By Thomas Piketty
Thomas Piketty—whose Capital within the Twenty-First Century driven inequality to the vanguard of public debate—wrote The Economics of Inequality as an advent to the conceptual and authentic historical past worthy for reading alterations in fiscal inequality over the years. This concise textual content has tested itself as an vital advisor for college students and normal readers in France, the place it's been frequently up to date and revised. Translated by means of Arthur Goldhammer, The Economics of Inequality now looks in English for the 1st time.
Piketty starts via explaining how inequality evolves and the way economists degree it. In next chapters, he explores variances in source of revenue and possession of capital and the range of guidelines used to lessen those gaps. alongside the best way, with attribute readability and precision, he introduces key principles in regards to the courting among exertions and capital, the consequences of alternative structures of taxation, the excellence among “historical” and “political” time, the impression of schooling and technological switch, the character of capital markets, the position of unions, and obvious tensions among the pursuit of potency and the pursuit of fairness.
Succinct, available, and authoritative, this is often the fitting position to begin if you are looking to comprehend the elemental matters on the center of 1 of the main urgent issues in modern economics and politics.
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Extra info for The Economics of Inequality
Sample text
The special attention accorded to labor-capital inequality should come as no surprise. Indeed, the mere fact that a share of productive income goes to capital might seem to contradict basic principles of justice and immediately raise the question of redistribution: Why should a person who inherits ownership of capital receive income denied to those who inherit only their labor power? Absent any market inefficiency, this would amply justify a pure redistribution of capital income to labor income (using the distinction between pure and efficient redistribution discussed in the Introduction).
Readers interested in a detailed account of that more recent research and the lessons that can be drawn from it are advised to consult the World Top Incomes Database (available online) and my book Capital in the Twenty-First Century (Belknap Press, 2014). Introduction The question of inequality and redistribution is central to political conflict. Caricaturing only slightly, two positions have traditionally been opposed. The right-wing free-market position is that, in the long run, market forces, individual initiative, and productivity growth are the sole determinants of the distribution of income and standard of living, in particular of the least well-off members of society; hence government efforts to redistribute wealth should be limited and should rely on instruments that interfere as little as possible with the virtuous mechanisms of the market—instruments such as Milton Friedman’s negative income tax (1962).
To pursue these issues further, it is useful to begin by reminding the reader of the history and extent of today’s inequality. Doing so will enable us to identify the principal sets of facts that any theory of inequality and redistribution must take into account (Chapter 1). The next two chapters (2 and 3) present the leading analyses of the mechanisms that produce inequality, emphasizing both the political stakes involved in the intellectual conflict between opposing theories and the observed or observable facts that can help us decide which theories are correct.