Thomas Piketty
Author of Capital in the Twenty-First Century
About the Author
Thomas Piketty was born in Clichy, France on May 7, 1971. He received a M.Sc. in mathematics at Ecole Normale Supérieure and a PhD in Economics at EHESS and at LSE. He is a professor at the Paris School of Economics. His articles have appeared in numerous journals including the Quarterly Journal show more of Economics, the Journal of Political Economy, the American Economic Review, and the Review of Economic Studies. He has written several books including Capital in the Twenty-First Century. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
Image credit: Thomas Piketty en septembre 2019
Works by Thomas Piketty
Why Save the Bankers?: And Other Essays on Our Economic and Political Crisis (2016) 110 copies, 4 reviews
Nature, Culture, and Inequality: A Comparative and Historical Perspective (2024) 10 copies, 1 review
Associated Works
Les Marchands et le Temple: La société chrétienne et le cercle vertueux de la richesse du Moyen… (2002) — Préface, some editions — 7 copies
Tagged
Common Knowledge
- Canonical name
- Piketty, Thomas
- Birthdate
- 1971-05-07
- Gender
- male
- Nationality
- France
- Country (for map)
- France
- Birthplace
- Clichy, France
- Places of residence
- Paris, France
USA - Education
- École normale supérieure (M.Sc)
London School of Economics (Ph.D)
École des hautes études en sciences sociales (Ph.D) - Occupations
- economist
author
professor - Relationships
- Piketty, Guillaume (Cousin)
Cagé, Julia (wife) - Organizations
- École des hautes études en sciences sociales (EHESS)
Paris School of Economics
French National Centre for Scientific Research
Massachusetts Institute of Technology - Awards and honors
- Yrjö Jahnsson Award (2013)
Prix du meilleur jeune économiste de France (2002)
International Member, American Philosophical Society (2015)
Members
Reviews
Lists
Awards
You May Also Like
Associated Authors
Statistics
- Works
- 28
- Also by
- 4
- Members
- 5,707
- Popularity
- #4,330
- Rating
- 4.1
- Reviews
- 103
- ISBNs
- 260
- Languages
- 23
- Favorited
- 3
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)