Even within developed economies, Piketty’s pessimism is exaggerated. While almost all experts agree that there has been a significant increase in the inequality of incomes and wealth in the United States, the evidence in other developed economies is more mixed.Īlso, “Capital and Ideology” barely acknowledges that economic growth in many developing countries has significantly reduced global inequality. The fancy words and almost hysterical tone are excessive. This “neo-proprietarian” ideology of “hyper-capitalism” is a malignant power which sits “between modernity and archaism”. He complains of the takeover by a new “inequality regime”. Piketty, as a professed believer in “participatory socialism”, deeply regrets the recent trends in tax policy. The focus is so extreme that it sometimes feels like the 60 million people who died in World War Two were martyrs to the cause of greater post-tax income equality. A large part of that discussion is dedicated to the high tax rates on the rich which arrived in the first third of the 20th century and retreated in the last third. In Piketty’s mind, it seems that the most remarkable economic development of the 20th century had little to do with mass production, globalisation, the rise and fall of communist governments or the development of welfare states.Īll of these topics put together merit less attention from the expert on income inequality than the history of income inequality. This rambling, repetitive, muddled and narrow-minded work then turns to more recent events. The French economist’s follow-up to his best-selling “Capital in the Twenty-First Century” takes a long time to make some pretty obvious points. With that summary, would-be readers can safely skip the first third of Thomas Piketty’s new 1,141-page book, “Capital and Ideology”. French economist and academic Thomas Piketty attends a symposium 'Les Entretiens du Tresor' at the Bercy Finance Ministry in Paris January 23, 2015.

Capital ideology piketty