Inequality: The original economic sin of capitalism? An Evaluation of Thomas Piketty's "Capital in the twenty-first century
François Facchini
Post-Print from HAL
Abstract:
This is a review article of Thomas Piketty's book "Capital in the twenty-first century". Piketty promotes the old theme that, under capitalism, the rich tend to become richer and the poor become poorer, at least in relative terms. We consider whether the data really shows that wealth and income are becoming more concentrated; the role of income transfers (Piketty's data is for pre-tax and pre-transfer income) and other influences on inequality such as real estate prices; the implications of social and economic mobility; the role of the state in fostering inequality; and the determination of socially acceptable inequality. We conclude that Piketty has not succeeded in showing that the inequality r > g (the rate of return is greater than the rate of growth) is the principal determinant of inequality. Piketty offers neither an accompanying theory of social justice nor a theoretical framework to support his case. In particular, lacking is a revealed appreciation of the effects of high marginal tax rates on growth and efficiency.
Keywords: Inequality; Rent-seeking society; Unfair order (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015-09
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)
Published in European Journal of Political Economy, 2015, 39, pp.281-287. ⟨10.1016/j.ejpoleco.2015.05.001⟩
There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.
Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.
Export reference: BibTeX
RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan)
HTML/Text
Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hal:journl:hal-01286694
DOI: 10.1016/j.ejpoleco.2015.05.001
Access Statistics for this paper
More papers in Post-Print from HAL
Bibliographic data for series maintained by CCSD ().