Thomas Piketty: Is Inequality Inevitable?
On Wednesday, April 16 at 6 p.m. Eastern time, Thomas Piketty will join economists Paul Krugman, Joseph Stiglitz and Steven Durlauf in New York to talk about his new landmark book, Capital in the Twenty-First Century.
In a review, Krugman, who will appear on Moyers & Company this week, calls the book “magnificent” in part because it will “change both the way we think about society and the way we do economics,” adding that the French economist’s influence “runs deep.”
“The big idea of Capital in the Twenty-First Century is that we haven’t just gone back to nineteenth-century levels of income inequality, we’re also on a path back to ‘patrimonial capitalism,’ in which the commanding heights of the economy are controlled not by talented individuals but by family dynasties.”
What digby said:
This is the book everyone’s talking about. It’s said to be a towering work of scholarship and a tremendous breakthrough in the way we understand how the economy works.
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“…in which the commanding heights of the economy are controlled not by talented individuals but by family dynasties.”
Otherwise known (eventually) as feudalism.