If lefties want to talk capitalism in the 21st century, can they at least get an honest, fresh critique?

First there was the book, now there is the “documentary” film version of French economist Thomas Piketty’s Capitalism in the Twenty-First Century — French capitalism.

The book was marketed by the left as the correct line on growing inequality under capitalism and sold well as such, but it was in fact a description of the liberalisation of the previously heavily controlled French economy, made to look like universal principle.

This film goes a step even further and simplifies it into a universal description of human economic development. And then, worse again, it’s made by a New Zealander, from that terminal for ideas where they are often late, simplified, distorted and enthusiastically embraced.

The movie is on SBS…