Thomas Piketty Paris School Of Economics

Thomas Piketty, director of the Paris School of Economics (PSE), attends  the inauguration of the school in Paris, February 22, 2007. REUTERS/Benoit  Tessier (FRANCE Stock Photo - Alamy

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Piketty was born to militant Trotskyite parents and was later politically affiliated with the French Socialist Party. After he took the baccalauréat examination, he spent two years preparing for the École Normale Supérieure (ENS) entrance examination. From the ENS he received (1990) an M.Sc. degree in mathematics. In 1993 he was awarded a Ph.D. in economics from the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS) and the London School of Economics European doctoral program for a dissertation on the theory of the redistribution of wealth. After Piketty taught (1993–95) at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, he returned to France as a research fellow (1995–2000) at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique. He became professor of economics at the EHESS (2000) and also at the Paris School of Economics (2007), of which he was the founding director. He was the author of numerous other books and articles and, in collaboration with French American economist Emmanuel Saez, British economist Anthony B. Atkinson, and Facundo Alvaredo of Argentina, was a compiler of the World Top Incomes Database.

In 2014 Piketty gained international celebrity with the English publication of Capital in the Twenty-first Century. The previously little-known author and his nearly 700-page unexpected best seller also became the subject of a lively debate between liberals and conservatives over economic inequality, the distribution of wealth, and the future of capitalism. Piketty’s principal claim in Capital in the Twenty-first Century was that there is a “central contradiction of capitalism.” He maintained that the average return on capital exceeds the rate of economic growth, so without countervailing factors—such as World Wars I and II, the Great Depression of the 1930s, or specific government action—inherited wealth will grow faster than earned wealth, leading to unsustainable levels of economic inequality that could threaten democracy. Unchecked, this contradiction will ultimately bring a return to what he called the “patrimonial capitalism” of the 19th century (as shown in the novels of such authors as Jane Austen and Honoré de Balzac, wherein the preferred path to wealth is inheritance or marriage rather than labour). He based his conclusions on 200 years of tax records from the United States and Europe, especially France. Much of this data was collected by Piketty himself as well as Atkinson and Saez.

Piketty’s prescription for the crisis of inequality was a change in taxation policies, including an annual progressive global tax on financial assets of as much as 2 percent on fortunes above $6.6 million. Because he realized that this goal was “utopian,” he recommended regional wealth taxes, a tax of 80 percent on incomes above $500,000 (or, alternatively, $1 million), and a 50–60 percent tax on incomes of $200,000 or more. The purpose of the income tax would be not to raise revenue but rather to eliminate such high incomes.

In May 2014 the Financial Times published the results of an investigation into Piketty’s data. The British newspaper claimed that there were discrepancies between Piketty’s data and official sources, and it charged that in some cases Piketty had modified the data from the original sources (some of the data appeared to have been constructed or cherry-picked) and, most important, that when these errors were corrected, the data did not support Piketty’s conclusions. Piketty wrote a long response in which he defended his book, although he also conceded that “available data sources on wealth inequality are much less systematic than what we have for income inequality.”

Is Thomas Piketty A Socialist

Time for Socialism: Dispatches from a World on Fire, 2016-2021 by Thomas  Piketty

A chronicle of recent events that have shaken the world, from the author of Capital in the Twenty-First Century
 
“What makes this manifesto noteworthy is that it comes from . . . an economist who gained his reputation as a researcher with vaguely left-of-center sensibilities but was far from a radical. Yet the times are such . . . that even honest moderates are driven to radical remedies.”—Robert Kuttner, New York Times
 
As a correspondent for the French newspaper Le Monde, world-renowned economist Thomas Piketty has documented the rise and fall of Trump, the drama of Brexit, Emmanuel Macron’s ascendance to the French presidency, the unfolding of a global pandemic, and much else besides, always from the perspective of his fight for a more equitable world. This collection brings together those articles and is prefaced by an extended introductory essay, in which Piketty argues that the time has come to support an inclusive and expansive conception of socialism as a counterweight against the hypercapitalism that defines our current economic ideology. These essays offer a first draft of history from one of the world’s leading economists and public figures, detailing the struggle against inequalities and tax evasion, in favor of a federalist Europe and a globalization more respectful of work and the environment.

Thomas Piketty is director of studies at the École des hautes études en sciences sociales (EHESS) and professor at the Paris School of Economics. He is the author of Capital in the Twenty-First Century and Capital and Ideology.

Thomas Piketty, 2017.
Thomas Piketty, 2017.Credit…SIPA, via Associated Press

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By Robert Kuttner

  • Published Oct. 26, 2021 Updated Oct. 28, 2021

TIME FOR SOCIALISM

Dispatches From a World on Fire, 2016-2021

The French economist Thomas Piketty came to prominence with his 2014 book, “Capital in the Twenty-First Century.” The title was a deliberate echo of Marx’s “Capital,” though Piketty was far from a Marxist. Drawing on his virtuoso knowledge of historical economic statistics, he demonstrated something close to an iron law of capitalism. Wealth concentrates because the return on capital tends to exceed the general rate of economic growth. Since income broadly tracks wealth, economies become relentlessly more unequal over time. Piketty demonstrated this pattern in all major nations and at all historic periods for at least 200 years, with one notable exception — the mid-20th century, when income and wealth in Europe and the United States became more equal.

In explaining this anomaly, Piketty pointed to the great wars of the last century. Wars tended to wipe out riches. Given that wealth was disproportionately held by the wealthy, the result was a leveling. The trouble was that the wars had different impacts on different nations. Both World War I and World War II indeed destroyed wealth in Europe, which Piketty knows best. But they were bonanzas for the United States. Neither conflict was fought on American soil, where war production created vast new riches.

However, postwar Europe and America did have one thing in common. Governments in the West changed the dynamics of political power. The great crash and the legacy of the New Deal left American capitalists with less wealth and power than usual. In Europe, the disgrace of both the fascist right and free-market conservatives brought to power coalitions committed to full employment and extensive welfare benefits, as well as a legitimate role for unions and the use of public capital. The result: For a generation, economies on both sides of the Atlantic became more equal. But then, as trade, private finance and politics reverted to normal, capitalists regained their traditional power to make the rules. After 1973, Piketty’s pattern of deepening inequality returned, and has been worsening ever since.

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