World Thinkers 2015: Thomas Piketty

Economist. France

by Prospect Team / February 16, 2015 / Leave a comment

Photo by Emmanuelle Marchadour

It’s hard to think of a work of economics—certainly not one published in the past 30 years—that has had as extraordinary an impact outside the guild of professional economists as Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century. Its thesis is that capitalist economies have a natural tendency to incubate highly unequal distributions of income and wealth.

The book struck a nerve, but has also met with strong criticism. The Financial Times accused Piketty of serious statistical errors that undermined his conclusions. (Piketty responded at length to the FT, saying he did not find its rather technical objections “particularly constructive,” though he did allow that his historical data series could and should be improved upon in the future.) Other commentators have found his definition of capital problematic in concentrating on physical assets rather than household wealth and his somewhat utopian recommendations for a global wealth tax unconvincing.

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Comments

Rod Rivers
March 27, 2015 at 13:28
There is more on Piketty at http://www.wellbeingandcontrol.com/?page_id=233 in the section on 'Control in Organisations . This blog also attempts to set out a more general theory of control from self control to state control.
Henry Haslam
April 2, 2015 at 10:00
Piketty's work doesn't deserve to be so highly regarded. Your summary states: 'Its thesis is that capitalist economies have a natural tendency to incubate highly unequal distributions of income and wealth.' In the 1960s Salary/wage inequality was greater in Soviet USSR than in capitalist UK. The truth is that inequality in built into human nature. It is also seen in many other species (giving rise to phrases like 'pecking order' and 'alpha male'), particularly our near relatives the apes. A tirade against capitalism misses the point. A much more interesting subject for study would be how it was that in the 1960s Britain and other countries had decreasing inequality (and I thought at the time that this was a process that would inevitably continue) and are there any lessons for us today. Those who favour a 'tax the rich' policy are, in fact, supporters of inequality. The more we tax the rich, the more we are dependent on inequality. In Britain today, if the extremely rich stopped being extremely rich we'd be in a right pickle.
1. mari therese
  August 16, 2015 at 12:25
  Economic equality issues are best defined through discussion about equality of opportunity. The pecking-order cliché is all well and good, but not when the deck is already stacked against inclusion by dint of inequality of opportunity. If justice has any merit in this discussion, this would be it.
2. Mike Comay
  October 9, 2015 at 09:06
  You don't seem to have read either Picketty himself or about him. The widening equality since WW2 is exactly what he is concerned with.
3. Matthew Roeser
  February 15, 2016 at 21:06
  The notion that human nature is fixed and can not be altered is certainly not new. You may be right, but sometimes when change needs to occur, it can happen regardless of what side we land on in the debate regarding human nature. I love the story of Ghandhi's struggle in India. An equally fascinating part of his early life was his work in S. Africa. At that time both South Africans and Indians were considered inferior to the British and other Europeans due to their inferior human nature. Whatever one believed about that didn't stop Ghandhi human rigths' advocacy and the achievements for freedom he accomplished.
Mike Comay
October 9, 2015 at 09:07
inequality not equality