Piketty and Inequality
Danny Shapiro
This session was held in person, before Science Plus moved online, and was not recorded.
About the talk
Piketty has emerged as a rock star of the policy-intellectual world. His book was for a time Amazon's bestseller. Every pundit has expressed a view on his argument … Piketty's tome seems to be drawn on a dozen times for every time it is read.
Lawrence Summers, "The Inequality Puzzle" — quoted in the session announcementFrom the session announcement: “This session will explore Piketty's argument that inequality is increasing, and the reason is increased disparities in wealth. He also suggests that wealth tends not to be earned, and is inherited, so that absent any significant action wealth inequality will persist… In truth, it is largely unreadable even for professional economists, both because of its length and the detailed historical nature of many of the chapters. I would not expect that you will have read it.”
The session worked through Piketty's equations sequentially — the capital share of income as the return on capital times the capital-to-income ratio, the long-run equilibrium from the Solow growth model, and the observation that the return on capital normally exceeds the growth rate of the economy (r > g) — and the two “laws” of capitalism Piketty draws from them: that capital's share of national output, and of national income, both tend to rise over time, making wealth inequality the major source of inequality.
About the speaker
Professor of Economics and Dean of the Executive MBA Program, SFU.
We are always looking for recommendations for and introductions to presenters who will appeal to the Science Plus audience. Please send to Ray Schachter at Schachter.ray@gmail.com.