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Portrait of Thomas Piketty

Thomas Piketty

(1971) Economist

124 quotes in 528 categories

A global registry of assets is suggested as a way to know who owns what across countries. Piketty points out that modern US inequality mirrors old European levels, and that wealth distribution matters more than any single discipline can capture. He also argues that a progressive net‑worth tax could help shrink extreme gaps.

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Thomas Piketty is an economist, best known for Le capital au XXIe siècle.

Quick Facts About Thomas Piketty

Born: May 7, 1971
Profession: Economist
Notable works: Le capital au XXIe siècle

About Thomas Piketty

Thomas Piketty is a French economist who is a professor of economics at the School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences (EHESS), associate chair at the Paris School of Economics (PSE) and Centennial Professor of Economics in the International Inequalities Institute at the London School of Economics (LSE).

Quotes by Thomas Piketty

“We must also consider inequality within and not just between countries. I”

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“(autarky does not encourage technological transfer).”

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“In Britain, things were done differently: more slowly and with less passion.”

Britain

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“Autarky has never promoted prosperity.”

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“(which did not exist before the creation of the income tax in 1913)”

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I'm not as pessimistic as what a number of people seem to believe.

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At the heart of every major political upheaval lies a fiscal revolution.

Heart

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When inequality gets to an extreme, it is completely useless for growth.

Extremes

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What I argue for is a progressive tax, a global tax, based on the taxation of private property.

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I am not political. It is not my job. But I would be happy if politicians could read my work and draw…

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Once constituted, capital reproduces itself faster than output increases. The past devours the future.

Capital

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I don't live in the Cold War. Some people maybe still live in the Cold War, but this is their problem, not…

Cold

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Democracy will never be supplanted by a republic of experts—and that is a very good thing.

Democracy

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I believe in the power of ideas, I believe in the power of books, but you have to give them time.

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It's not Utopian to believe that we can create a global registry of financial assets so we know who owns what in…

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Having a decent share of the national wealth for the middle class is not bad for growth. It is actually useful both…

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Economists tend to think they are much, much smarter than historians, than everybody. And this is a bit too much because at…

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Private property and the market system are good not only to promote innovation and to promote growth; private property and the market…

Freedom

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Economists have put themselves in a position where what they are doing is supposed to be impossible to understand for outsiders, so…

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“They (economists) must set aside their contempt for other disciplines and their absurd claim to greater scientific legitimacy, despite the fact that…

Economics

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“US inequality in 2010 is quantitatively as extreme as in old Europe in the first decade of the twentieth century, but the…

Inequality

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I think if you look back through time, the history of income, wealth and taxation is full of surprise. So I am…

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“In Europe today, the capital/income ratio has already risen to around five to six years of national income, scarcely less than the…

World war

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“To sum up, historical experience suggests that the principal mechanism for convergence at the international as well as the domestic level is…

Convergence

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“This fundamental inequality, which I will write as r > g (where r stands for the average annual rate of return on…

Economics

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“The reality was so striking that it even found expression in an animated cartoon, The Aristocats, set in Paris in 1910. The…

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“The most striking fact is that the United States has become noticeably more inegalitarian than France (and Europe as a whole) from…

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“if we consider the total growth of the US economy in the thirty years prior to the crisis, that is, from 1977…

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“In the long run, the best way to reduce inequalities with respect to labor as well as to increase the average productivity…

Economics

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“In contrast to what many people in Britain and the United States believe, the true figures on growth (as best one can…

Economy

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“The sharp reduction in income inequality that we observe in almost all the rich countries between 1914 and 1945 was due above…

Income inequality

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“The idea was that inequalities increase in the early phases of industrialization, because only a minority is prepared to benefit from the…

Economic growth

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“I belong to a generation that came of age listening to news of the collapse of the Communist dicatorships and never felt…

Communism

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“This complex and contradictory relation to inequality largely persists in the United States to this day: on the one hand this is…

Civil rights

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“In the United States, the Supreme Court blocked several attempts to levy a federal income tax in the late nineteenth and early…

Carbon tax

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“The top centile is a particularly interesting group to study in the context of my historical investigation. Although it constitutes (by definition)…

History

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“According to our estimates, the optimal top tax rate in the developed countries is probably above 80 percent.50 Do not be misled…

Tax rate

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“Our democratic societies rest on a meritocratic worldview, or at any rate a meritocratic hope, by which I mean a belief in…

Democracy

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“Social scientific research is and always will be tentative and imperfect. It does not claim to transform economics, sociology, and history into…

Science

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“α = r × β where r is the rate of return on capital. For example, if β = 600% and r…

Economics

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Thomas Piketty by topic

Inequality (21) Economics (20) Wealth (16) Money (11) Growth (10)