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Capital in the Twenty-First Century by…
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Capital in the Twenty-First Century (original 2013; edition 2017)

by Thomas Piketty (Author), Arthur Goldhammer (Translator)

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3,807733,219 (4.18)71
This is an excellent book and one to be read a few times. In the concluding section of the book, Thomas Piketty admitted some of his conclusions are tenuous and should be debated. This is rare for an author, and this adds value.

His arguments have been laid out systematically, and he has analyzed those countries where he has detailed data. This includes four nations in the West, and he admits that data in China and India is sketchy.

The book starts with the first principles and the fundamental 'laws' of capitalism. From there on, he puts his arguments forward in brilliant fashion. It may seem disconcerting when he refers to some of the old books by Tomas Hardy and Emily Bronte, but he did so to illustrate the differences in the society of those times versus our own.

From here, he goes deeper into his arguments, and it is possible to follow the arguments even if you are not an economist. However, this is a book that demands time and patience.

It is well worth the read, and gives excellent insights into the problems of inequality we face in the world today. ( )
  RajivC | Jun 18, 2022 |
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Nenhum livro de economia publicado nos últimos anos foi capaz de provocar o furor internacional causado por O capital no século XXI , do francês Thomas Piketty.

Seu estudo sobre a concentração de riqueza e a evolução da desigualdade ganhou manchetes nos principais jornais do mundo, gerou discussões nas redes sociais e colheu comentários e elogios de diversos ganhadores do Prêmio Nobel.

Fruto de quinze anos de pesquisas incansáveis, o livro se apoia em dados que remontam ao século XVIII, provenientes de mais de vinte países, para chegar a conclusões explosivas. O crescimento econômico e a difusão do conhecimento impediram que fosse concretizado o cenário apocalíptico previsto por Karl Marx no século XIX. Porém, os registros históricos demonstram que o capitalismo tende a criar um círculo vicioso de desigualdade, pois, no longo prazo, a taxa de retorno sobre os ativos é maior que o ritmo do crescimento econômico, o que se traduz numa concentração cada vez maior da riqueza. Uma situação de desigualdade extrema pode levar a um descontentamento geral e até ameaçar os valores democráticos. Mas Piketty lembra também que a intervenção política já foi capaz de reverter tal quadro no passado e poderá voltar a fazê-lo.

Essa obra, que já se tornou uma referência entre os estudos econômicos, contribui para renovar inteiramente nossa compreensão sobre a dinâmica do capitalismo ao colocar sua contradição fundamental na relação entre o crescimento econômico e o rendimento do capital. O capital no século XXI nos obriga a refletir profundamente sobre as questões mais prementes de nosso tempo.

“Piketty transformou nosso discurso econômico; jamais voltaremos a falar sobre renda e desigualdade da maneira que fazíamos.” - Paul Krugman (Prêmio Nobel de Economia), The New York Times

“Um livro seminal sobre a evolução econômico-social do planeta... Uma obra-prima.” - Emmanuel Todd, Marianne
  luizzmendes | Mar 16, 2024 |
First book I have read in a while that makes me feel I am really learning what is going on around me. I finished this book just a few days before my wife, my daughter and I embarked on a whirlwind tour of six countries in Western Europe. I had a fresh look at cities I'd visited before and thought about things in light of what Thomas Piketty had to say about the super rich, the growing disparity between the upper decile and everybody else, and the unlikelihood that things will change for the better anytime soon.

When you travel you inevitably eat out and when you eat out these days in the cities of London, Amsterdam, Paris, and even smaller centres like Interlaken, Switzerland, the first thing you discover is that your waiters, your busboys, and most of your food preparers come from somewhere other than where you are dining. And virtually all of these people commute to work. From my unscientific poll I learned that commute time vary anywhere from one to one and a half hours each way, each day.

Even professionals. One woman dining at the table next to us at a restaurant facing the Thames said her daily commute as a financial advisor consumed a good portion of her salary, and that if she missed her regular train to the Midlands could cost her 100 pounds sterling just to get home before her children got to bed. I translated that to Canadian dollars and that mounts to $202.65....for a one way ticket home!

For the people who earn a basic wage working in these restaurants it means sharing accomodation, taking costly transit to and from work, a eating what you can get. It means little if any money at the end of the day to save. Little if any money at the end of the day to send home. And few choices. The young Poles, the Lithuanians, the Slovaks, the Albanians I spoke to all seemed to have one objective: to get back to where they came from as soon as conditions improved in their homelands.

In Toronto, where thousands of migrant Phillipines work as nannies, caregivers for the aged, and in other low wage jobs, at least these people seem to be able to send home funds to support their distant families.

This is what capital provides in this day and age.

What it doesn't provide is any greater access to political or financial reform...because the individuals most affected by capital have no voice of dissent. Where they live they don't vote, and where they vote they don't live, and even if they did live where they vote...in Greece maybe?...the vote carries little value in the big scheme of things. ( )
  MylesKesten | Jan 23, 2024 |
While I cannot pretend to have understood most of this book, I can say this based on my own experience as a reader and a graduate student: it is a first rate piece of evidence-driven--exhaustively evidence-driven, including an extensive online scholarly technical apparatus--historical inquiry.
  Mark_Feltskog | Dec 23, 2023 |
Piketty provides a long historical view of economic information to support his thesis about growing wealth inequality. Sustained disparities between economic growth and return on investments will quickly result in large and unevenly distributed private wealth. Data from the 18th to the 21st centuries reveal the 20th century, with its global wars and depressions, as the anomaly rather than the norm, and now inequality is accumulating as much as in the 19th century, with no real upper limit. Great wealth disparity is ultimately incompatible with democracy, so if the latter is of value -- and Piketty clearly believes it is -- the former should be tempered. Piketty's suggested way to do that is by means of a progressive wealth tax.

I really appreciate Piketty's use of historical documents; he doesn't draw artificial distinctions between history, economics, politics and sociology. His (and Arthur Goldhammer's translation) is clear and easy to follow. Insightful. ( )
  questbird | Dec 10, 2023 |
if you want a detailed understanding of income inequality from an esteemed economist, this is for you. ( )
  pollycallahan | Jul 1, 2023 |
This book is required reading for anyone interested in the underlying structure of monetary policy. Piketty was unabashedly conservative, favoring tax structures that inhibit the natural tendency of capital to breed more capital thus concentrating wealth. Even if your economic ideals are different, this book's hard look at historical records is instructive. ( )
  Dokfintong | Mar 30, 2023 |
Surprisingly easy read. Tax the rich! ( )
  squealermusic | Mar 16, 2023 |
You don't have to agree with all of Piketty's ultimate conclusions and recommendations (and I am still processing them) to be blown away by the breadth of research and clarity of this important book. I'd recommend this work anyone interested in history, taxes, politics, and/or economics and finance. This book will forever change the way I look at the (past, present, and future) world. ( )
  dovetailer | Oct 6, 2022 |
This book was a major disappointment for me. After many years of intrigue in the title, I finally sat down to read it, and am unable to accept the author's portrayal of the data as reliable. As a matter of fact, I feel scammed after reading this book, and it makes me angry to get scammed, so I'm going to vent a little bit here because of it.

I couldn't get past the graphs. The graphs in this book are deceptive, and I don't just mean slightly; they are highly misleading!

If it wasn't already enough of a joke for the author to attempt to rationalize why it is that what appear as equal distances of time on a grid may range anywhere from ten to two hundred and fifty years, then surely presenting them in such fashion was done with comedic intent, and surely, the author knows much better than to habitually reference the same deceptive graphs, and draw conclusions for future hypotheses from them, especially since we've established that they are a joke in the first place! (You see, I'm being a bit sarcastic here - because that's what Pickory did!)

To read this book, you need to be able to accept the author's rationale for the seemingly skewed data, and look past the deception, i.e. ignore it, never notice it, etc., which I'd like to have been able to do because many of the author's conclusions surrounded my initial intrigue in the title, but I could not; given the title's popularity, I seem to be one of the very few unable to suspend disbelief in order to allow for a deceptive presentation of data to inform my conception of political economy, which is surprising...

Although I'm not entirely sure how complete or helpful much of the data the author draws from actually is, the real trouble isn't the data itself; it is how the researcher chose to present the data. It's not inaccurate or wrong; it's illusory and deceptive, sneaky-like, and the only reason I hesitate to call it all bollocks is because I'm not a British citizen, resident, or national; I feel sure, however, that the representations of data in this book are bollocks enough for anyone in the world to be able to call them out as such!

The imbalance of the graphs alone undermines any argument based upon them, and the red flag of statistical error confirming a sampler's bias is so flagrant and egregious that I wonder if it was done intentionally in order to undermine public intelligence, just to go ahead and nip a reasonable argument for a revolutionary mindset that could upset the status quo in the bud, so to speak; i.e. Plinkett's argument is simply too easily debunked and/or exploited; if I can point out the error, then anyone should be able...

So why was this book so esteemed? I don't know... I'd guess the ideas presented and drawn from the 'conclusions' must have already been devised, with the 'conclusions' themselves already reached, well before any data was examined; the book's popularity was likely ordained before any ink went onto paper, or any key was pressed to appear as a letter on a screen in contribution to the book. I wouldn't be surprised if the documentary film deal was already inked before a word was absorbed in alleged 'research,' much less put into print... and I'm really stretching it there... Honestly, I'm probably wrong about the latter, at very least, but possibly 'right enough' for it to behoove me to go ahead and throw it out there... Could it be? Yes! Was it? Who knows?

I know what you're thinking. You're thinking something along the lines of me belonging in the same sentence as a lexical item representing all that I am not, idiot, and be that as it may, I'm not saying that it's an overall awful book, simply one that bases many of its conclusions on faulty premises based on shoddy, conveniently manipulated, and often skewed presentations of data, i.e. one that should not have been published and/or should not have been taken seriously; there's a glass ceiling to the bogeyman in this book, and it's crystal clear!

It may be a rather good book. The author's conclusions, which I like, may hold on their own, and certainly aren't wrong; there's simply no fairly presented and reliable data to back most of them up; that's the troubling part... The author inundates us with data, and claims it is this trove of data that gives his work the edge over previous works in political economy; my reading of it tells me that the data itself hurts his argument more than it helps; he would have been better off not using any than so flagrantly manipulating what he had, and in turn, he gives us a textbook on how to manipulate data, so much so that I'd bet this book sells better as an example of what not to do in statistics classes than as a manual for what to do in political economy as we inch nearer to the close of the twenty first century. That is not to say that the gutless statistician won't find this an extremely useful manual.

Pickery, or whomever it is, tells us in the prologue, or introduction, somewhere, that the first chapters are for dummies, essentially, and writes that expert economists may skip these chapters; they are there to lay the groundwork for later chapters, and would be redundant for an economist. Despite many a credo to the contrary, I fashioned myself just shy of the professionalism required to skip the chapters (a dummy,) and after dropping my jaw in disbelief that so many pages could follow so many unreliable models presented to readers, I put the book down; if that stuff is redundant to an economist, then I'd bet the whole damned field is a scam! So, here's my confession: I get it.

Yay for me! When I say I get it, I mean that I know why Pikennen decided to manipulate the data like that, and it has nothing to do with all of that stuff he rationalizes to readers, i.e. censuses, historical events, etc.; he did it so that the data would form a bell curve, and to add insult to undermine the injury to the reader, he did it AFTER criticizing Malthusian economics, which should be more than criticized, and AFTER pointing to the bell curve as a blunder of sorts, a cash out, proper, to appease those with wealth, and perhaps, lacking understanding. Then, Plinko proceeds to grossly manipulate his data so that it forms a bell curve... Ironic? I'd guess not. Maybe since all of modern economic theory in the West is based on some unrealistic notion of self-regulating bell curves it was necessary, and is frequently so, for economists to manipulate their data to form one? Beats me... I don't know! The bottom line is that the data exploited to form many of the bell curves referenced in this work, doesn't form a bell curve at all! (If presented fairly) Maybe that's just the point...

Honest review: this book gave me a headache, was dry, and made me angry, yet I initially had trouble putting it down until after I kept seeing the same misleading graphs, and finally had enough. Thanks for letting me review! I feel much better now!

Public plea to defend my criticism of the author: Piccolo saw enough success on this book that my review won't hurt a thing, and he'll probably never read this, so he shouldn't get his feelings hurt by it... and not to make excuses for gaining relief by critique at the expense of his work, bear in mind that his work also contributed to causing the condition for which it is necessary to vent. Whew! Decent book! Not well argued. Good ideas! Nothing revolutionary. Deal with it! ( )
1 vote Reverend | Aug 1, 2022 |
Thomas Piketty looks at income and wealth inequality from a historic perspective that is more data driven than most analyses. Other than part 4, the book is largely apolitical. Piketty has political perspectives, and they come up occasionally in the first three part of the books, but he does not let ideology distract him from making an argument strongly rooted in historical data. He also does not push conclusions further than the data can bear. For example, most of his analysis is based on data from France, Britain, and the US since they have the best records over the last couple hundred years. He considers how far his conclusions can be applied to the rest of the world but makes it clear that the conclusions are not nearly as firm.

Because this is a detailed historical analysis, the book actually has only a few truly central takeaway points. The bulk of the text explains the implications of these takeaways and provides robust support for them.

One takeaway, which I consider the least important but start with because it is one of the most publicized, is that Piketty argues in part 4 that a global tax on capital is the most just way to control the increase of wealth inequality in the twenty-first century. He also, as is less publicized, notes explicitly that this is an ideal that likely can only be approximated right now. However, really understanding why he argues for a global tax on capital requires understanding the other key takeaways.

The second key takeaway--and if you remember only one, it is this--is that the mid-twentieth century was economically weird. We like to think that the growth in the mid-twentieth century was due to the growth in technology and productivity. Yet earlier periods of high growth in technology and productivity did not give such high levels of economic growth. And throughout most of human history, as far as we can tell, the economic growth rate was very low and dominated by demographic growth with no significant increase in per capita productivity. In particular, as far as we can tell, throughout most of history, the rate of return on capital was larger than the growth rate.

The mid-twentieth century inverted this logic. Rates of return on capital were approximately stable with overall averages of 4-5%. However, the rate of economic growth was quite high. When you look at economic data from before and after WWI and WWII, it is pretty clear that this growth is catch up growth making up for the massive economic destruction wrought by the two wars and the period between them. After that destruction, high demographic and productivity growth led to economic growth rates that were higher than the rate of return on capital. Thus, for a short period, it looked as if a world of theoretically meritocratic labor income would prevail over a world where capital, and especially inherited capital, dominated the upper levels of wealth and income.

The practical upshot of this is that any time economic data from the present is being compared to economic data from approximately 1950-1980, you should be suspicious. This is not a normative statement. The economic growth of the mid-twentieth century was great for the bulk of people whose income comes primarily from labor. But that period was not a new normal, it was making up for the destruction which came before. As an aside, for a similar reason, we should not assume that the huge economic growth that less economically rich countries are seeing is going to last forever or reflects some fundamental better way of doing things. Rather, much of this is due to demographic growth plus catch-up productivity growth.

The third key takeaway is that with economic growth rates slowing down again (to rates closer to 2% per year which is still historically high but lower than the mid-twentieth century), the average rate of return on capital once again exceeds the economic growth rate -- (r > g). This seemingly simple inequality has large implications for wealth and income inequality.

There are a couple ways to think about the implications of this inequality. First, consider a fixed stock of capital where all of the capital income is spent each year. When the economy is growing, the relative economic value of that capital income shrinks each year--is essence, the fortune is shrinking without shrinking. If the rate of return on capital is greater than the growth rate, this effect is slowed. The fortune still becomes worth relatively less over time, but the higher rate of return on capital means that the impact takes longer to be felt.

Now consider the situation where part of the capital income is reinvested each year. If (r g)--if the rate of return on capital is greater than the growth rate. In that case, the percentage invested can equal the growth rate, then the fortune keeps the same relative size as the economy grows. And if the amount reinvested is greater than the growth rate, then the fortune will grow relative to the growth of the economy. The larger the amount of total capital income someone is, the more likely they will be to be able to reinvest a larger percentage of it.

In plain English, when the rate of return on capital is greater than the economic growth rate, then it is likely that wealth will grow more quickly than the economy. Furthermore, the more that someone has, the easier it is for their wealth to grow at a greater rate. No matter how meritocratic the initial acquisition of wealth was, when the rate of return on capital is higher than economic growth, large amounts of capital tend to grow in ways that increase income inequality over time. The rich become richer and the poor become (relatively) poorer.

This cannot go on forever. If there is too much capital in the system, the rate of return will eventually fall because the marginal productivity of individual units of capital will decrease. However, there is no fundamental reason why this cannot continue until capital's share of income dwarfs labor's share of income.

This becomes even more worrisome given that wealth is (and always has been) very unequally distributed. Even in the rich countries studied (France, Britain, and the US), about half the population has no net wealth at all. Much of the rest has wealth mostly in the form of their primary residence. More liquid forms of wealth are concentrated in the upper echelons. Even within those upper echelons, the top 1% pulls far ahead of the next 9%, and the top 0.1% pulls far ahead of the rest of the top 1%. Combine this uneven distribution with the tendency of wealth to become more concentrated when the growth rate is low and you have a formula for the top of the wealth hierarchy to own a greater and greater percentage of total wealth, leaving less and less for everyone else.

Coming back to the first point, this is why Piketty proposes a global tax on wealth. The purpose of the tax is to try to provide a break on the spiral of inequality that is present when the rate of return on capital is greater than the growth rate. Without some brake--whether this or something else--odds are high that capital will become increasingly concentrated because of structural reasons (rather than because of any inherit skill in investing and innovation on the part of the owners of capital).

So remember, the mid-twentieth century was weird and the world of wealth inequality we are returning to is one that seems to represent a natural outcome of the forces of capital growth and economic growth if intentional checks are not put in place. Market forces are not enough to fix this without the aid of political will to disrupt the mechanisms of wealth divergence. ( )
  eri_kars | Jul 10, 2022 |
Minden korszaknak megvannak a maga Nagy Könyvei, amiket kevesen olvasnak, de mindenki hivatkozik rájuk – ilyen volt Fukuyama és Huntington klasszikusa, Marx Tőkéje, vagy épp a Biblia. No most szerintem a „XXI. század Nagy Könyve” megtisztelő titulusra idáig Pikettynek van a legnagyobb esélye. Nem laikusoknak való olvasmány, ezt én, mint laikus mondom: hosszas fejtegetéseit tőke/jövedelem arányának változásairól, alsó és felső decilisek és centilisek eltéréseiről és ezek jelentőségéről gyakran inkább csak érteni véltem, mint értettem, és bizony mondom néktek: még úgy sem volt élvezetes magamba szívni őket, hogy közben kiültem a teraszra napozni, és bontottam egy meggyes radlert. Persze az alapmondanivaló végtelenül világos, egy mondatban összefoglalható (következésképpen nem kell hozzá átrágni magunkat a könyvön, elég, ha elolvasunk egy recenziót, vagy esetleg ezt az értékelést): minden jel arra mutat, hogy a közhiedelemmel ellentétben az anyagi egyenlőtlenség a világban egyáltalán nem csökken, sőt. Nő. (Így viszont már két mondat.)

Ennek bizonyításra Piketty beveti a teljes arzenált: adatok, kimutatások, táblázatok, Jane Austen és Balzac regények… amit csak akartok, sőt, egy kicsit több. Legfőbb irányszáma a tőke/jövedelem arány, ugyanis értelmezésében a jövedelem nem árul el eleget az egyenlőtlenségről, sokkal érdemesebb tehát a tőke, vagyis (némi egyszerűsítéssel) a vagyon felől megközelíteni a kérdést*. Merthogy a vagyon ugye öröklés útján halmozódik (különösen egy demográfiailag csökkenő népesség esetén), ráadásul a nagy vagyonok hozamai többnyire magasabbak, mint a gazdasági fejlődés üteme. A vagyoni egyenlőtlenség anno a XX. század elején tetőzött, egészen extrém különbségeket hozva létre ember és ember között – ám egyszer csak bekopogott a Történelem ajtaján az első világháború (jó, talán inkább berúgta az ajtót), és hopp, a nagy öröklött vagyonok jó része elértéktelenedett, a vállalatok csődbe, a járadékosok pedig tönkrementek. Mire nem jó egy háború, ugye? Ez a relatív egyenlőség egész sokáig kitartott, nagyjából a hetvenes évek végéig, többek között azért, mert a páratlan gazdasági fellendülés Európában magasabb növekedési ütemet tudott produkálni, mint a vagyonok hozamai, és a hidegháború miatt erős egyenlősítő szociális programokat működtettek az államok azért, hogy polgáraik nehogy szovjetizálják magukat. Azonban a gazdasági növekedés egyszer csak behúzta a kéziféket, és feltűntek a színen a neokonzervatív közgazdászok, hogy Hayek nyomán átszabják kicsit a jóléti rendszereket – és ennek következtében a nyolcvanas évektől kezdve az egyenlőtlenségek megint robbanásszerű növekedésnek indultak, és mára már szinte elérték az 1910-es szintet**. És még hol van a vége, ugye.

A legérdekesebb mindazonáltal az utolsó száz oldal (sajnálhatja is, aki eddig már falhoz csapta a művet), ahol Piketty felvázol egy stratégiát, amivel kezelni lehet a helyzetet – vagy ahogy ő fogalmaz, visszahódítani a kapitalizmust a demokrácia számára, mert eléggé kezdenek eltávolodni egymástól. A progresszív (többkulcsos) jövedelemadót nem érzi elégségesnek, ezen felül brutális progresszív örökösödési adót, illetve progresszív vagyonadót tartana üdvösnek. Persze azzal is tisztában van, hogy a kőgazdagoknak szokása anyagi javaikat különböző adóparadicsomok bankszektorában elrejteni a magasabb hazai adókulcsok elől – biztos úgy vannak vele, nekik nem kell finanszírozni saját államuk jóléti rendszereit, hisz ők anélkül is elég jól élnek. (Amiről eszembe jut, bár nem tartozik szorosan ide, hogy rendszeresen látok itt a Hűvösvölgyben parkolni egy szlovák rendszámú kék Ferrarit.) Erre a problémára egy globális banki adatszolgáltatási kötelezettséget, illetve globális vagyonadót gondol orvosságnak, és érvel is ezek megvalósíthatósága mellett – akár még azon az áron is, hogy ez nagy feszültséghez vezet a Svájchoz hasonló renitensekkel szemben, akik hajlamosak felmondani a nemzetközi szolidaritást, csak hogy a többiek kárára magukhoz csalogassák a zsíros milliárdokat. Persze hogy mindez gazdaságilag mennyire racionális, abban nem merek nyilatkozni, de látni kell, hogy ez szinte másodlagos: Piketty fejtegetései ugyanis (állításainak helyességétől függetlenül) olyan politikai muníciót szolgáltathatnak a progresszív (talán populista) baloldalnak, amit az zászlajára tűzhet, és felveheti a versenyt az egyre inkább nacionalista-szuverenista színezetet öltő jobboldallal. Már ha sikerül ennek a baloldalnak ezt a 700 oldalt értelmezhető jelszavakká desztillálni.

Bizonyára nem hibátlan fejtegetés, de attól a tény még tény marad: ez a könyv megkerülhetetlen – legyél akármilyen irányultságú közgazdász, egész egyszerűen muszáj manapság valahogy viszonyulnod Piketty téziseihez. (Még én is viszonyulok valahogy – pedig hol vagyok én közgazdász?) Arról nem is beszélve, hogy ugye itt vannak ezek a neokonzervatív közgazdászok***, akik annak idején azzal robbantak be, hogy drasztikus varázsszert kínáltak a jóléti állam betegségeire: azt állították, hogy ha azzal élénkítjük a gazdaságot, hogy a szociális juttatások helyett a vagyonosoknál hagyjuk a pénzt, akkor az vissza fog gyűrűzni a társadalomba, és előbb-utóbb a szegényeknek is jut a kaviárból. Piketty monstrumja elég meggyőzően szaggatja szét ezt az illúziót, jelezve, ebből a gyakorlatban alig valósult meg valami, cserébe viszont megágyazott az orbitális egyenlőtlenségeknek. Ráadásul a neokonzervatív idea még a gazdaságot se pörgette fel úgy, ahogy várták, talán mert a vagyon jelentős része ebben a folyamatban a pénzügyi körforgásból kivont improduktív tőke – csak arra jó, hogy pár Dagobert bácsi üldögélhessen egy kupac aranyon. És azt se felejtsük, hogy – ha hihetünk Balzac Goriot apójának – a nagy egyenlőtlenségek az innováció szempontjából is ártalmasak, mert nem arra késztetik a társadalom nagy részét, hogy keményen dolgozzon és fejlődjön, hátha feljebb jut, sokkal inkább arra, hogy ügyeskedni kell, hízelegni a szupergazdagoknak, és ha egy mód van rá, elvenni valamelyik csilliárdos randa lányát. Minden összevetve tehát Piketty hosszú évek óta az első erős, karakteres progresszív állítást**** tette le az asztalra.

Mindazonáltal a csillagozáshoz nem érzem elég kompetensnek magam – nem tisztem eldönteni, hogy Piketty állításainak igazságai egy, három, vagy öt csillagot érnek-e. (Bár bevallom, én hiszek neki.) Ráadásul olyan szakadékot érzek e könyv élvezeti értéke és tartalmi súlya között, amit egy pórias osztályozással nem vagyok képes áthidalni. Szóval ez egy tiszletetteljes csillagtalanság. És annyira boldog vagyok, hogy holnap nem kell már olvasnom ezt a könyvet, hogy azt el se tudom mondani.

* ”A nagyságrendek érzékeltetésére előzetes példaként nézzük a következőket: a lakosság legnagyobb munkajövedelemmel bíró 10%-a általában a munkajövedelmek 25-30%-ával rendelkezik, míg a legnagyobb vagyonnal bíró 10% vagyona mindig meghaladja az összvagyon 50%-át, sőt, egyes társadalmakban ez akár a 90%-ot is elérheti.” (262. oldal)
** Bár ezt az egyenlőséget némiképp enyhíti, hogy most a két véglet (hipergazdagok és hiperszegények) között egy vastagabb középosztály teng-leng.
*** Mely neokonzervatív közgazdászokat a szerző szőrmentén meg is gyanúsítja azzal, hogy erős érdekek fűzik őket azokhoz a milliárdosokhoz, akiket véletlenül épp megvédenek érveikkel a progresszív adózástól. Ami vagy igaz, vagy nem, mindenesetre nem túl elegáns módszer arra, hogy eleve hiteltelenítsük a lehetséges ellenvéleményeket.
**** És tegyük hozzá: a jellemzően angolszászok uralta közgazdászszakmán belül a kevés kontinentális európai válasz is, aminek szintén lehet üzenete.
  Kuszma | Jul 2, 2022 |
This is an excellent book and one to be read a few times. In the concluding section of the book, Thomas Piketty admitted some of his conclusions are tenuous and should be debated. This is rare for an author, and this adds value.

His arguments have been laid out systematically, and he has analyzed those countries where he has detailed data. This includes four nations in the West, and he admits that data in China and India is sketchy.

The book starts with the first principles and the fundamental 'laws' of capitalism. From there on, he puts his arguments forward in brilliant fashion. It may seem disconcerting when he refers to some of the old books by Tomas Hardy and Emily Bronte, but he did so to illustrate the differences in the society of those times versus our own.

From here, he goes deeper into his arguments, and it is possible to follow the arguments even if you are not an economist. However, this is a book that demands time and patience.

It is well worth the read, and gives excellent insights into the problems of inequality we face in the world today. ( )
  RajivC | Jun 18, 2022 |
Interesting views backed with science Is always an good read.

This is not a light book to read. In some parts I revisited more than once during my first read through. I listened to from beginning to endit 3 times. It is solid research explaining how or economic system works. I great read. ( )
  paven | Jan 26, 2021 |
One of the interesting little details that made this book good was how the author put inflation in historical perspective: there was no long term inflation until recent times. And to prove it he shows how novels such as Jane Austen's would often mention "10,000 pounds per annum" as an acceptable income for a man to have before a woman would consider him marriageable. But after 1920 there are no further mentions of this in fiction.

So inflation is one way or consequence of government trying to function without the unpleasantness of raising taxes. Another is borrowing and Picketty delves into that also in an objective way, without digression, that I found riveting rather than dull. So that takes him back to the inevitability of increasing taxes and then Picketty is on to capital flight. ( )
  JoeHamilton | Dec 29, 2020 |
What a remarkable, provocative and confounding book.

It's impossible to boil down this magisterial compilation of statistics and polemics into a few paragraphs for the sake of review. Every chapter had at least one fact — and often many — that could anchor a compelling news story. Piketty drops observations in passing that might warrant entire volumes of their own.

It is, I must confess, not the easiest book to read. Though I found it compelling, it also took me the better part of a year to finish it. Something about its prose, at least in English translation from the original French, made it difficult for me to sustain reading momentum despite being a near-ideal audience for its content. It was quite readable in short chunks — by no means impenetrable prose — but required constant effort to forge through.

I think it unfortunate that much of the book is read in the context of its concluding section, in which Piketty endorses policy solutions to the wealth inequality issues he has been discussing for hundreds of pages. Those solutions — primarily a global wealth tax — may well be workable and necessary (or foolish and unnecessary), but they definitely have provoked strong reactions from people opposed to such a solution for a mix of strong and weak reasons. It's a mistake, I think, to disregard the voluminous array of facts Piketty musters in the front of his book simply because he draws from those facts a particular normative conclusion. (That said, commentators from across the ideological spectrum have criticized some of Piketty's positive facts, particularly as regards the United States in the 19th Century, and those developments should be watched closely.) ( )
  dhmontgomery | Dec 13, 2020 |

Here are the first few paragraphs of my review; the full thing can be found at:

http://www.thepointmag.com/2014/politics/unvulgar-economics

***

Adam Smith’s invisible hand has always been the take-away from ECON 101. Smith used the phrase once, when arguing that states should not give a private company the monopoly over a domestic market. It would be wrong for the government, say, to force tea grown in Scotland onto everyone in the United Kingdom. It’s very difficult to grow tea in Scotland, so any tea that could be grown there would be very expensive and, due to geography and climate, disgusting. Tea drinkers would not benefit from the Scottish-Hibernian Institute for Tea having a monopoly over the U.K. market. Only those who own, or own shares in, that Institute would gain. But, Smith suggested, the alternative to private monopoly is a good one: if you let everyone invest their capital wherever they want, they will be guided, despite themselves, to help the domestic economy. The unintended consequences of their actions will benefit everyone. Smith’s hand has stayed with us, and become the centerpiece of our political-economic discourse. Libertarianism is the most intellectually respectable, consistent, and politically powerful twenty-first century version of this discourse.

Libertarianism greatly expands Smith’s argument: he made a case for the invisible hand in the production of economic goods; libertarianism makes the case for it in distribution and consumption, as well. The theory holds that we are all rational actors, and we all know our best interests; if we all act in our best interests, and have access to perfect information, everything will work out for the best. But if governments intervene by, e.g., forcing Scottish tea on us, or subsidizing medical care, the natural processes of rational deciding will be interrupted, and the outcome will be bad. Therefore we can blame all problems on government intervention.

In addition to the economic benefits, this view holds that doing away with government intervention would greatly simplify our moral lives. If the government’s always poking its nose in our business, it’s hard to tell whether successful people deserve their success. But if we are all free to act in our best interests, any given individual’s failure can only be caused by his own failure to act rationally; and if things work out spectacularly well for another individual, that can only be because she acted with perfect rationality. He deserved his failure, and she deserved her success. The inequalities of these outcomes are morally justifiable. This, libertarian discourse suggests, is the essence of true capitalism: markets, left to their own devices, will apportion goods efficiently and effectively; and they will also apportion them justly... ( )
  stillatim | Oct 23, 2020 |
To finish reading the whole of this massive work is itself a great achievement; one only wonders at the effort that must have gone into its creation! The work amasses a wealth of data on incomes and wealth, mainly of the western countries and Japan. It demonstrates that inequalities in wealth, and parallely in incomes, which decreased during the post-world war decades, rose again during the 1980s, and will continue to increase, with deleterious social and political consequences. The author recommends a progressive annual capital tax on wealth to reduce the endless growth in capital of the most wealthy. The average reader will wish that the point had been made more pithily in far fewer pages, with fewer footnotes and graphs, and I do not see myself going to the website to look at the technical appendices. ( )
1 vote Dilip-Kumar | Jun 29, 2020 |
I greatly appreciated his graphs and data detailing the economic history of France in particular, but also the US (and other countries). His main conclusion is capitalist countries left to themselves will have ever greater concentrations of wealth. His suggestion to fix it is multi-pronged: 1) Global automatic sharing of banking information with tariffs against any countries that do not cooperate. 2) A progressive tax on capital starting at the regional level (the US, Europe, etc.)

I have two major negative points. I didn't understand was his discussion of a budgetary parliament in Europe. After all, if a European-level body controls all the national budgets would that body essentially control practically 90% of policies as well? At the same time, I think there is a disconnect between the European Central Bank & the Euro and national-level monetary/fiscal policy. A budgetary parliament would address this. Secondly, I have severe doubts about how realistic his proposal is for a global wealth tax and automatic sharing of all banking information. ( )
  aevaughn | May 4, 2020 |
An extremely thorough study of wealth and income inequality both in modern times and for the last 3 centuries. It shows in painstanking detail how capital has a positive feedback loop of accumulation where as income will struggle to keep pace with it. Many people arguing against this book use straw man arguments and while I dont fully agree with the author on many points, I can't refute any of the findings or conclusions.

The only true issue I had with it was it's close to 700 pages in size. This often lead to repetitions tha were uneccesary and even some chapters that could've accompanied to book in a separate format or an addendum. I believe that if this book were condensed to around 400 pages it would've reached a broader audience and would've helped spread the message. The message being that if your bank account isnt currently showing 6-7 digits you're being f%$ked or about to be in the next half decade. See ya at the bread lines! (kidding slightly, but the future isnt looking peachy in this political climate of corrupt profiteers posing as populists). ( )
  parzivalTheVirtual | Mar 22, 2020 |
Perfectly interesting and important.

However, I had to hold a list of "well that (A) is incorrect", "well (B) is incorrect" ... in my head while reading. I think I got to six before I abandoned this book. I can only recall two now:

1. While excusing himself at great (great) length for being a financial economist "oh, they know nothing about the real world ... unlike me" he then is only able to evaluate the worth of items via their price. At one stage, talking about the total unimproved value of lands in the North America, he discusses how this land mass's value as capital increased over the century after white settlement began. Instead, in reality, its monetary price greatly increased. It's weird, as this is also one of his main themes.

2. His yardstick and special contribution is Captial per unit of Revenue, with a - get this - highest ratio of Capital to Revenue being a sign of advancement. OK, maybe. However, this is the opposite, inverse, to ROI, the ubiquitous valuation measure of the economic success of an enterprise. Maybe his complete inversion of this century's measurement approach is correct. But he doesn't even spare a sentence to justify his 'revolution'.

In a world where "conspiracy theories" supported by large piles of evidence and opposed only by impossible claims are easily discarded by the stupidest 80% of the population, Piketty's lack of support for his major claims is unacceptable.

I read about a third, or maybe only a quarter of this book. The only reason this book gets three stars is that there are many interesting ideas scattered through it. ( )
  GirlMeetsTractor | Mar 22, 2020 |
This book has engendered much anger from the right, who collectively refuse to read it. It is a well-done piece of research and, yes, the small normative section does call for a capital tax, anathema to the wealthy, white right, but most of the controversy is unjustified by the contents of the text.

Could have done without the aggregate 100 pages of references to Austen and Balzac novels, but these were occasionally interesting. ( )
  shum57 | Jul 22, 2019 |
Wealth tax, now. And other measures (isn't this what Keynes called for 70 years ago?).
Communities, Please Cooperate
MEOW Date: 13 Aug. 12,014 Holocene Era ( )
  FourFreedoms | May 17, 2019 |
Wealth tax, now. And other measures (isn't this what Keynes called for 70 years ago?).
Communities, Please Cooperate
MEOW Date: 13 Aug. 12,014 Holocene Era ( )
  ShiraDest | Mar 6, 2019 |
This was really interesting, particularly the third part, which discusses the current and past distribution of income and capital ownership and the role of inheritance. I'm of course not knowledgeable enough to rate the content, but now I want to know more.
  brokensandals | Feb 7, 2019 |
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