Das Kapital im 21. Jahrhundert

A memorising journey through time following the flow of wealth across centuries to give insight into where we might be heading.

The film is based on the best-selling book of the same name by French economist Thomas Piketty, who's research suggests we're trending back to a world resembling 18th Century style capitalism -- where a small number of mega-rich own everything and the rest of us are forced to 'rent' our lives; and where the middle-class shirks back to be almost as poor as the poorest. It's a world where social mobility is low and inheritance is king.

Already today the very wealthy are able to avoid paying taxes - just like the aristocracy of the past - and many use their wealth to distort democracy for their benefit. The film is a call to rewire capitalism to produce fairer outcomes for the majority of the population. It doesn't reject capital, but instead calls for it to be tamed.

Though this is no dry lecture... never has economics been more entertaining. Capital in the Twenty-First Century is a mash-up of pop culture through time that reflects the moods of the eras it traverses - from Jane Austin to The Simpsons - and it's all set to a killer soundtrack!

That said, the film is also careful not to dumb down the economics. Piketty's most famous finding, R>G (essentially that the growth rate of capital over time is consistently higher than the growth rate of the economy), is elegantly explained. As are ideas for solving tax havens and new ways to tax and control capital.

Highly recommend the film as an easy introduction to the ideas of one of the world's preeminent economic thinkers. Of course the 700 page book goes much deeper, but this is far more fun.

I definitely learned some things, and also didn't. We keep on hearing the same story over and over again. The economy seems to keep lurching from crisis to crisis, and people throw up their hands every time there's a collapse of sorts and then private equity shows up and buys up everything, and the cycle of wealth accumulation goes basically unchallenged. Rinse, repeat. I don't really think it's that hard to imagine a solution. Politically, it shouldn't even be that hard. The elites make it seem like the solutions are untenable, but they distort the narrative significantly.

I have been reading a book about the Koch brothers, and I can say with absolute certainty: do not trust ANYTHING they say. I say to my family, when Eminem even acknowledges the very existence of mumble rappers, it gives them more power. It's the same with the 'mainstream news' media. If you even accept the very idea that someone's views on an opposing channel are worth debating, you have implicitly bought into the idea that they even have merit in the first place. So it's simple: don't accept the narratives of the elites. They live in a complete bubble and think the entire universe revolves around them, and they are absolutely myopic because they only hear each others' opinions and live in separate zip codes. I once heard, "To be rich in America means never having to be around people who aren't." So don't even accept any of the premises they are arguing from.

We need to have a reckoning. Don't accept the status quo.

There is a lot of important thought in this film, but it misses an entire, and important, chapter in the history of economic thought that provides clearer answers and actual solutions.

Early in the film, there is a great deal of talk about land. In classical economics, it was recognized that there are not two but three factors of production, LAND, LABOR and CAPITAL. The neoclassical economists, from whom almost all of today's college and university instructors learned their economics, somehow managed to treat LAND as if it is merely a subset of CAPITAL.

But LAND and CAPITAL are vastly different. LAND includes all the the natural creation -- the sites under our feet on which we live and work, the natural resources we draw from the earth,. the electromagnetic spectrum, geosynchronous orbits. LABOR uses those things to supply its wants and needs. Thrifty laborers can use their excess to create better and better tools that make LABOR more productive. That's CAPITAL.

But under it all is LAND. And if you think land is trivial today, consider that a single block in midtown Manhattan can be worth $250 million, $500 million or more. An acre of good farmland might be worth $2,500. It would take 100,000 acres of that farmland to equal the value of that single $250 million acre in Manhattan. And then we let them call it "CAPITAL"

Land was here before people were, and we're all equally entitled to share in its value. That's the chapter of the history of economic thought that most of the presenters in this film seem to have missed.

The names most clearly associated with it are Adam Smith, David Ricardo, John Stuart Mill and Henry George. Today, the people who know these ideas are often known as Georgists. Their thought has answers from which this film, and all of us, would benefit.

I'm not a fan of neoliberal capitalism. So, interested. Haven't read the book, and afterwards feel completely uncompelled to do so. Maybe because I'm old ^^.

"Everybody wants to sell what's already been sold And everybody wants to tell what's already been told What's the use of money if you ain't gonna break the mold?" - P. R. Nelson

There, I saved you the watch-time and totally mangled history-facts. Geez, my mind is still spinning from the spinning...

This is - I don't know what this is. A jambled mess. Painting a dystopic picture but in a fear-mongering way. The solution offered is 1 minute long (tax the rich). Not the worst of ideas, but by the time we get to it I was so annoyed by the sweeping and silly superficiality of it that I wanted to protest the idea just because I felt like protesting anything they said. How they handled the start for WW1 was - ridiculous. Just to mention the one point.

Waste of time.

It's not that the documentary doesn't make some good points, but it makes it seem as though exploitation only began in the 17th - 18th centuries, when it is more like the unfortunate default of humankind.

A lot of information is given, but few solutions are actually presented which causes the documentary to end on a bleaker outlook. Perhaps that is the intention of the filmmakers, but a problem without a potential solution almost comes across as a complaint.