Notes from GV4D4 week 3

• addresses the mistaken concept that growth favours labour over inheritance
  (spoiler: it usually doesn't)
• in 19th century France, labour alone (no matter your profession) was rarely
  enough to compete with inherited wealth
• in the US it was different (inherited wealth mattered little) until the 20th,
  especially due to the slave trade and all the compounding consequences of
  that
• it's important to distinguish between income/wealth inequality for labour,
  and that for capital, because the moral justifications are different
• and the econ/socio/political mechanisms are different
• for labour: market, education, rules and institutions
• for capital: inheritance laws, savings and investment behaviour, real
   estate and financial markets
• income inequality for capital is always more unequal than for labour
• but this is due to political institutions and norms, not nature
• the 20th century saw a huge structural transformation in the distribution of
  wealth in developed countries
• growth of a patrimonial (propertied) middle class)
• coincided with a falling share of wealth held by the upper class
• prediction: by 2030, top decile in US will have 60% of NI
• now let's look at justifications of high inequality:
• in a hyperpatrimonial society (with lots of rentiers), inherited wealth
   plays a huge role and has a tendency to become very concentrated
• this describes Belle Époque Europe (1871-1914) and the Ancien Régime
   (pre-revolution France)
• contemporary society is more "hypermeritocratic", esp in the US (and dw,
   Piketty is well aware that "meritocracies" are smokescreens used for
   justifying unjustifiable distributions of wealth/opportunity)---inequality
   is primarily due to a class of "supermanagers" with high labour income
• ofc, the two models can coexist; the children of supermanagers/superstars
   can become rentiers