Thomas Piketty

In a quick little essay published as a book, Nobel Economist Thomas Piketty expands on his analyses of wealth and inequality with different ways of looking at the issues. In Nature, Culture and Inequality, the (full color) charts he adds show it from different angles, cementing the view that what is going on in the West is arrogant luxury for the very few, while fully half the population acquire almost literally nothing combined.

In broadening his research to the whole world, Piketty finds that inequality is rife. He says that nowhere does the bottom 50% ever approach 50% of a society’s income. As close as it comes 25% in Sweden. In Latin America, it is 2%. He says the poorest 50% own less than 5% of the wealth in any country in the world. So it is not merely a western disease or a capitalist disease. It is, he does not spell out, a human one.

Even progressive economies, as shown by the “Great Redistribution” of the era 1914-80, only spread the wealth from the top 10% to the next 40% - the middle classes. The bottom 50% still got nothing.

Piketty confirms what has long been known, such as that the children of colonists received 80-90% of educational funding, and that the more highly taxed incomes are among the top 10%, the richer the whole economy becomes. For the USA, it means that the Reagan Era was the beginning of the worst period of inequality and more sluggish growth, as Reagan slashed income taxes for the wealthy and caused severe expansion of the deficit. Things have not improved overall since. He says growth since 1990 has been half of what it was from the preceding period from 1950 to 1980.

In his quest to broaden his own horizons, Piketty has come to appreciate the German labor system, where workers can control 50% of directorships, helping corral inequality. As he applies his quest for knowledge to property taxes, we can only hope that one day he discovers Henry George, who not only recognized and defined the problem succinctly in the 1850s, but proposed solid solutions to it. It is land, which no one has the right to own exclusively, that is at the root of inequality.

All the evidence Piketty assembles leads him to conclude our present systems will not allow for correcting the environmental imbalance threatening the whole planet. It will take a full frontal attack on inequality to do that.

Of the climate crisis, he says: “It may lead to a greater demand for equality than we’ve recently seen: there can be no resolution to the global warming crisis, no possible reconciliation between man and nature, without a drastic reduction in inequality and without a new economic system that is radically different from the current capitalist one.”

David Wineberg… (more)

Nenhum livro de economia publicado nos últimos anos foi capaz de provocar o furor internacional causado por O capital no século XXI , do francês Thomas Piketty.

Seu estudo sobre a concentração de riqueza e a evolução da desigualdade ganhou manchetes nos principais jornais do mundo, gerou discussões nas redes sociais e colheu comentários e elogios de diversos ganhadores do Prêmio Nobel.

Fruto de quinze anos de pesquisas incansáveis, o livro se apoia em dados que remontam ao século XVIII, provenientes de mais de vinte países, para chegar a conclusões explosivas. O crescimento econômico e a difusão do conhecimento impediram que fosse concretizado o cenário apocalíptico previsto por Karl Marx no século XIX. Porém, os registros históricos demonstram que o capitalismo tende a criar um círculo vicioso de desigualdade, pois, no longo prazo, a taxa de retorno sobre os ativos é maior que o ritmo do crescimento econômico, o que se traduz numa concentração cada vez maior da riqueza. Uma situação de desigualdade extrema pode levar a um descontentamento geral e até ameaçar os valores democráticos. Mas Piketty lembra também que a intervenção política já foi capaz de reverter tal quadro no passado e poderá voltar a fazê-lo.

Essa obra, que já se tornou uma referência entre os estudos econômicos, contribui para renovar inteiramente nossa compreensão sobre a dinâmica do capitalismo ao colocar sua contradição fundamental na relação entre o crescimento econômico e o rendimento do capital. O capital no século XXI nos obriga a refletir profundamente sobre as questões mais prementes de nosso tempo.

“Piketty transformou nosso discurso econômico; jamais voltaremos a falar sobre renda e desigualdade da maneira que fazíamos.” - Paul Krugman (Prêmio Nobel de Economia), The New York Times

“Um livro seminal sobre a evolução econômico-social do planeta... Uma obra-prima.” - Emmanuel Todd, Marianne… (more)

You aren't going to believe me when I tell you that the long version of Piketty's argument, which is spread over many thousands of pages of dense text, is easier to read and understand than this summary version. Unless, perhaps, you are a Talmudic or Bibilcal scholar, or proceed like those people who read "Finnegans Wake" a page at a time.

Piketty's distillation is only 274 pages but each sentence condenses a chapter or more of his long-form works. Without the longer explanations, it is too dense to understand without reference books and search engines. I have read a few of Piketty's other books and liked them better.… (more)