
    5. N. Gregory Mankiw, 2015. "Yes, r > g. So What?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 105(5), pages 43-47, May.
    6. David Harvey, 2014. "Afterthoughts on Piketty's," Challenge, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 57(5), pages 81-86.
    7. Thomas Piketty & Emmanuel Saez, 2014. "Inequality in the long run," PSE-Ecole d'économie de Paris (Postprint) halshs-01053609, HAL.
    8. Eero Vaara, 2014. "Struggles over legitimacy in the Eurozone crisis : Discursive legitimation strategies and their ideological underpinnings," Post-Print hal-02313233, HAL.
    9. Stephan Puehringer & Katrin Hirte, 2013. "The financial crisis as a tsunami Discourse profiles of economists in the financial crisis," ICAE Working Papers 14, Johannes Kepler University, Institute for Comprehensive Analysis of the Economy.
    10. Werner Eichhorst, 2015. "The Unexpected Appearance of a New German Model," British Journal of Industrial Relations, London School of Economics, vol. 53(1), pages 49-69, March.
    11. Pirmin Fessler & Martin Schürz, 2018. "Private Wealth Across European Countries: The Role of Income, Inheritance and the Welfare State," Journal of Human Development and Capabilities, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 19(4), pages 521-549, October.
    12. repec:hal:pseose:halshs-01053609 is not listed on IDEAS
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Theine, Hendrik, 2019. "The media coverage of wealth and inheritance taxation in Germany," Department of Economics Working Paper Series 290, WU Vienna University of Economics and Business.
    2. Hendrik Theine, 2019. "The media coverage of wealth and inheritance taxation in Germany," Department of Economics Working Papers wuwp290, Vienna University of Economics and Business, Department of Economics.
    3. David Strauss & Daniel Ventosa-Santaularia, 2023. "Does r-g cause wealth inequality? The case of the United States/¿La r-g causa la desigualdad de la riqueza? El caso de Estados Unidos," Estudios Económicos, El Colegio de México, Centro de Estudios Económicos, vol. 38(2), pages 183-224.
    4. Block, Joern H. & Hirschmann, Mirko & Kranz, Tobias & Neuenkirch, Matthias, 2023. "Public family firms and economic inequality across societies," Journal of Business Venturing Insights, Elsevier, vol. 19(C).
    5. Pedro Salas-Rojo & Juan Gabriel Rodríguez, 2022. "Inheritances and wealth inequality: a machine learning approach," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 20(1), pages 27-51, March.
    6. Bertrand Garbinti & Jonathan Goupille-Lebret & Thomas Piketty, 2017. "Income Inequality in France, 1900-2014: Evidence from Distributional National Accounts," Working Papers 201704, World Inequality Lab.
    7. Thomas Theobald, 2015. "Agent-based risk management – a regulatory approach to financial markets," Journal of Economic Studies, Emerald Group Publishing Limited, vol. 42(5), pages 780-820, October.
    8. Andrés Rodríguez-Pose & Neil Lee & Cornelius Lipp, 2021. "Golfing with Trump. Social capital, decline, inequality, and the rise of populism in the US," Cambridge Journal of Regions, Economy and Society, Cambridge Political Economy Society, vol. 14(3), pages 457-481.
    9. Justus Haucap & Johannes Muck, 2015. "What drives the relevance and reputation of economics journals? An update from a survey among economists," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 103(3), pages 849-877, June.
    10. repec:spo:wpmain:info:hdl:2441/56k383m9o9kpb1g6f8rvv74ok is not listed on IDEAS
    11. Dirk Antonczyk & Thomas DeLeire & Bernd Fitzenberger, 2018. "Polarization and Rising Wage Inequality: Comparing the U.S. and Germany," Econometrics, MDPI, vol. 6(2), pages 1-33, April.
    12. Peter J. Boettke & Alexander W. Salter & Daniel J. Smith, 2018. "Money as meta-rule: Buchanan’s constitutional economics as a foundation for monetary stability," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 176(3), pages 529-555, September.
    13. Bönke, Timm & Werder, Marten v. & Westermeier, Christian, 2017. "How inheritances shape wealth distributions: An international comparison," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 159(C), pages 217-220.
    14. Hasan, Iftekhar & Horvath, Roman & Mares, Jan, 2020. "Finance and wealth inequality," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 108(C).
    15. Malat, Jennifer & Mayorga-Gallo, Sarah & Williams, David R., 2018. "The effects of whiteness on the health of whites in the USA," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 199(C), pages 148-156.
    16. Zhang, Muyang & Zhou, Guangsu & Fan, Gang, 2020. "Political Control and Economic Inequality: Evidence from Chinese Cities," China Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 61(C).
    17. Cowell, Frank A., 2014. "Piketty in the long run," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 65992, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    18. Datu Buyung Agusdinata & Rimjhim Aggarwal & Xiaosu Ding, 2021. "Economic growth, inequality, and environment nexus: using data mining techniques to unravel archetypes of development trajectories," Environment, Development and Sustainability: A Multidisciplinary Approach to the Theory and Practice of Sustainable Development, Springer, vol. 23(4), pages 6234-6258, April.
    19. Schäfer, Andreas & Prettner, Klaus, 2016. "The fall and rise of inequality," VfS Annual Conference 2016 (Augsburg): Demographic Change 145806, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association.
    20. Yuri Biondi & Simone Righi, 2019. "Inequality, mobility and the financial accumulation process: a computational economic analysis," Journal of Economic Interaction and Coordination, Springer;Society for Economic Science with Heterogeneous Interacting Agents, vol. 14(1), pages 93-119, March.
    21. Aaberge, Rolf & Atkinson, Anthony B. & Modalsli, Jørgen, 2020. "Estimating long-run income inequality from mixed tabular data: Empirical evidence from Norway, 1875–2017," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 187(C).

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Thomas Piketty; Economic Inequality; economic ideology; Policy; Social Semiotics; Critical Discourse Analysis; economic discourse; media discourse; legitimation strategies;
    All these keywords.

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:wiw:wus005:6248. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: WU Library (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://research.wu.ac.at/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.