It has been already a year and a half since Thomas Piketty published his world famous book “Capital in the 21st century”.
In my country (Colombia) it was only launched a few months ago with the spanish edition. In spite of its relatively new impact, it has fostered important discussions in both mainstream and heterodox economic circles, including the American Economic Association. Moreover they have created an open website which displays a rich database on the Top World Incomes:
If you have not yet read the book, now is a good time to start lending it a few moments of your daily activities for what he has to say is very important. Not just because of his worldwide known formula on the impact of economic growth vis-á-vis capital productivity in a nation’s inquality of income but because of its impact on economics teaching worldwide.
Piketty’s ideas are part of abundant heterodox and marxist perspectives that are increasingly permeating the world of Economics debates. However the frequency and quality of these discussions is not yet nearly as much as one would want them to have. Most importantly, the academia and the Universities economic faculties should be the first ones to promote such discussions in a regular order and be in the vanguard of new economic ideas but they have clearly failed in doing so. These ideas should be fostered because they try to cope with issues such as class and income inquality, real economic development and political economy of power that the neoclassical economics has completely obliterated.
Professor Julie Ann Matthaei recently published an inspiring article about the need to search for new alternatives to face the fact that the Neoliberal economics perspective has reached its peak. It is therefore our duty as economics students and as people interested in building up a sustainable and better future to point out the crisis in the teaching of economics that we find ourselves into these days. It is also our duty to create new spaces for discussion and critical thinking to create a conscious response to the issues that affect our discipline nowadays. Get involved in a more interdisciplinary focus of our science, and accept that fact that any economic issues involves very often a political, sociological, historical and sometimes even psychological perspective. A pluralist approach between the disciplines is needed to bring about a correct global response to the counterproductive method in mainstream economics that could be better described as a “childish passion for mathematics and for purely theoretical and often highly ideological speculation, at the expense of historical research and collaboration with the other social sciences…” (Piketty (2013), on Matthaei, Julie (2015) )
Having said that, the insurrection of economic students through which a better teaching on economics is to be attained is not new whatsoever. The Post- Autistic economics movement and the Post-Crash Economics society are examples of a combined local and global iniciative of the students to demand a plural and more effective teaching in economics to match the real economic problems of today in which to pose a simple comparison: inequality is clearly far more important than inflation. They started their struggle since 2000 and 2012 respectively. We can add more international groups such as the International Students Initiative for Pluralism in Economics, the Rethinking economics, Kick it over Initiative and so on.
With all these global societies that are aware of the situation, the spaces for collective bargaining are now even more open than ever. I thereby make a call for every economics and non-economics student that agrees with our struggle for a more plural and interdisciplinary approach to join the initiative and be part of a local and global response. My call is also adressed to any student who is interested in learning more than what he is taught, who is interested in studying more than what he is told to and who is interested in helping us to build a better more equal, free and sustainable society. I would urge any other student thinking alike us, to not give up on the struggle for creativity because of a rigid neoclassical economics pensum. On the contrary, I would urge them to use this crisis as an opportunity to search for alternatives of space to face this threat to our values. I refer to our values because I decided to study economics as I thought it would provide me with the academic and innovative tools to face the issues that I think are unfair and demand an inmediate collective solution such as poverty or inequality. I am one of those who think that the Economy should be at service of the people, that economics should be a tool to promote the human development in our communities and to enhance the capabilities of the people to face social injustice.
To finish this, let us not forget what happened in 2011 where almost 70 students walked out of Greg Mankew’s Harvard class in solidarity with the “Occupy” movement. Let us not forget that we are also human beings that care about each other and have the ability to cooperate without the need of a “rational” behaviour to explain it. There is hope.
David Caicedo Sarralde
Pontificial Xaverian University
Bogota D.C, Colombia
Economics and Political Science Student.
An Intellectual Revolution - The Sumak Kawsay 