Economists tend to think they are much, much smarter than historians, than everybody. And this is a bit too much because at… — Thomas Piketty Copy Share Image
There is a fundamentalist belief by capitalists that capital will save the world, and it just isn't so. — Thomas Piketty Copy Share Image
We want capitalism and market forces to be the slave of democracy rather than the opposite. — Thomas Piketty Copy Share Image
Capitalism and market forces are very powerful in producing wealth and innovation. But we need to ensure that these forces act in… — Thomas Piketty Copy Share Image
Market forces and capitalism by themselves aren't sufficient to ensure the common good and to limit the concentration of wealth at levels… — Thomas Piketty Copy Share Image
“it was the wars of the twentieth century that wiped away the past to create the illusion that capitalism had been structurally… — Thomas Piketty Copy Share Image
Economists have put themselves in a position where what they are doing is supposed to be impossible to understand for outsiders, so… — Thomas Piketty Copy Share Image
“They (economists) must set aside their contempt for other disciplines and their absurd claim to greater scientific legitimacy, despite the fact that… — Thomas Piketty Copy Share Image
“When the rate of return on capital significantly exceeds the growth rate of the economy (as it did through much of history… — Thomas Piketty Copy Share Image
“To put it bluntly, the discipline of economics has yet to get over its childish passion for mathematics and for purely theoretical… — Thomas Piketty Copy Share Image
“Among the members of these upper income groups are US academic economists, many of whom believe that the economy of the United… — Thomas Piketty Copy Share Image
“For far too long, economists have neglected the distribution of wealth, partly because of Kuznets’s optimistic conclusions and partly because of the… — Thomas Piketty Copy Share Image
“Economists are all too often preoccupied with petty mathematical problems of interest only to themselves. This obsession with mathematics is an easy… — Thomas Piketty Copy Share Image
...the discipline of economics has yet to get over its childish passion for mathematics and for purely theoretical and often highly ideological… — Thomas Piketty Copy Share Image
“This fundamental inequality, which I will write as r > g (where r stands for the average annual rate of return on… — Thomas Piketty Copy Share Image
“In the long run, the best way to reduce inequalities with respect to labor as well as to increase the average productivity… — Thomas Piketty Copy Share Image
There is one great advantage to being an academic economist in France: here, economists are not highly respected in the academic and… — Thomas Piketty Copy Share Image
“α = r × β where r is the rate of return on capital. For example, if β = 600% and r… — Thomas Piketty Copy Share Image
When the rate of return on capital exceeds the rate of growth of output and income, as it did in the nineteenth… — Thomas Piketty Copy Share Image
For far too long economists have sought to define themselves in terms of their supposedly scientific methods. In fact, those methods rely… — Thomas Piketty Copy Share Image
It's not Utopian to believe that we can create a global registry of financial assets so we know who owns what in different countries. — Thomas Piketty Copy Share
“US inequality in 2010 is quantitatively as extreme as in old Europe in the first decade of the twentieth century, but the structure of… — Thomas Piketty Copy Share
Indeed, the distribution of wealth is too important an issue to be left to economists, sociologists, historians, and philosophers. — Thomas Piketty Copy Share
The United States could transform its property tax system into a progressive tax on net worth without asking permission to the rest of the… — Thomas Piketty Copy Share
“When it comes to decreasing inequalities of wealth for good or reducing unusually high levels of public debt, a progressive tax on capital is… — Thomas Piketty Copy Share
“In other words, low growth cannot adequately counterbalance the Marxist principle of infinite accumulation: the resulting equilibrium is not as apocalyptic as the one… — Thomas Piketty Copy Share
“I belong to a generation that came of age listening to news of the collapse of the Communist dicatorships and never felt the slightest… — Thomas Piketty Copy Share
When you are an entrepreneur, you have founded your own firm, it is so easy to find that you exist - you are the… — Thomas Piketty Copy Share
There is one great advantage to being an academic economist in France: here, economists are not highly respected in the academic and intellectual world… — Thomas Piketty Copy Share
Without precisely defined sources, methods, and concepts, it is possible to see absolutely everything and its opposite. — Thomas Piketty Copy Share
“the population of the world grew at an average annual rate of barely 0.8 percent between 1700 and 2012.” — Thomas Piketty Copy Share
“The sharp reduction in income inequality that we observe in almost all the rich countries between 1914 and 1945 was due above all to… — Thomas Piketty Copy Share
“Progress in medicine together with improved living conditions has therefore, it is argued, totally transformed the very essence of capital.” — Thomas Piketty Copy Share
“the decrease in the top marginal income tax rate led to an explosion of very high incomes, which then increased the political influence of… — Thomas Piketty Copy Share
