“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
“Knowledge and skill diffusion is the key to overall productivity growth as well as the reduction of inequality both within and between… — 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
Once constituted, capital reproduces itself faster than output increases. The past devours the future. — 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
“The most striking fact of the day was the misery of the industrial proletariat. Despite the growth of the economy, or perhaps… — 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
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
