There is one great advantage to being an academic economist in France: here, economists are not highly respected in the academic and intellectual world or by political and financial elites. Hence they must set aside their contempt for other disciplines and their absurd claim to greater scientific legitimacy, despite the fact that they know almost nothing about anything.
Interpretation
The quote highlights the low respect for economists in France, suggesting they must be more open-minded towards other disciplines.
In this quote, Thomas Piketty critiques the status of academic economists in France, pointing out that their low esteem in the broader intellectual community compels them to confront their own biases and limitations. Instead of clinging to a false sense of superiority regarding their field's scientific credence, they are encouraged to engage with other disciplines, recognizing the value of diverse perspectives and expertise, which ultimately leads to sounder and more comprehensive economic discussions.
In practice
This quote could be used in a lecture on the importance of interdisciplinary approaches in academic research.
Contrary to a tenacious myth, France is not owned by California pension funds or the Bank of China, any more than the United States belongs to Japanese and German investors. The fear of getting into such a predicament is so strong today that fantasy often outstrips reality. The reality is that inequality with respect to capital is a far greater domestic issue than it is an international one.
The main force pushing toward reduction in inequality has always been the diffusion of knowledge and the diffusion of education.
Over a long period of time, the main force in favor of greater equality has been the diffusion of knowledge and skills.
When the rate of return on capital exceeds the rate of growth of output and income, as it did in the nineteenth century and seems quite likely to do again in the twenty-first, capitalism automatically generates arbitrary and unsustainable inequalities that radically undermine the meritocratic values on which democratic societies are based.
Having a decent share of the national wealth for the middle class is not bad for growth. It is actually useful both for equity and efficiency reasons.
The discipline of economics has yet to get over its 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.
Place the lives of children in their formative years, despite the convictions of their parents, under the intimate control of experts appointed by the state, force them to attend schools where the higher aspirations of humanity are crushed out, and where the mind is filled with the materialism of the day, and it is difficult to see how even the remnants of liberty can subsist.
I never heard one word in Pixar about, 'Will kids get this?' I don't think it's important that they get everything. I think that it's important that they get engaged, interested.
I have met thousands of children now, and not even one time has a child come up to me and said, 'Ms. Rowling, I'm so glad I've read these books because now I want to be a witch.'
By 2018, an estimated 63 percent of all new U.S. jobs will require workers with an education beyond high school. For our young people to get those jobs, they first need to graduate from high school ready to start a postsecondary education.
If someone comes to you with, 'It's my kid's graduation,' you don't tell them, 'Sorry, you can't go to that.' You just don't do that. You figure out some other way.
Let the reader find that he cannot afford to omit any line of your writing because you you have omitted every word that he can spare.
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