Capital in the Twenty-First Century

Posted on 27 September 2017 by Thomas Piketty

What are the grand dynamics that drive the accumulation and distribution of capital Questions about the long term evolution of inequality, the concentration of wealth, and the prospects for economic growth lie at the heart of political economy But satisfactory answers have been hard to find for lack of adequate data and clear guiding theories In Capital in the Twenty First Century, Thomas Piketty analyzes a unique collection of data from twenty countries, ranging as far back as the eighteenth century, to uncover key economic and social patterns His findings will transform debate and set the agenda for the next generation of thought about wealth and inequality.Piketty shows that modern economic growth and the diffusion of knowledge have allowed us to avoid inequalities on the apocalyptic scale predicted by Karl Marx But we have not modified the deep structures of capital and inequality as much as we thought in the optimistic decades following World War II The main driver of inequality the tendency of returns on capital to exceed the rate of economic growth today threatens to generate extreme inequalities that stir discontent and undermine democratic values But economic trends are not acts of God Political action has curbed dangerous inequalities in the past, Piketty says, and may do so again.A work of extraordinary ambition, originality, and rigor, Capital in the Twenty First Century reorients our understanding of economic history and confronts us with sobering lessons for today. New Download Kindle ePUB Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty – kino-fada.fr Given the amount of hype and misinformation around this book, I ll start by saying what Capital in the 21st century is not about This book is NOT 1 A work of opinion journalism or punditry Though, obviously, it does contain the views of its author 2 A prescriptive manifesto trying to explain how to utterly eradicate inequality worldwide, though its author does feel constructive steps can be taken to reduce such inequalities 3 A work of Journalism written in response to the recession of 20 Given the amount of hype and misinformation around this book, I ll start by saying what Capital in the 21st century is not about This book is NOT 1 A work of opinion journalism or punditry Though, obviously, it does contain the views of its author 2 A prescriptive manifesto trying to explain how to utterly eradicate inequality worldwide, though its author does feel constructive steps can be taken to reduce such inequalities 3 A work of Journalism written in response to the recession of 2007 2008 or to cheaply capitalize on the surge of public interest in matters financial in recent years, though obviously anyone interested in those topics will find it intensely engaging This book is a staggeringly in depth, wide ranging, rigorously researched, endlessly quantified and qualified work of economic history Thomas Piketty is interested in wealth Where does it come from, how do we talk about, how can we understand its history in a modern context and what does its distribution at different ...It is a bad habit of mine to review good books with hyperbole, where I describe a merely good book as a fearsome work of art or a divinely revealed look at the nature of humanity For here, I ll tone it down a bit whether you agree with it or not, Capital in the Twenty First Century is a profoundly important book and will continue to dominate economic and policy discussions for years.The very title is a provocation The use of the word Capital calls to mind Karl Marx s major investigation on It is a bad habit of mine to review good books with hyperbole, where I describe a merely good book as a fearsome work of art or a divinely revealed look at the nature of humanity For here, I ll tone it ...This book is basically the Harry Potter of Economics I mean in terms of blockbuster sales and turning its author into a rock star He is being credited with giving new life to the left The book is very long I m not sure if you really need to read the whole thing, either Depending on what you want to get out of this, you really could get by with reading the Introduction and the Conclusion If that doesn t seem enough, then you could read Chapter 14 and 15 pretty much where he outlines his This book is basically the Harry Potter of Economics I mean in terms of blockbuster sales and turning its author into a rock star He is being credited with giving new life to the left The book is very long I m not sure if you really need to read the whole thing, either Depending on what you want to get out of this, you really could get by with reading the Introduction and the Conclusion If that doesn t seem enough, then you could read Chapter 14 and 15 pretty much where he outlines his solutions.I m going to give you the layperson that s me version of this book Marx and to be fair Ricardo before him believed in the total impoverishment of the working class Essentially, Capitalism works by deskilling people Adding technology to factories removes skills from workers The greater the amount of technology, therefore the greater the displacement of labour, thus the less labour you need to make the same amount of stuff But that means you needcapital t...It s amazing to me how often Marxism gets repackaged and sold as if it was something new Piketty s book is a prime example of this It attempts to resell the already disproven lie about post WWII growth being caused by taxing the rich when in fact very few of the wealthy elite actually paid the 70 90% tax rates Post WWII growth was the result of the U.S holding excess gold reserves from Europe and the Bretton Woods conference that made the U.S dollar the world s reserve currency Anyone who It s amazing to me how often Marxism gets repackaged and sold as if it was something new Piketty s book is a prime example of this It attempts to resell the already disproven lie about post WWII growth being caused by taxing the rich when in fact very few of the wealthy elite actually paid the...This is my five stars of this book changed the way I look at something, not five stars of flawlessness or five stars of thinking everyone in the world should read it Since I didn t have an opinion before, it would beaccurate to say this book gave me a way of looking at the structure of wealth in economies over time.First things first, for people who read reviews of the book rather than the book its...Indeed, the distribution of wealth is too important an issue to be left to economists, sociologists, historians, and philosophersThomas Piketty, Capital in the Twenty First CenturyThis is one of those scholarly books that seem to end up being accidental cultural markers of time and place I m pretty sure Piketty want...The Economist magazine rightly calls French professor Thomas Piketty the new Marx, although a watered down version Piketty s bestseller rated 1 onis a thick volume with the same title as Karl Marx s 1867 magnum opus, Kapital The publisher, Harvard University Press, appropriately designed the book cover in red, the color of the socialist workers party.Piketty cites Karl Marxthan any other economist, eventhan Keynes The professor barely mentions Adam Smith Instead of t The Economist magazine rightly calls French professor Thomas Piketty the new Marx, although a watered down version Piketty s bestseller rated 1 onis a thick volume with the same title as Karl Marx s 1867 magnum opus, Kapital The publisher, Harvard University Press, appropriately designed the book cover in red, the color of the socialist workers party.Piketty cites Karl Marxthan any other economist, eventhan Keynes The professor barely mentions Adam Smith Instead of the modern scientific name economics, he prefers the old term political economy, a favorite of radical professors.And most importantly, Piketty s focus is on the distribution of income and capital, not the creation of wealth He s not so much concerned with the size of the economic p...Spoiler alert.Holy smokes, this was a tour de force of political economy economic history Piketty explains why a tax on capital is so much preferable than taxes on income, the need for global cooperati.... 20 1914 1948 1914 1945 1945 19751970 Fresh confirmation Piketty likely underestimated the growth of extreme inequalityhttps www.washingtonpost.com news w feed the poor eat the rich The introduction includes one of the most gratifying paragraphs ever writtenTo put it bluntly, 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 wit Fresh confirmation Piketty likely underestimated the growth of extreme inequalityhttps www.washingtonpost.com news w feed the poor eat the rich The introduction includes one of the most gratifying paragraphs ever writtenTo put it bluntly, 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 Economists are all too often preoccupied with petty mathematical problems of interest only to themselves This obsession with mathematics is an easy way of acquiring the appearance of scientificity without having to answer the farcomplex problems of the world we live in There is one great advantage...

English
27 September 2017

Thomas Piketty