Paul Krugman: Thomas Doubting Refuted

OK, Thomas Piketty has replied at length (pdf) to the attempted takedown of his work by Chris Giles, and done it very effectively. Essentially, Giles tried to compare apples and oranges, and the result was a lemon.

The central point here is one that’s familiar to anyone who works at length on inequality issues. We have two kinds of data on distribution of both income and wealth: surveys, in which people are asked what they make or own, and tax data.