Piketty's thesis--that the tendency towards growing inequality is not a dumb coincidence but rather a law immanent to the economy or at least a strong tendency--is provocative
Piketty’s central point of critique is aimed at the legitimation of inequality. Bourgeois society’s self-description, in which inequality is a consequence of different abilities, will no longer be accurate in the future. To make a long story short: effort will no longer be worth it.
Hidden behind these pure numbers, however, are radical changes within society. According to Piketty, states used their tax revenues in order to build welfare state structures. With the loss of significance of the super-rich, and a new relation between the state and the market, a new middle class em…
[...] Only a few years afterwards, however, it underwent a drastic reduction. One reason for this was of course the loss of wealth in the form of ‘war damages’. A further reason was the devaluation of financial wealth in the form of government bonds: government bonds were already held in the eighte…
[...] if all people owned an equal amount of wealth, all of them would equally profit from a strong growth of capital. In fact, however, wealth is unequally distributed, according to Piketty. He does not explain why that is. Rather, he assumes inequality as a given, and examines its development ove…
