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
advance full history impressed taxation terribly time
I think if you look back through time, the history of income, wealth and taxation is full of surprise. So I am not terribly impressed by those who know in advance what will or will not happen.
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.
wealth existence
Wealth is so concentrated that a large segment of society is virtually unaware of its existence.
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.
hypocrisy financial economic
No hypocrisy is too great when economic and financial elites are obliged to defend their interest.
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.
growth useless inequality
When inequality gets to an extreme, it is completely useless for growth.
opposites democracy want
We want capitalism and market forces to be the slave of democracy rather than the opposite.
girlfriend outsiders impossible
Economists have put themselves in a position where what they are doing is supposed to be impossible to understand for outsiders, so they dont even talk - sometimes not even with their girlfriend or boyfriend or friends - about what they are doing.
opposites method source
Without precisely defined sources, methods, and concepts, it is possible to see absolutely everything and its opposite.
discipline political intellectual
There is one great advantage to being an academic economist in France: here, economists are not highly respected in the academic and intellectual world or by political and financial elites. Hence they must set aside their contempt for other disciplines and their absurd claim to greater scientific legitimacy, despite the fact that they know almost nothing about anything.
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.
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.