Thomas Piketty
Thomas Piketty
Thomas Pikettyis a French economist who works on wealth and income inequality. He is a professorat the École des hautes études en sciences sociales, associate chair at the Paris School of Economics and Centennial professor at the London School of Economics new International Inequalities Institute...
NationalityFrench
ProfessionEconomist
Date of Birth7 May 1971
CountryFrance
thinking average order
I don't think there is any serious evidence that we need to be paying people more than 100 times the average wage in order to get high-performing managers.
way american-universities university
I loved American universities. In many ways, they are better organized - certainly than French universities.
people return different
I certainly agree that capital is not a one-dimensional object, and that the return on capital takes very different forms for different assets or different people.
opposites democracy want
We want capitalism and market forces to be the slave of democracy rather than the opposite.
skills long favors
Over a long period of time, the main force in favor of greater equality has been the diffusion of knowledge and skills.
growth useless inequality
When inequality gets to an extreme, it is completely useless for growth.
democratic-ideals luck inheritance
Our modern democratic ideal is based on the hope that inequalities will be based on merit more than inheritance or luck.
lying heart political
At the heart of every major political upheaval lies a fiscal revolution.
passion discipline historical
...the discipline of economics has yet to get over its childish passion for mathematics and for purely theoretical and often highly ideological speculation, at the expense of historical research and collaboration with the other social sciences.
issues important distribution-of-wealth
Indeed, the distribution of wealth is too important an issue to be left to economists, sociologists, historians, and philosophers.
innovation growth important
It's important to realize that innovation and growth in itself are not sufficient to moderate inequality of wealth.
hypocrisy financial economic
No hypocrisy is too great when economic and financial elites are obliged to defend their interest.
wealth existence
Wealth is so concentrated that a large segment of society is virtually unaware of its existence.
growth income arbitrary
When the rate of return on capital exceeds the rate of growth of output and income, as it did in the nineteenth century and seems quite likely to do again in the twenty-first, capitalism automatically generates arbitrary and unsustainable inequalities that radically undermine the meritocratic values on which democratic societies are based.