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
capital devours future itself output
Once constituted, capital reproduces itself faster than output increases. The past devours the future.
apparatus closer instead methods models pragmatic pretending pushing scientific using
What I'm pushing for is an economic discipline that will be closer to other social sciences; in particular, we should be more pragmatic about the methods that we are using instead of pretending that we have our own scientific apparatus with very sophisticated mathematic models that distinguish us from sociologists and historians.
becomes common gets
I think inequality is fine, as long as it is in the common interest. The problem is when it gets so extreme, when it becomes excessive.
exist founded main market position stock
When you are an entrepreneur, you have founded your own firm, it is so easy to find that you exist - you are the main shareholder of your company; it is very easy to look at the stock market position of your company to know how rich you are.
capture democratic extreme harmful inequality lead mobility useless
You need some inequality to grow... but extreme inequality is not only useless but can be harmful to growth because it reduces mobility and can lead to political capture of our democratic institutions.
There is a fundamentalist belief by capitalists that capital will save the world, and it just isn't so.
bottom destroy increase middle premise
My premise is not to tax to destroy the wealth of the wealthy; it's to increase the wealth of the bottom and the middle class.
bit smarter tend
Economists tend to think they are much, much smarter than historians, than everybody. And this is a bit too much because at the end of the day, we don't know very much in economics.
access broader concentration extreme increase large reduce top
One way to have broader access to wealth is to reduce the tax on the large group and increase the tax on the very top so concentration of wealth doesn't get to extreme levels.
people
I'm not as pessimistic as what a number of people seem to believe.
country inherited invented
The U.S. is the country that invented progressive taxation of income and of inherited wealth in the 1910s and '20s.
long use scientific-method
For far too long economists have sought to define themselves in terms of their supposedly scientific methods. In fact, those methods rely on an immoderate use of mathematical models, which are frequently no more than an excuse for occupying the terrain and masking the vacuity of the content.
children eight innovation
What was the good of industrial development, what was the good of all the technological innovations, toil, and population movements if, after half a century of industrial growth, the condition of the masses was still just as miserable as before, and all lawmakers could do was prohibit factory labor by children under the age of eight?
democracy republic experts
Democracy will never be supplanted by a republic of experts—and that is a very good thing.