Thomas Piketty
Economist
1971-05-07
Quotes by Thomas Piketty
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Our democratic societies rest on a meritocratic worldview, or at any rate a meritocratic hope, by which I mean a belief in a society in which inequality is based more on merit and effort than on kinship and rents. This belief and this hope play a very crucial role in modern society, for a simple reason: in a democracy, the professed equality of rights of all citizens contrasts sharply with the very real inequality of living conditions, and in order to overcome this contradiction it is vital to make sure that social inequalities derive from rational and universal principles rather than arbitrary contingencies. Inequalities must therefore be just and useful to all, at least in the realm of discourse and as far as possible in reality as well.
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Income from labor [in the United States] is about as unequally distributed as has ever been observed anywhere.
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All told, over the period 1932-1980, nearly half a century, the top federal income tax rate in the United States averaged 81 percent.
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All told, over the period 1932-1980, nearly half a century, the top federal income tax rate in the United States averaged 81 percent.
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Income from labor [in the United States] is about as unequally distributed as has ever been observed anywhere.
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Our democratic societies rest on a meritocratic worldview, or at any rate a meritocratic hope, by which I mean a belief in a society in which inequality is based more on merit and effort than on kinship and rents. This belief and this hope play a very crucial role in modern society, for a simple reason: in a democracy, the professed equality of rights of all citizens contrasts sharply with the very real inequality of living conditions, and in order to overcome this contradiction it is vital to make sure that social inequalities derive from rational and universal principles rather than arbitrary contingencies. Inequalities must therefore be just and useful to all, at least in the realm of discourse and as far as possible in reality as well.
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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.
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The United States could transform its property tax system into a progressive tax on net worth without asking permission to the rest of the world.
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I am afraid that if you don't find peaceful domestic solutions to our inequality and social problems, then it's always tempting to find other people responsible for our problems.
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When inequality gets too extreme, then it becomes useless for growth, and it can even become bad because it tends to lead to high perpetuation of inequality over time and low mobility.
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The main force pushing toward reduction in inequality has always been the diffusion of knowledge and the diffusion of education.
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We know too little about global wealth dynamics, so we need international transmission of bank information.
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I was born too late to have any temptation with communism, or at least Soviet-type communism. Travelling in Eastern Europe and the ex-Soviet Union, you clearly don't want to defend a system that would have empty shops and a totalitarian regime and internal passports.
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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.
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