Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty

People, Power, and Profits: Progressive Capitalism for an Age of Discontent
by Joseph E. Stiglitz
Published 22 Apr 2019

Stiglitz, “New Theoretical Perspectives on the Distribution of Income and Wealth among Individuals.” For a discussion of the role of housing, see Matthew Rognlie, “Deciphering the Fall and Rise in the Net Capital Share: Accumulation or Scarcity?,” Brookings Papers on Economic Activity 46, no. 1 (Spring 2015): 1–69. See also Thomas Piketty, Capital in the Twenty-First Century. 17.The right to obtain a certain rent stream, year after year, has a market value, and this is called the capitalized value of the rents. Thus, owning a monopoly will give the owner profits each year. The owner could sell that stream of profits. The value today of that stream is called the capitalized rents. 18.See Mordecai Kurz, “On the Formation of Capital and Wealth: IT, Monopoly Power and Rising Inequality” (Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research Working Paper 17-016, 2017). 19.In mid-twentieth-century capitalism, corporations with market power shared their monopoly rents with their unionized workers.

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Brownell, “Effects of Soft Drink Consumption on Nutrition and Health: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis,” American Journal of Public Health 97 [2007]: 667–75.) 38.Perhaps the best website for data on inequality is that of inequality.org. There is some controversy both about the sources of wealth inequality and its future evolution. Thomas Piketty, in his justly praised 2014 book Capital in the 21st Century (Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press) has argued, for instance, that the passing on of inheritances from one generation to the next leads to ever-increasing inequality. The recent surge of inequality, he writes, is a reflection of this time-honored process that had been temporarily interrupted by World War II and the surge of social solidarity that it brought about.

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A quick search of “patent infringement” shows numerous cases, in the hundreds of millions of dollars, between Qualcomm and Apple, Apple and Samsung, and so forth. The only sure winners in all of these suits are the lawyers; the only sure losers are consumers and small firms unable to enter the fray. Such is American-style capitalism in the twenty-first century. Our “innovative” firms do not rest their anticompetitive practices there. They have pioneered new contractual arrangements to leverage their market power. In credit cards, these new contractual forms do not allow, for instance, stores to charge customers who use credit cards with high rewards—and high merchant fees—for the use of these high-cost credit cards.

Visions of Inequality: From the French Revolution to the End of the Cold War
by Branko Milanovic
Published 9 Oct 2023

See “Minorities, Immigrants, and Home Ownership: Through Boom or Bust, Part 5: Foreclosures in the U.S. in 2008,” Pew Research Center Report, May 12, 2009, https:// www .pewresearch .org /hispanic /2009 /05 /12 /v -foreclosures -in -the -u -s -in -2008 / . 3 . Thomas Piketty, Capital in the Twenty-First Century (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2014). 4 . John Maynard Keynes, The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 1936). 5 . Thomas Piketty, Top Incomes in France in the Twentieth Century: Inequality and Redistribution, 1901–1998 (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2018). 6 . Branko Milanovic, “The Return of ‘Patrimonial Capitalism’: Review of Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the 21st Century, ” Journal of Economic Literature, 52, no. 2 (2014): 519–534. 7 .

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Each of these trends is now only at the beginning of what I expect to be many tumultuous and successful developments in the decades to come. Each deserves, as this book comes to its close, some paragraphs of explanation. Piketty’s contribution. In 2014, the English-language version of Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century became a huge international bestseller. 3 Probably it had the highest first-year sales of any economics book ever. While this is remarkable, it does not tell the full story. Many books have become bestsellers only to be soon forgotten. But this is unlikely to be the case here, both because Piketty has gone on to expand the agenda of his work in several promising directions, and because he proposed a new way of looking at inequality—a new theory of inequality whose importance stands independent of the book’s appeal to a wide audience.

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Piketty allows that Kuznets might simply have been unduly influenced by postwar prosperity, but suspects the economist was not entirely innocent of that pretense: “In order to make sure that everyone understood what was at stake, he took care to remind his listeners that the intent of his optimistic predictions was quite simply to maintain the underdeveloped countries ‘within the orbit of the free world.’ ” In Piketty’s judgment, “the magical Kuznets curve theory was formulated in large part for the wrong reasons.” Thomas Piketty, Capital in the Twenty-First Century, trans. Arthur Goldhammer (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2014), 14, 15. It is, of course, also possible that Kuznets used the qualifier “free” to indicate that his regularity applied only to the capitalist economies of the world, and that those that underwent a socialist revolution might experience a more abrupt decrease in inequality.

Dream Hoarders: How the American Upper Middle Class Is Leaving Everyone Else in the Dust, Why That Is a Problem, and What to Do About It
by Richard V. Reeves
Published 22 May 2017

Adam Swift, “Justice, Luck, and the Family: The Intergenerational Transmission of Economic Advantage from a Normative Perspective,” in Unequal Chances: Family Background and Economic Success, edited by Samuel Bowles, Herbert Gintis, and Melissa Osborne Groves (Princeton University Press, 2005), p. 267. 2. Thomas Piketty, Capital in the Twenty-First Century (Harvard University Press, 2014), p. 419. 3. William Mosher, Jo Jones, and Joyce Abma, Intended and Unintended Births in the United States: 1982–2010, National Health Statistics Report 55 (Hyattsville, Md.: National Center for Health Statistics, July 24, 2012) (www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nhsr/nhsr055.pdf). 4.

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Raj Chetty, John N. Friedman, and Jonah E. Rockoff, “Measuring the Impacts of Teachers I: Evaluating Bias in Teacher Value-Added Estimates,” American Economic Review 104, no. 9 (September 2014): pp. 2593–2632. 19. Alan Krueger, “Human Capital in the 21st Century,” Milken Institute Review, January 2015 (www.milkenreview.org/articles/human-capital-in-the-21st-century?IssueID=11). 20. Penny Starr, “Education Secretary: Give Teachers in Poor Communities 50 Percent Raise by Releasing Half of Non-Violent Criminals from Jail,” CNS News, October 2, 2015 (www.cnsnews.com/news/article/penny-starr/education-secretary-give-teachers-poor-communities-50-percent-raise). 21.

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Producing another volume about class and inequality might then seem redundant. But I think some of the most popular efforts to date have diagnosed the class fracture incorrectly. Some analysts have let the upper middle class off the hook (yes, that would be you) by pointing at the “super-rich” or “top 1 percent.” Take the new rock star of economic history, Thomas Piketty. For him, inequality is pretty much all about the top 1 percent. Others have looked through a slightly wider lens. In Coming Apart, Charles Murray describes an isolated “New Upper Class,” comprised of the most successful adults (and their spouses), working in managerial positions, the professions, or with senior jobs in the media.

Capitalism Without Capital: The Rise of the Intangible Economy
by Jonathan Haskel and Stian Westlake
Published 7 Nov 2017

Review of Economics and Statistics 39 (3): 312–20. doi:10.2307/1926047. Solow, Robert M. 1987. “We’d Better Watch Out.” New York Times Book Review. http://www.standupeconomist.com/pdf/misc/solow-computer-productivity.pdf. ———. 2014. “Thomas Piketty Is Right: Everything You Need to Know about ‘Capital in the Twenty-First Century.’ ” New Republic, April 22, 2014. https://newrepublic.com/article/117429/capital-twenty-first-century-thomas-piketty-reviewed. Song, Jae, David J. Price, Fatih Guvenen, Nicholas Bloom, and Till von Wachter. 2015. Firming Up Inequality. NBER, Working Paper, No. 21199. doi:10.3386/w21199. Soto, Hernando de. 2001.

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The same journalist might call a long-term financier like Warren Buffett an “investor” and his short-term rivals “speculators.” Someone considering going to college might be advised that “education is the best investment you can make.” The terms “assets” and “capital” are also used in a confusing variety of ways. In his justly famous Capital in the Twenty-First Century, Thomas Piketty (2014) defined capital as “all forms of wealth that individuals . . . can own.” Marxist writers commonly ascribe to “capital” not just an accounting definition, but an entire exploitative system. “Assets” also have different definitions. Many firms think of their business assets as their stock of plant and equipment.

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The world’s richest people have done well too. But one big group has not done as well: people between the seventy-fifth and ninety-fifth percentiles of world income—which represents a lot of the traditional working class in developed countries. Thomas Piketty’s blockbuster book added another flavor of inequality to the mix: inequality of wealth. One of the many dazzling features of Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century (2014) and the research that underpins it was the light it cast on the wealth of the very rich, which is often hard to measure. It will not come as a huge surprise that this showed that the wealth of the richest in countries like the United States, the UK, and France has increased dramatically in the past few decades.

Why We Can't Afford the Rich
by Andrew Sayer
Published 6 Nov 2014

.… buy-to-let property investors in effect lever their investments through mortgage borrowing and rely on the rental payments of their tenants’ (p 82). 114 Engelen et al (2011), p 139. 115 Savage, M. and Williams, K. (2008) ‘Elites: remembered in capitalism and forgotten in social science’, The Sociological Review, 56(s1), 1–24. 116 Mill, J.S. (1848) Principles of political economy with some of their applications to social philosophy, bk V, ch II: On the general principles of taxation, v 2.28, http://www.econlib.org/library/Mill/mlP64.htm. 117 Freeland, C. (2012) Plutocrats: The rise of the new global super-rich, London: Allen Lane, p 42. 118 Krugman, P. (2014) ‘Why we’re in a new gilded age’, http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2014/may/08/thomas-piketty-new-gilded-age/; Piketty, T. (2014) Capital in the 21st century, Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press. This is what Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez infer from the data, wrongly, in my view (Piketty, T. and Saez, E. (2006) ‘The evolution of top incomes: a historical and international perspective’, American Economic Review 96(2), pp 200–5). In Part Three we’ll illustrate the role of the active rentier in the financial crisis. 119 It can be highly skilled too: the design of financial instruments is a highly technical job, and the ‘quants’ – top mathematicians employed by financial institutions – became a key factor in their success, though they have little to do with productive investment. 120 Toynbee, P. and Walker, D. (2008) Unjust rewards, London: Granta.

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While the public sector has to work within budgets, neoliberal governments have tried to make public organisations compete in zero-sum games for funds to make them more like the private sector, in the belief that this will make them more efficient and effective. Or, as in health and education, they have allowed capitalist businesses to compete for them. 85 Strangely, this point is missed by Thomas Piketty (2014) Capital in the 21st century, Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, p 423. 86 Some readers might be wondering at this point, isn’t this like Marx’s labour theory of value, and hasn’t it been discredited? (By the way, for what it’s worth, Adam Smith also had a labour theory of value, though few modern economists who invoke his authority seem to realise it.)

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They are living beyond our means and those of the planet, and their interests are at odds with those of the 99% and the environment. We must stop supporting them. Notes and sources Chapter One: Introduction 1 http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Warren_Buffett. In 2013, Buffett was ranked by Forbes as the fourth-richest person in the world. 2 World Top Incomes Database. See Piketty, T. (2014) Capital in the 21st century, Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, for details and analysis. However, these are figures for pre-tax income, and since taxes on the rich have fallen dramatically in the last 30 years, their post-tax income share has risen more. 3 In the US between 2002 and 2012 – years spanning the boom and crash – family incomes of the bottom 90% fell by 10.7% and the top 10% experienced increases from 2.7% (the top 10% to 5%) to 76.2% (the top 0. 01%).

The Great Divide: Unequal Societies and What We Can Do About Them
by Joseph E. Stiglitz
Published 15 Mar 2015

If we get the rules of the game right, we might even be able to restore the rapid and shared economic growth that characterized the middle-class societies of the mid-20th century. The main question confronting us today is not really about capitalism in the 21st century. It is about democracy in the 21st century. ______________ * Project Syndicate, September 1, 2014. PHONY CAPITALISM* AMERICANS ARE FINALLY BEGINNING TO APPRECIATE THE magnitude of the inequalities in income and wealth that mark our society. Lately, this realization has been helped along by an unexpected source: the French economist Thomas Piketty, whose Capital in the Twenty-First Century is the surprise bestseller of the year. Piketty has collected the most extensive evidence available of the increases in economic inequality and inherited wealth over the past forty years, which are creating a new plutocracy.

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Putting all of this together, one reaches a disappointing result: overall inequality, in the way it is conventionally measured (the Gini coefficient, a number ranging from zero, with perfect equality, to one, with perfect inequality), has barely budged. The Piketty Phenomenon The final two articles of this section are, in part, a response to the enormous success of the economist Thomas Piketty’s book Capitalism in the Twenty-First Century. The success of that book echoed the growing concern about inequality, a concern expressed in Davos by the world’s elite, and consistent with the way my own article “Of the 1 percent, by the 1 Percent, for the 1 Percent” had gone viral. President Obama had in 2013 declared that inequality would in fact be the focus of his attention for the remaining three years of his office.

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They are not places in which most of us would want to live, whether in their cloistered enclaves or their desperate shantytowns. ______________ * New York Times, October 13, 2013. DEMOCRACY IN THE 21ST CENTURY* THE RECEPTION IN THE UNITED STATES, AND IN OTHER advanced economies, of Thomas Piketty’s recent book Capital in the Twenty-First Century attests to growing concern about rising inequality. His book lends further weight to the already overwhelming body of evidence concerning the soaring share of income and wealth at the very top. Piketty’s book, moreover, provides a different perspective on the 30 or so years that followed the Great Depression and World War II, viewing this period as a historical anomaly, perhaps caused by the unusual social cohesion that cataclysmic events can stimulate.

The Triumph of Injustice: How the Rich Dodge Taxes and How to Make Them Pay
by Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman
Published 14 Oct 2019

Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of the American Consensus. New York: Hill and Wang, 2001. Phillips, Richard, Matt Gardner, Alexandria Robins, and Michelle Surka. Offshore Shell Games 2017: The Use of Offshore Tax Havens by Fortune 500 Companies. Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy and U.S. PIRG Education Fund, 2017. Piketty, Thomas. Capital in the 21st Century. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2014. ——— . Capital et Idéologie. Paris: Le Seuil, 2019. ———, and Emmanuel Saez. “Income Inequality in the United States, 1913–1998.” Quarterly Journal of Economics 118, no. 1, (2003): 1–39. ———, and Emmanuel Saez. “A Theory of Optimal Inheritance Taxation.”

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Alvaredo, Facundo, Anthony Atkinson, Lucas Chancel, Thomas Piketty, Emmanuel Saez, and Gabriel Zucman. “Distributional National Accounts (DINA) Guidelines: Concepts and Methods Used in the World Wealth and Income Database.” WID Working Paper 2016/1, 2016. Alvaredo, Facundo, Lucas Chancel, Thomas Piketty, Emmanuel Saez, and Gabriel Zucman. World Inequality Report 2018. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2018. Atack, Jeremy, and Peter Passell. A New Economic View of American History from Colonial Times to 1940. 2nd ed. New York: W. W. Norton, 1994. Atkinson, Anthony, Thomas Piketty, and Emmanuel Saez. “Top Incomes in the Long Run of History.”

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This book would not have been possible without the numerous co-authors and colleagues who have worked with us and commented on our research on taxes and inequality over the years, and without the support of our home institution, UC Berkeley. We want to thank in particular Heather Boushey, Lucas Chancel, Kimberly Clausing, Camille Landais, Claire Montialoux, and Thomas Piketty for their detailed comments on the manuscript. We thank our research assistants Akcan Balkir, Katie Donnelly Moran, and Clancy Green, and our agent Raphael Sagalyn. Special thanks to our editor Brendan Curry and his W. W. Norton colleagues for their invaluable work. NOTES Chapter 1: INCOME AND TAXES IN AMERICA 1.

Global Inequality: A New Approach for the Age of Globalization
by Branko Milanovic
Published 10 Apr 2016

This is why Tinbergen expected the skill premium to go to zero.2 But here too, the very opposite has happened: the skill premium has shown a strong increase in most advanced countries during the past twenty years. Note also that Tinbergen’s theory, like Kuznets’s, holds that inequality should be expected to decrease with development—a conclusion that is unambiguously contradicted by the facts. It was Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century, a book of extraordinary breadth and influence, that presented a theory to effectively displace Kuznets’s. The problem was how to explain both the decrease in inequality in rich countries in the period 1918–1980 and its subsequent increase. Piketty argued that the decrease was a special and unusual event driven by the political forces of wars, taxation to finance the wars, socialist ideology and movements, and economic convergence (which kept the growth rate of wages above the growth rate of income from property).

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Economic History Review 48(4): 1–23. van Zanden, Jan Luiten, Joerg Baten, Peter Foldvari, and Bas van Leeuwen. 2014. “The Changing Shape of Global Inequality, 1820–2000.” Review of Income and Wealth 60(2): 279–297. Varoufakis, Yanis. 2014. “Egalitarianism’s Latest Foe: A Critical Review of Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the 21st Century.” Real-World Economics Review 69: 18–35. Večernik, Jiři. 1994. “Changing Earnings Inequality under the Economic Transformation. The Czech and Slovak Republics in 1984–92.” Unpublished ms. Institute of Sociology, Prague. Vries, Peer. 2013. Escaping Poverty: The Origins of Modern Economic Growth.

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Inequality as measured by the land rent/wage ratio probably went down in both cases, but not equally.18 Another type of catastrophic event that reduces inequality is war. For modern societies, the argument that war can be a force for equality, if an unwelcome one, recently received much attention in Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century. It was already present in Piketty’s earlier work on French inequality (2001a), which showed how inequality was affected by World War I and its aftermath. War reduces inequality through physical destruction of capital and inflation (creating real losses for creditors), resulting in a general decrease of income received from property.

Prosperity Without Growth: Foundations for the Economy of Tomorrow
by Tim Jackson
Published 8 Dec 2016

The servicing of escalating debts creates a rising flow of income from debtors to creditors. This is particularly problematic when a relatively small proportion of the population owns a large proportion of the financial assets. It’s no surprise to find, as the French economist Thomas Piketty convincingly demonstrated in his bestselling book Capital in the 21st Century, that the richest 1 per cent of the US population got considerably richer over the same time-frame in which financial institutions were creating so much more credit.23 This isn’t the only bear pit. Making credit more widely available doesn’t always lead to investment in real physical assets or in the real wealth of households.

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But in a world where capital is very unequally distributed – and ours is clearly such a world – things look very different. Any slight disparity in the ownership of capital, or even in the rate of savings, will lead to escalating inequality.32 The algebra of inequality This tension has been highlighted most notably by the French economist Thomas Piketty in his bestselling book Capital in the 21st Century, published to enormous and widespread acclaim six years after the financial crisis.33 The astonishing popularity of the ‘rock-star economist’ is itself a resounding testament to our abiding concern for inequality. But his painstaking analysis reveals an uncomfortable story for capitalism.

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The Little Big Number: How GDP Came to Rule the World and What to Do About It. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Pieters, Rik 2013. ‘Bidirectional dynamics of materialism and loneliness: not just a vicious cycle’. Journal of Consumer Research 40(4): 615–631. Piketty, Thomas 2014. Capital in the 21st Century. Harvard: Harvard University Press. Polanyi, Karl 1942. Great Transformation – The Political and Economic Origins of Our Time, reprinted 2002. Uckfield: Beacon Press. Porritt, Jonathon 2013. The World We Made: Alex McKay’s Story from 2050. London: Phaidon Press. Porritt, Jonathon 2005.

Rethinking Capitalism: Economics and Policy for Sustainable and Inclusive Growth
by Michael Jacobs and Mariana Mazzucato
Published 31 Jul 2016

Keynes, The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money, London, Macmillan, 2007 [1936]. 52 Shiller, Irrational Exuberance. 53 ‘I expect to see the State … taking an ever greater responsibility for directly organising investment … I conceive, therefore, that a somewhat comprehensive socialisation of investment will prove the only means of securing an approximation to full employment.’ J. M. Keynes, The Collected Writings of John Maynard Keynes, vol. 7, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1973, pp. 164, 378. 54 H.-J. Chang, Globalization, Economic Development and the Role of the State, London, Zed Books, 2002. 55 T. Piketty, Capital in the 21st Century, Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press, 2014. 56 A. Berg and J. D. Ostry, Inequality and Unsustainable Growth: Two Sides of the Same Coin?, International Monetary Fund Staff Discussion Note No. 11/08, April 2011, https://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/sdn/2011/sdn1108.pdf (accessed 12 April 2016); F.

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Corak, ‘Income inequality, equality of opportunity, and intergenerational mobility’, Journal of Economic Perspectives, vol. 27, no. 3, Summer 2013, pp. 79–102. 15 Ibid. 16 OECD Income and Poverty Statistics, http://stats.oecd.org/Index.aspx?DataSet-Code=IDD# (accessed 22 December 2015) . See also OECD, In It Together: Why Less Inequality Benefits All, Paris, OECD, 2015. 17 Piketty, T., Capital in the 21st Century, supplementary materials, Tables S9.2 and S10.1: piketty.pse.ens.fr/en/capital21c2, (accessed 14 April 2016). 18 The comparison is made using World Bank data. Some caution should be exercised in comparing different countries’ Gini coefficients: in addition to the well-known flaws in the measure, different databases have used slightly different methodologies or income data to arrive at their respective figures, and thus figures are different depending on the data source.

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The macroeconomic effects of public investment’, World Economic Outlook, October 2014, pp. 75–114, http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/weo/2014/02/pdf/c3.pdf (accessed 22 December 2015). Note that the balanced budget multiplier itself provides a framework in which governments can increase investment and stimulate the economy today, without incurring any increase in current deficits—but lowering future deficits and the debt/GDP ratio. 56 T. Piketty, Capital in the 21st Century, Cambridge, MA and London, Harvard University Press, 2014. 57 More precisely, these are the estimated costs (‘tax expenditures’) associated with these special provisions. See Congressional Budget Office, The Distribution of Major Tax Expenditures in the Individual Income Tax System, May 2013, p. 31, http://cbo.gov/sites/default/files/cbofiles/attachments/TaxExpenditures_One-Column.pdf (accessed 22 December 2015).

Equal Is Unfair: America's Misguided Fight Against Income Inequality
by Don Watkins and Yaron Brook
Published 28 Mar 2016

Stiglitz, “Equal Opportunity, Our National Myth,” New York Times, February 2013, http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/02/16/equal-opportunity-our-national-myth/ (accessed April 12, 2015). 3. Thomas Piketty, “Capital in the Twenty-First Century,” March 2014, http://piketty.pse.ens.fr/en/capital21c2 (accessed April 12, 2015). 4. On some of the problems with Piketty’s data on wealth inequality, see Phillip W. Magness and Robert P. Murphy, “Challenging the Empirical Contribution of Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century,” Journal of Private Enterprise, Spring 2015, http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2543012 (accessed April 12, 2015); Malin Sahlén and Salim Furth, “Piketty Is Misleading about the Swedish Case,” Timbro, November 7, 2014, http://timbro.se/en/samhallsekonomi/articles/piketty-is-misleading-about-the-swedish-case (accessed April 12, 2015); Phillip W.

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,” Policy Analysis, November 5, 2007, http://object.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/pubs/pdf/pa-603.pdf (accessed May 28, 2015). 60. Thomas Piketty, Capital in the Twenty-First Century (Cambridge, MA: Belknap, 2014), pp. 247–49. 61. Johnny Munkhammar, “The Swedish Model: It’s the Free-Market Reforms, Stupid!” Wall Street Journal, January 26, 2011, http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052748704698004576104023432243468 (accessed April 13, 2015). 62. Piketty, Capital in the Twenty-First Century, p. 246. Chapter 5 1. Joseph Stiglitz, “America Is No Longer a Land of Opportunity,” Financial Times, June 25, 2012, http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/2/56c7e518-bc8f-11e1-a111-00144feabdc0.html (accessed April 28, 2015). 2.

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Ferdinand Protzman, “East Germany’s Economy Far Sicker Than Expected,” New York Times, September 20, 1990, http://www.nytimes.com/1990/09/20/business/east-germany-s-economy-far-sicker-than-expected.html (accessed April 21, 2015). 46. Thomas Piketty interview with Russell Roberts, “Thomas Piketty on Inequality and Capital in the Twenty-First Century,” EconTalk, September 22, 2014, http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2014/09/thomas_piketty.html (accessed May 4, 2015). 47. See, for instance, John Cochrane, “Why and How We Care about Inequality,” The Grumpy Economist, September 29, 2014, http://johnhcochrane.blogspot.com/2014/09/why-and-how-we-care-about-inequality.html (accessed May 28, 2015), and Ayn Rand, “Egalitarianism and Inflation,” reprinted in Ayn Rand, Philosophy: Who Needs It (New York: Signet, 1984). 48.

Unsustainable Inequalities: Social Justice and the Environment
by Lucas Chancel
Published 15 Jan 2020

For a specific discussion of the US trajectory see Thomas Piketty, Emmanuel Saez, and Gabriel Zucman, “Distributional National Accounts: Methods and Estimates for the United States” (working paper no. 22945, National Bureau of Economic Research, December 2016), rev. version published in Quarterly Journal of Economics 133, no. 2 (2018): 553–609. 7. On the relation between capital and wealth, see Piketty, Capital in the Twenty-First Century, 47–49. 8. See particularly Alvaredo et al., World Inequality Report 2018, section 4. 9. For a detailed analysis see Piketty, Capital in the Twenty-First Century; Anthony B. Atkinson, Inequality: What Can Be Done?

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Nevertheless, there is every reason to suppose that it is in fact possible—for it is actually taking place now. PART ONE The Sources of Unsustainable Development 1 Economic Inequality as a Component of Unsustainability THE RESOUNDING success of French economist Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century, a massive work on the dynamics of inequality, marked a turning point in contemporary economic debate.1 The increase in inequalities of various kinds is now at the center of political debate as well. In 2013, Barack Obama called the rise in income inequality the “defining challenge of our time.”2 Institutions that had not previously been known for their egalitarian sympathies began to warn against the levels of inequality reached in both developed and developing countries.

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A future that will be both just and sustainable is not yet an impossibility. NOTES Introduction 1. The term social-ecological state was coined by the economist Éloi Laurent in his book Social-écologie (Paris: Flammarion, 2008). 1. Economic Inequality as a Component of Unsustainability 1. Thomas Piketty, Capital in the Twenty-First Century, trans. Arthur Goldhammer (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2014). 2. Barack Obama, “Remarks by the President on Economic Mobility,” December 4, 2013, https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/the-press-office/2013/12/04/remarks-president-economic-mobility. 3.

The Globotics Upheaval: Globalisation, Robotics and the Future of Work
by Richard Baldwin
Published 10 Jan 2019

They are now back at their 1970s starting point and seem stable. The causes of these varied changes in income equality are many and complex. While this has been a topic in seminar rooms for many years, it burst into the open with the 99 Percent movement; the Occupy Wall Street movement; and Thomas Piketty’s transformative 2013 book, Capital in the Twenty-First Century. The explanations range from government deregulation and the rise of monopoly capitalism to the decline of labor unions and skill-biased technology progress. Technology surely played a role. Many elements of the ICT impulse tended to boost income and wealth inequality.

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The income share of the top 5 percent dropped from 40 percent down to under 20 percent by the 1970s. Since then it’s been rising, but that’s a story for the next chapter. It is not easy to say exactly what causes these waves of inequality. It is the subject of much debate, as Thomas Piketty’s bestselling Capitalism in the 21st Century points out. By its very nature, inequality involves almost every aspect of the economic system—ranging from education, technology, and globalization to urbanization, voting rights, and imperialism. Most of these are interrelated. Figure 2.1 Income Inequality in the Great Transformation, 1688–2009.

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Lindert, “When Did Inequality Rise in Britain and America?,” Journal of Income Distribution 9 (2000): 11–25, and Anthony B. Atkinson, “The Distribution of Top Incomes in the United Kingdom 1908–2000,” in Top Incomes over the Twentieth Century: A Contrast between Continental European and English-Speaking Countries, ed. Anthony B. Atkinson and Thomas Piketty (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), ch. 4. 9. The data is from Robert C. Allen, “Engel’s Pause: A Pessimists Guide to the British Industrial Revolution,” Department of Economics Discussion Paper Series no. 315, University of Oxford, April 2007. 10. Quoted in Carl Wittke, “The German Forty-Eighters in America: A Centennial Appraisal.”

Good Economics for Hard Times: Better Answers to Our Biggest Problems
by Abhijit V. Banerjee and Esther Duflo
Published 12 Nov 2019

The Ones Without Principals Are,” Quarterly Journal of Economics 116, no. 3 (2001): 901–32. 57 Scharfstein and Greenwood showed that in most continental European countries the share of finance in the economy either did not grow much in the 1990s and 2000s, or it even declined. Robin Greenwood and David Scharfstein, “The Growth of Finance,” Journal of Economic Perspectives 27, no. 2 (2013): 3–28. 58 Thomas Piketty, Capital in the Twenty-First Century, trans. Arthur Goldhammer (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2014), 550–51, and Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman, “Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s Idea Is Not about Soaking the Rich,” accessed April 20, 2019, https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/22/opinion/ocasio-cortez-taxes.html. 59 Thomas Piketty, Emmanuel Saez, and Stefanie Stantcheva, “Optimal Taxation of Top Labor Incomes: A Tale of Three Elasticities,” American Economic Journal: Economic Policy 6, no. 1 (2014): 230–71. 60 Maury Brown, “It’s Time to Blowup the Salary Cap Systems in the NFL, NBA, and NHL,” Forbes, March 10, 2015, accessed April 11, 2019, https://www.forbes.com/sites/maurybrown/2015/03/10/its-time-to-blowup-the-salary-cap-systems-in-the-nfl-nba-and-nhl/#1e35ced969b3. 61 Our discussion in this section and the next draws heavily on the work of Thomas Piketty, Emmanuel Saez, and Gabriel Zucman.

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In their wonderfully refreshing book, Banerjee and Duflo delve into impressive areas of new research questioning conventional views about issues ranging from trade to top income taxation and mobility, and offer their own powerful vision of how we can grapple with them. A must-read.” —Thomas Piketty, professor, Paris School of Economics, and author of Capital in the Twenty-First Century “A magnificent achievement, and the perfect book for our time. Banerjee and Duflo brilliantly illuminate the largest issues of the day, including immigration, trade, climate change, and inequality. If you read one policy book this year—heck, this decade—read this one.”

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Doom: Debating the Future of the US Economy,” debate, Chicago Council of Global Affairs, October 31, 2016. 16 Alvin H. Hansen, “Economic Progress and Declining Population Growth,” American Economic Review 29, no. 1 (1939): 1–15. 17 Angus Maddison, Growth and Interaction in the World Economy: The Roots of Modernity (Washington, DC: AEI Press, 2005). 18 Thomas Piketty, Capital in the Twenty-First Century (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2013), 73, table 2.1. The data Piketty uses for long-term growth originally comes from Angus Maddison, and can be found on the Maddison project data base at https://www.rug.nl/ggdc/historical development/maddison/releases/maddison-project-database-2018. 19 For the interested reader who decides to peruse this literature, it will be useful to know that economists call well-being “welfare” (by which they are not referring to welfare programs).

Everyday Utopia: What 2,000 Years of Wild Experiments Can Teach Us About the Good Life
by Kristen R. Ghodsee
Published 16 May 2023

Alix Kates Shulman, freely available at the Anarchist Library, https://www.theanarchistlibrary.org/library/emma-goldman-socialism-caught-in-the-political-trap. 8 Karl Mannheim, Ideology and Utopia: An Introduction to the Sociology of Knowledge (1936; New York: Martin, 2015): 341–43. 9 William Samuelson and Richard Zeckhauser, “Status Quo Bias in Decision-Making,” Journal of Risk and Uncertainty 1, no. 1 (February 1988): 7–59. 10 Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky, “The Psychology of Preferences,” Scientific American 246, no. 1 (January 1982): 160–73. 11 Scott Timberg, “The Novel That Predicted Portland,” New York Times, December 12, 2008, https://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/14/fashion/14ecotopia.html. 12 Mannheim, Ideology and Utopia, 232–33. 13 Thomas Piketty, Capital in the 21st Century (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2013). 14 Rutger Bregman, Utopia for Realists: How We can Build the Ideal World (New York: Little, Brown, 2017). 15 Wade Davis, “Keynote Speech: The Ethnosphere and the Academy,” 2014, https://www.wheretherebedragons.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/DavisEthnosphereAcademy.pdf. 16 For the full text and a video of the 1997 Apple “Think Different” ad, see: http://www.thecrazyones.it/spot-en.html. 17 See the website of the Center for Climate Repair at Cambridge University: https://www.climaterepair.cam.ac.uk. 18 Fred Pearce, “Geoengineer the Planet?

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Project Gutenberg, https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/3261. Piercy, Marge. Woman on the Edge of Time: A Novel. New York: Ballantine Books, 1997. Piketty, Thomas. A Brief History of Equality. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2022. ———. Capital and Ideology. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2020. ———. Capital in the Twenty-First Century. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2014. Plato. The Republic. Project Gutenberg, https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1497. Shaer, Roland, Gregory Claeys, and Lyman Tower Sargent, eds. Utopia: The Search for the Ideal Society in the Western World. New York: Oxford University Press and the New York Public Library, 2000.

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It may even be necessary for our collective survival. Asteroid Miners and Aspiring Immortals In the last decade, a growing number of future-positive books have suggested political and economic changes that might seem far-fetched, but are increasingly debated as real possibilities. The French economist Thomas Piketty has called for a progressive supranational wealth tax to combat income inequality.13 The Dutch journalist Rutger Bregman has promoted several utopian visions “for realists,” including open borders and a fifteen-hour workweek.14 In Abundance: The Future is Better Than You Think, Greek-American engineer Peter Diamandis (founder of XPRIZE, which rewards inventors for technological developments that benefit humanity) and science journalist Steven Kotler look to the wonders of artificial intelligence and advances in robotics to propose technological solutions to problems like food scarcity, aging populations, and climate change.

The Limits of the Market: The Pendulum Between Government and Market
by Paul de Grauwe and Anna Asbury
Published 12 Mar 2017

The Love of Money, and the Case for the Good Life (London: Allen Lane, ). . Facundo Alvaredo, Tony Atkinson, Thomas Piketty, Emmanuel Saez, and Gabriel Zucman, The World Wealth and Income Database (WID), <http://www. wid.world>, and Tony Atkinson and Salvatore Morelli, The Chartbook of Income  NO TE S . . . . . . . . . . . Inequality, VoxEU (), <http://www.voxeu.org/article/chartbook-economicinequality>. See Raghuram G. Rajan and Luigi Zingales, Saving Capitalism from the Capitalists (New York: Crown Business, ), and Thomas Piketty, Capital in the Twenty-First Century, trans. Arthur Goldhammer (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, ).

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Milton Friedman and Anna Jacobson Schwartz, A Monetary History of the United States, – (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, ). Thomas Piketty, Le capital au XXIe siècle (Paris: Editions du Seuil, ); Eng. Capital in the Twenty-First Century, trans. Arthur Goldhammer (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, ). Odran Bonnet, Pierre-Henri Bono, Guillaume Camille Chapelle, and Étienne Wasmer, ‘Capital is not back: A comment on Thomas Piketty’s “Capital in the st Century” ’, VoxEU ( June ), <http://www.voxeu.org/article/ housing-capital-and-piketty-s-analysis>. Paul De Grauwe and Yuemei Ji, ‘Panic-driven austerity in the Eurozone and its implications’, VoxEU ( February ), <http://www.voxeu.org/article/panicdriven-austerity-eurozone-and-its-implications>.  INDEX Note: text within tables, figures, and boxes is indicated by t, f, and b following the page number.

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This has led Robert Solow, the great American economist who won the Nobel Prize for his contribution to the theory of economic growth, to the conclusion that the new technologies are visible everywhere except in productivity growth statistics. We see a similar trend in other developed countries, including those of the EU, as represented in Figure .. This is based on Thomas Piketty’s authoritative book Capital in the Twenty-First Century, which I will discuss in Chapter . Figure . shows the development of production per capita since the industrial revolution. These figures are not directly comparable with those of Figure ., showing production per hour, which is a better measure of productivity.

The Globalization of Inequality
by François Bourguignon
Published 1 Aug 2012

During the last few years, rising inequality in certain countries, notably the United States, has been the subject of or inspiration for several major books—among which it would be difficult to overstate the importance of two recent books by Joseph Stiglitz and Thomas Piketty, the success of which is a clear sign of the mounting public interest in the issue of inequality.2 While few books address global income inequality directly, with the exception of Branko Milanovic’s Worlds Apart,3 many have analyzed inequalities in development between 2 Joseph Stiglitz, The Price of Inequality: How Today’s Divided Society Endangers Our Future (New York: Norton, 2012); Thomas Piketty, Capital in the Twenty-­First Century (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2013). 3 Branko Milanovic, Worlds Apart, Measuring International and Global Inequality (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005). 

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For example, lawyers who take part in litigation involving large sums of money will often be compensated directly in proportion to 10 Carola Frydman and Raven Saks, “Executive Compensation: A New View from a Long-­Term Perspective, 1936–2005,” Review of Financial Studies 23, no. 5 (2010): 2099–2138. In Capital in the Twenty-­First Century, Thomas Piketty relates the explosion in top executives’ pay to the drop in top marginal income tax rates in the 1980s, the argument being that it was not worth negotiating a high level of compensation when 70% would go to the state. I’ll return to the tax issue later. 90 Chapter 3 the sums in question.

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But there are also non-­monetary forms of inequality—some of which can be measured and some of which cannot—that are also socially and economically significant from the point of view of both social justice and the perity in India and China prior to 2002 was estimated by Sanjay Ruparelia et al., Growth, Reforms and Inequality: India and China Since the 1980s, APSA 2010 Annual Meeting Paper, 2010. 11 Piketty, Capital in the Twenty-­First Century. Are Countries Becoming More Unequal?61 ception that the public may have of the equity of the economy. This is the case, in particular, of the inequality of opportunities. Two individuals or two families whose economic standards of living, measured by income or consumer spending are identical, will not necessarily feel “equal” or be considered equal in the eyes of an observer.

The Coming of Neo-Feudalism: A Warning to the Global Middle Class
by Joel Kotkin
Published 11 May 2020

New York Times, August 5, 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/05/opinion/sunday/when-will-the-tech-bubble-burst.html. 8 Kevin Starr, Coast of Dreams: California on the Edge, 1990–2003 (New York: Knopf, 2004), 271–75. 9 Scott Galloway, “Silicon Valley’s Tax-Avoiding, Job-Killing, Soul-Sucking Machine,” Esquire, February 8, 2018, http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a15895746/bust-big-tech-silicon-valley/. 10 Shira Ovide, “Big Tech Has Dug a Moat That Rivals and Regulators Can’t Cross,” Yahoo, July 5, 2019, https://finance.yahoo.com/news/big-tech-dug 11 Thomas Piketty, Capital in the Twenty-First Century, trans. Arthur Goldhammer (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap/Harvard, 2014), 174; “Richest people in the world,” CBS News, https://www.cbsnews.com/pictures/richest-people-in-world-forbes/12/. 12 Carter Coudriet, “13 Under 40: Here Are The Youngest Billionaires On The Forbes 400 2019,” Forbes, October 31, 2019, https://www.forbes.com/sites/cartercoudriet/2019/10/02/forbes-400-youngest-under-40-zuckerberg-spiegel/#7fd35f5a5a0e. 13 Sally French, “China has 9 of the world’s 20 biggest companies,” Market Watch, May 31, 2018, https://www.marketwatch.com/story/china-has-9-of-the-worlds-20-biggest-tech-companies-2018-05-31. 14 Farhad Manjoo, “Tech’s ‘Frightful 5’ Will Dominate Digital Life for Foreseeable Future,” New York Times, January 20, 2016, https://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/21/technology/techs-frightful-5-will-dominate-digital-life-for-foreseeable-future.html; Dana Mattioli, “Takeovers Roar to Life as Companies Hear Footsteps From Tech Giants,” Wall Street Journal, November 20, 2017, https://www.wsj.com/articles/takeovers-roar-to-life-as-companies-hear-footsteps-from-tech-giants-1511200327. 15 “Why startups are leaving Silicon Valley,” Economist, August 30, 2018, https://www.economist.com/leaders/2018/08/30/why-startups-are-leaving-silicon-valley; Rex Crum, “Let’s make a deal: SV150 firms spent $41 billion on acquisitions in 2016,” Mercury News, May 1, 2017, https://www.mercurynews.com/2017/05/01/lets-make-a-deal-acquisitions-were-all-over-the-sv150-in-2016/; “Too much of a good thing,” Economist, March 26, 2016, https://www.economist.com/brieing/2016/03/26/too-much-of-a-good-thing. 16 Christopher Mims, “Why Free Is Too High a Price for Facebook and Google,” Wall Street Journal, June 8, 2019, https://www.wsj.com/articles/why-free-is-too-high-a-price-for-facebook-and-google-11559966411; Andy Kessler, “Antitrust Can’t Catch Big Tech,” Wall Street Journal, September 14, 2019, https://www.wsj.com/articles/antitrust-cant-catch-big-tech-11568577387; David Dayen, “Trump’s Antitrust Cops Fail to Police Big Business—Again,” American Prospect, July 24, 2019, https://prospect.org/power/trump-s-antitrust-cops-fail-police-big-business-again/; Andrew Orlowski, “Google had Obama’s ear during antitrust probe,” Register, August 18, 2016, https://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/08/18/google_had_obamas_ear_on_antitrust_probe/. 17 Bryan Clark, “Facebook’s new ‘early bird’ spy tool is just tip of the iceberg,” Next Web, August 10, 2017, https://thenextweb.com/insider/2017/08/10/facebooks-new-early-bird-spy-tool-is-just-the-tip-of-the-iceberg/#; Betsy Morris and Deepa Seetharaman, “The New Copycats: How Facebook Squashes Competition from Startups,” Wall Street Journal, August 9, 2017, https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-new-copycats-how-facebook-squashes-competition-from-startups-1502293444. 18 Crunchbase, Google Acquisitions, updated January 15, 2020, https://wwwcrunchbase.com/organization/google/acquisitions/acquisitions_list#section-acquisitions; Ben Popper, “Failure is a feature: how Google stays sharp gobbling up startups,” The Verge, September 17, 2012, https://www.theverge.com/2012/9/17/3322854/google-startup-mergers-acquisitions-failure-is-a-feature; Tim Wu and Stuart A.

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CNN, May 6, 2017, https://money.cnn.com/2017/05/26/news/economy/mark-zuckerberg-universal-basic-income/index.html; Chris Weller, “Elon Musk doubles down on universal basic income: ‘It’s going to be necessary,’” Business Insider, February 13, 2017, https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-universal-basic-income-2017-2; Patrick Caughill, “Another Silicon Valley Exec Joins the Ranks of Universal Basic Income Supporters,” Futurism, September 8, 2017, https://futurism.com/another-silicon-valley-exec-joins-the-ranks-of-universal-basic-income-supporters; Sam Altman, “Moving Forward on Basic Income,” Y Combinator, May 31, 2016, https://blog.ycombinator.com/moving-forward-on-basic-income/; Diane Francis, “The Beginning of the End of Work,” American Interest, March 19, 2018, https://www.the-american-interest.com/2018/03/19/beginning-end-work/. 14 “The YIMBY Guide to Bullying and Its Results: SB 827 Goes Down in Committee,” City Watch LA, April 19, 2018, https://www.citywatchla.com/index.php/los-angeles/15298-the-yimby-guide-to-bullying-and-its-results-sb-827-goes-down-in-committee; John Mirisch, “Tech Oligarchs and the California Housing Crisis,” California Political Review, April 15, 2018, http://www.capoliticalreview.com/top-stories/tech-Oligarchs-and-the-california-housing-crisis/; Joel Kotkin, “Giving Common Sense a Chance in California,” City Journal, April 26, 2018, https://www.city-journal.org/html/giving-common-sense-chance-california-15868.html. 15 Thomas Piketty, Capital in the Twenty-First Century, trans. Arthur Goldhammer (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap/Harvard, 2014), 85. 16 VanderMey, “Why Are Young Billionaires So Boring?” 17 Fernand Braudel, The Structures of Everyday Life, vol. 1 of Civilization and Capitalism, 15th–18th Century, trans. Sian Reynolds, (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992), 334. 18 Laura Sydell, “In Google’s Vision of the Future, Computing is Immersive,” NPR, May 20, 2017, https://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2017/05/20/529146185/in-googles-vision-of-the-future-computing-is-immersive. 19 Jason Pontin, “Silicon Valley’s Immortalists Will Help Us All Stay Healthy,” Wired, December 15, 2017, https://www.wired.com/story/silicon-valleys-immortalists-will-help-us-all-stay-healthy/; Dom Galeon and Christianna Reedy, “A Google Exec Just Claimed the Singularity Will Happen by 2029,” Science Alert, March 16, 2017, https://www.sciencealert.com/google-s-director-of-engineering-claims-that-the-singularity-will-happen-by-2029. 20 Alvin Toffler, The Third Wave (New York: Bantam, 1980), 158–59; Kevin Carty, “Tech giants are the robber barons of our time,” New York Post, February 3, 2018, https://nypost.com/2018/02/03/big-techs-monopolistic-rule-is-hiding-in-plain-sight/; Jia Tolentino, “The End of the Awl and the Vanishing of Freedom and Fun from the Internet,” New Yorker, January 18, 2018, https://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/the-end-of-the-awl-and-the-vanishing-of-freedom-and-fun-from-the-internet; Andrew Orlowski, “Google, propaganda, and the new New Man,” Register, September 4, 2017, https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/09/04/google_propaganda_and_the_new_new_man; Aaron Renn, “How Apple and Google Are Censoring the Mobile Web,” Real Clear Politics, August 24, 2017, https://www.realclearpolitics.com/2017/08/24/how_apple_and_google_are_censoring_the_mobile_web_419092.html; Kenneth P.

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Cantor, Medieval History: The Life and Death of a Civilization (New York: Macmillan, 1963), 50–51, 69–70, 97, 101. 5 Pitirim Sorokin, The Crisis of Our Age (London: Oneworld Publication, 1992), 20–21, 67–69, 81. 6 Adam K. Webb, “Class and Clerisy,” Front Porch Republic, October 19, 2010, https://www.frontporchrepublic.com/2010/10/class-and-Clerisy. 7 Max Weber, Economy and Society (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978), vol. 1: xcviii; Thomas Piketty, Capital in the Twenty-First Century, trans. Arthur Goldhammer (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap/Harvard, 2014), 345. 8 Barbara Tuchman, The March of Folly: From Troy to Vietnam (New York: Ballantine, 1984), 6–7; John Hale, The Civilization of Europe in the Renaissance (New York: Touchstone, 1993), 413–19. 9 H. G. Wells, Anticipations of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress Upon Human Life and Thought (1901; Mineola, N.Y.: Dover Books, 1999), 85–87, 99, 151; Fred Siegel, The Revolt Against the Masses: How Liberalism Has Undermined the Middle Class (New York: Encounter, 2015), 100. 10 Peter Bachrach, The Theory of Democratic Elitism (Boston: Little Brown & Co., 1967), 58–60; Arthur Herman, The Idea of Decline in Western History (New York: Free Press, 1997), 17; Talcott Parsons, “The Distribution of Power in American Society,” in The Power Elite, ed.

The Scandal of Money
by George Gilder
Published 23 Feb 2016

Across the Atlantic, in France and the United Kingdom, influential people have noticed the hypertrophy of finance and called for a new economic theory. Several candidates offer policy breakthroughs intended to be as far reaching as the New Deal that supposedly ended the Great Depression. We have already met the Frenchman Thomas Piketty, that cherubic scourge of wealth, bearing credentials from Harvard and MIT, electrifying the crowds with Capital in the Twenty-First Century and its new “laws of capitalism.”1 Piketty warns that a society that stops growing will grow fat on finance and real estate. The accumulated overhang of capital and inheritance will overwhelm the future as entrepreneurs become mere rentiers of old wealth.

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Since everyone refused the offer, Summers concludes that, adjusted for quality, healthcare has not risen in price. Thus productivity in healthcare has improved far more than the measured gains. See also Bret Swanson, “Moore’s Law and the Productivity Paradox,” AEIdeas (blog), November 25, 2015, https://www.aei.org/publication/moores-law-and-the-productivity-paradox/. 4.Thomas Piketty, Capital in the Twenty-First Century (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University, Belknap Press, 2014). 5.Ta-Nehisi Coates, Between the World and Me (New York, NY: Spiegel and Grau, 2015). See also Kyle Smith, “The Hard Untruths of Ta-Nehisi Coates: A Bestselling Polemic Riven with Hatred Thrills the Liberal Elite,” Commentary, October 2015, pp. 20–25. 6.Yuval Levin, “The Mobility Crisis,” Commentary, March 2015, pp. 12–20. 7.Kwasi Kwarteng, War and Gold: A 500-Year History of Empires, Adventures, and Debt (New York, NY: PublicAffairs, 2014), 219–20. 8.Peter Thiel with Blake Masters, Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future (New York, NY: Crown Business, 2014), 5–11 and passim.

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(London: The Institute of Economic Affairs, 1990). 5.Ametrano, “Hayek Money,” 20. 6.Ametrano, presentation to the Central Bank of Italy, June 9, 2014. 7.George Gilder, Telecosm: The World after Bandwidth Abundance (New York, NY: Simon & Schuster, 2002). 8.Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, “Current FAQs: Informing the Public about the Federal Reserve,” http://www.federalreserve.gov/faqs/faq.htm. 9.Richard Vigilante, personal communication. 10.Hayek, “A Free-Market Monetary System,” lecture at the Gold and Monetary Conference, New Orleans, LA, November 10, 1977, Journal of Libertarian Studies 3, no. 1. 11.Satoshi Nakamoto, “Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System,” Bitcoin.org, 2008. 12.George Sammon, speech to CoinAgenda, Las Vegas, October 2014. CHAPTER 9: THE PIKETTY-TURNER THESIS 1.Thomas Piketty, Capital in the Twenty-First Century (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University, Belknap Press, 2014). 2.“The Scandal of Money,” chapter 12 in George Gilder, Knowledge and Power: The Information Theory of Capitalism and How It Is Revolutionizing Our World (Washington, DC: Regnery Publishing, 2013), 113–23. 3.Adair Turner, Between Debt and the Devil: Money, Credit, and Fixing Global Finance (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2016). 4.Joseph E.

The Hidden Wealth of Nations: The Scourge of Tax Havens
by Gabriel Zucman , Teresa Lavender Fagan and Thomas Piketty
Published 21 Sep 2015

Tax authorities can verify that taxpayers indeed declare all the financial securities included in the register. Source: Depository Trust Company (USA). A Tax on Capital The world financial register is intimately linked to the proposal for a global wealth tax made by Thomas Piketty in Capital in the Twenty-First Century. This proposal has generated a heated controversy, and I don’t want to repeat it here. Quite simply, let’s assume that a tax on wealth might turn out to be desirable in certain places, at certain times, if wealth concentration was to reach extreme levels above which inequality harms growth, innovation, or the well functioning of our democratic institutions.

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Index Africa, 31, 32–33, 53 Amazon, 104 Apple, 1, 104 arm’s-length pricing, 103 Austria, 69, 70 automatic exchange of data: EU savings tax directive and, 68, 69; FATCA and, 64–65, 66, 73–74; first international treaty for, 59; on inheritances in France, 57–59; progress toward a global system, 64–65; to end tax fraud, 5 Bahamas, 23, 35, 71, 85 Bank for International Settlements (BIS), 39 bank note wealth, 43 Bergier, Jean-François, 13 Bergier commission, 13, 15, 16, 20 Bermuda, 4, 103, 104, 105, 107, 109, 111 Birkenfeld, Bradley, 68 Bretton Woods, 23 British Virgin Islands, 1, 26, 28, 31, 33, 43, 45, 73, 77 BSI, 67 Cahuzac, Jérôme, 62 Caillaux, Joseph, 57, 58 Canada, 21, 53, 85 Capital in the Twenty-First Century (Piketty), 98 Cayman Islands: dominance in hedge funds, 27; financial wealth held in tax havens, 35; role in routine tax fraud, 10–11; role in world’s asset/liability imbalance, 38; trust registration in, 28 Clearstream, 4, 94–95 Common Consolidated Corporate Tax Base (CCCTB), 112 Congress of Vienna (1815), 9 Convention IV, 21 cost of offshore tax evasion.

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The Hidden Wealth of Nations The Hidden Wealth of Nations The Scourge of Tax Havens Gabriel Zucman Translated by Teresa Lavender Fagan With a Foreword by Thomas Piketty The University of Chicago Press Chicago and London GABRIEL ZUCMAN is assistant professor at the London school of economics. The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 60637 The University of Chicago Press, Ltd., London © 2015 by The University of Chicago Foreword © 2015 by Thomas Piketty All rights reserved. Published 2015. Printed in the United States of America 24 23 22 21 20 19 18 17 16 15 1 2 3 4 5 ISBN-13: 978-0-226-24542-3 (cloth) ISBN-13: 978-0-226-24556-0 (e-book) DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226245560.001.0001 Originally published as La richesse cachée des nations: Enquête sur les paradis fiscaux © Editions du Seuil et la République des Idées, 2013 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Zucman, Gabriel, author.

Capital in the Twenty-First Century
by Thomas Piketty
Published 10 Mar 2014

Capital in the Twenty-First Century CAPITAL IN THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY Thomas Piketty Translated by Arthur Goldhammer The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS LONDON, ENGLAND 2014 Copyright © 2014 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College All rights reserved First published as Le capital au XXI siècle, copyright © 2013 Éditions du Seuil Design by Dean Bornstein Jacket design by Graciela Galup The Library of Congress has cataloged the printed edition as follows Piketty, Thomas, 1971– [Capital au XXIe siècle. English] Capital in the twenty-first century / Thomas Piketty ; translated by Arthur Goldhammer.

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English] Capital in the twenty-first century / Thomas Piketty ; translated by Arthur Goldhammer. pages cm Translation of the author’s Le capital au XXIe siècle. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-674-43000-6 (alk. paper) 1. Capital. 2. Income distribution. 3. Wealth. 4. Labor economics. I. Goldhammer, Arthur, translator. II. Title. HB501.P43613 2014 332'.041—dc23 2013036024 Contents Acknowledgments Introduction Part One: Income and Capital 1. Income and Output 2. Growth: Illusions and Realities Part Two: The Dynamics of the Capital/Income Ratio 3. The Metamorphoses of Capital 4.

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The Capital-Labor Split in the Twenty-First Century Part Three: The Structure of Inequality 7. Inequality and Concentration: Preliminary Bearings 8. Two Worlds 9. Inequality of Labor Income 10. Inequality of Capital Ownership 11. Merit and Inheritance in the Long Run 12. Global Inequality of Wealth in the Twenty-First Century Part Four: Regulating Capital in the Twenty-First Century 13. A Social State for the Twenty-First Century 14. Rethinking the Progressive Income Tax 15. A Global Tax on Capital 16. The Question of the Public Debt Conclusion Notes Contents in Detail List of Tables and Illustrations Index Acknowledgments This book is based on fifteen years of research (1998–2013) devoted essentially to understanding the historical dynamics of wealth and income.

The Divide: A Brief Guide to Global Inequality and Its Solutions
by Jason Hickel
Published 3 May 2017

Crush et al., South Africa’s Labor Empire: A History of Black Migrancy to the Gold Mines (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1991). 50 ‘From the late 15th …’ I am indebted to Naomi Klein for the concept of the sacrifice zone. 51 ‘By contrast, incomes in Western …’ Ha-Joon Chang, Bad Samaritans (New York: Bloomsbury Press, 2008), p. 25. 52 ‘At the end of this …’ Thomas Piketty, Capital in the 21st Century (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2014), p. 69. 53 ‘This agenda became particularly clear …’ The Roosevelt Corollary was initially established to allow the US to respond militarily if Europeans invaded Latin America, which happened in 1902 when Britain, Germany and Italy blockaded Venezuela to demand debt repayment. 54 ‘The first was that the …’ One reason for this is that manufactured commodities have greater ‘elasticity of demand’, meaning that their prices rise as incomes rise.

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If we use the Maddison Project data, the figures are slightly different: 6.3:1 in 1800 to 31.8 in 1960. 58 ‘That is twice the amount …’ Samir Amin, Unequal Development (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1976), p. 144. Four: From Colonialism to the Coup 1  ‘In 1910, the richest …’ Thomas Piketty, Capital in the 21st Century (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2014), p. 349. During this period (between 1870 and 1910), aggregate private wealth was six to seven years of national income in Europe (Piketty, p. 26). In the United States, this era saw the rise of powerful industrialists and financiers – John Rockefeller, Andrew Mellon, Andrew Carnegie, Cornelius Vanderbilt and J.

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Nonetheless, the two men continued to propagate their ideas, hoping they would eventually take hold. In 1947, they formed the Mont Pèlerin Society along with others who shared their ideology. It was a club of free-market economists, named for its location in the elite Swiss resort town, established to push these ideas as urgently as possible into the public sphere. Source: Thomas Piketty’s data on www.quandl.com34 By 1950, both Hayek and Friedman had accepted posts in the economics department at the University of Chicago, which soon became a hub for the liberal revival in economics. Friedman, as head of the department, pursued his ideas with a kind of activist fervour. He believed in the vision of a totally pure market, and held that the economy should be returned to its ‘natural’ state, prior to what he saw as the distortions of human intervention.

99%: Mass Impoverishment and How We Can End It
by Mark Thomas
Published 7 Aug 2019

C., Pessimism Preserved: Real wages in the British Industrial Revolution, 2007 24 Schwab, 2015 25 Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2015 26 Frey & Osborne, 2013 27 Faroohar, 2018 28 Manyika, et al., 2017 29 Heath, 2018 30 Cowen, 2013 31 Murphey, 1999 Chapter 6: Wealth, Power and Freedom 1 Chaggaris, 2012 2 Churchill, 1947 3 Piketty, Capital in the 21st century, 2014 4 Stein, 2006 5 Humanities Texas, 1963 6 Rucker, 2008 7 Lawler, 2015 8 Lewis S. , 2013 9 Jones, The Establishment, 2014 10 Swinford, 2014 11 Supreme Court of the United States, 2010 12 Greenhouse, 2012 13 NASA, 2016 14 Ipsos MORI, 2014 15 Brulle, 2013 16 Fischer, 2013 17 Mayer, 2016 18 Jones, The Establishment, 2014 19 Rosenberg, 2018 20 Supreme Court of the United States, 2010 21 Roosevelt, Franklin D., State Of The Union Address, 1941 22 Berlin, 2018 23 OECD, 2010 24 Office for National Statistics, 2015 25 Wolff, 2012 26 The Economist, 2014 27 Stein, 2006 28 Bigman, 2015 29 Tudor Jones, 2015 30 Soros, George, ‘Billionaire George Soros: I Should Pay More In Taxes’, ThinkProgress, 13 February 2012 31 Freeland, 2014 Chapter 7: Eight Scenarios 1 Bank of England, 2016 2 Allen, Monaghan, & Inman , 2017 3 Thomas N. , 2016 4 Corlett, Finch, Gardiner, & Whittaker, 2016 5 Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, 2017 Part 2: Why We Don’t Act 1 Alston, 2018 Chapter 8: Going Post-Fact 1 Moynihan, n.d. 2 Noble & Lockett, 2016 3 Goebbels, 1928 4 History.com, 2009 5 ONS, 2015 6 Political Science Resources, 2016 7 The Conservative Party Archive / Getty, 2009 8 Godley, Seven unsustainable processes, 1999 9 Baker, 2002 10 Rodrik, 1997 11 Greenspan, 2008 12 Alford, 2010 13 King, 2003 14 Brown, 1999 15 BBC, 2009 16 Bernanke, 2007 17 Greenspan, 2008 18 Cassidy, 2010 19 Wallace, 2015 20 Goff & Parker, 2011 21 Connolly, 2016 22 Pariser, 2011 23 Kuchler, 2016 24 BBC, 2016 25 Dilnot, 2016 26 OECD, 2014 27 Nickell & Saleheen, 2015 28 Lewis H. , 2016 29 Benton, 2016 30 Boczkowski, 2016 31 Carney, Mark, ‘Keeping the patient alive: Monetary policy in a time of great disruption’, World Economic Forum, 6 December 2016 32 Agerholm, 2016 33 BBC, 2016 34 Harris & Eddy, 2016 35 Spiegelhalter, 2016 36 Harris & Eddy, 2016 37 Phys.org 2016 38 Yeats, 1920 39 Suskind, 2004 40 Nyhan & Reifler, 2006 Chapter 9: Myths and Metaphors 1 Popper, 1953 2 OECD, 2019 3 Library of Congress, 2015 4 OECD, 2010 5 Cowen, 2013 6 Blanchard & Leigh, Growth Forecast Errors and Fiscal Multipliers, 2013 7 Batini, Eyraud, & Weber, 2014 8 Cameron, Economy: There is no alternative TINA is back, 2013 9 Bank of England, 2015 10 Sky News, 2009 11 McLeay, Radia, & Thomas, 2014 12 Merkel, 2008 13 Federal Reserve Bank of St Louis, 2019 14 Office for National Statistics, 2016 15 Bennett, 2016 16 Rothwell, 2014 17 Payscale.com 2018 18 Smith, 1776 19 Chang, 2010 20 Hughes, 2017 21 Say, 1821 22 Kumar, 2015 23 Nalebuff & Bradenburger, 1996 24 Edward S.

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Figure 20: How wealth and power reinforce each other The top part of the diagram illustrates these dynamics and shows that there are two critical self-reinforcing chains of cause and effect. These dynamics – although they are self-reinforcing and tend to lead to the phenomenon of the rich getting richer faster than the poor can hope to – do not pose any direct threat to democracy. The extent to which they are self-reinforcing can be seen in the chart below, from the work of Thomas Piketty who, as part of his research for his book Capital, looked at returns achieved by university endowment funds and discovered the strikingly different rates of return on capital available to those with different – though in all cases considerable – amounts of capital to invest. Figure 21: Impact of wealth on rates of return Endowments Number of universities Average real rate of return Harvard, Yale and Princeton (higher than US$10 billion) 3 10.2% Endowments higher than US$1 billion 60 8.8% Endowments between US$500m and US$1 billion 66 7.8% Endowments between US$100m and US$500m 226 7.1% Endowments less than US$100m 498 6.2% Source: Piketty3 The bottom part of the diagram in Figure 20 is perhaps less obvious and is where the challenges to the democratic ideal arise.

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And internationally, the OECD, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the United Nations have done the same. Of course, these standardized datasets cannot tell the full story – in particular about extremes of wealth and poverty – but researchers around the world have worked painstakingly to plug the gaps. I am particularly grateful to Facundo Alvaredo, Anthony Atkinson, Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez for permission to cite their ground-breaking work on the World Top Incomes Database (now replaced by the World Inequality Database); Nick Balstone for his geographically accurate map of the London tube system; Jeanne Brooks-Gunn and Greg Duncan for their painstaking study into the practical impact of poverty on children; the Centre for Research in Social Policy for its calculations on the minimum income required for a normal life; Christopher Chantril for his data on UK public spending; Credit Suisse for their international survey of wealth; Forbes Magazine for their list of the world’s richest; Carl Benedikt Frey and Michael A.

The Upside of Inequality
by Edward Conard
Published 1 Sep 2016

Ironically, their solutions make matters worse for the very people they are intended to help. In the long run, they slow middle- and working-class employment and wage growth. Evidence Shows the 0.1 Percent Earned, Not Unfairly Negotiated, Their Pay Thomas Piketty has spearheaded the attacks on individuals who comprise the 0.1 percent by insisting their growing success is unearned. In his book Capital in the Twenty-First Century, Piketty rejects claims that income inequality results from skill-biased technological change, globalization, low-skilled immigration, or growing returns to skill that have driven up the pay of the most successful Americans.

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Driving Population Growth and Change Through 2065,” September 28, 2015, http://www.pewhispanic.org/files/2015/09/2015-09-28_modern-immigration-wave_REPORT.pdf. Chapter 1: The Causes of Growing Inequality 1. Joseph Stiglitz, Rewriting the Rules of the American Economy (New York: W. W. Norton, 2015). 2. Martin Ford, Rise of the Robots: Technology and the Threat of a Jobless Future (New York: Basic Books, 2015). 3. Thomas Piketty, Capital in the Twenty-First Century (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2013). 4. Alyssa Davis and Lawrence Mishel, “CEO Pay Continues to Rise as Typical Workers Are Paid Less,” Economic Policy Institute, June 12, 2014, http://www.epi.org/publication/ceo-pay-continues-to-rise. 5. Bruce Greenwald and Judd Kahn Globalization: n.

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Chapter 3: The Myth That Incentives Don’t Matter 1. Peter Diamond and Emmanuel Saez, “The Case for a Progressive Tax: From Basic Research to Policy Recommendations,” Journal of Economic Perspectives 25, no. 4 (2011): 165–90, http://eml.berkeley.edu/~saez/diamond-saezJEP11opttax.pdf. 2. Thomas Piketty, Capital in the Twenty-First Century (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2013). 3. Lawrence Summers, “U.S. Economic Prospects: Secular Stagnation, Hysteresis, and the Zero Lower Bound,” Business Economics 49, no. 2 (February 24, 2014), http://larrysummers.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/NABE-speech-Lawrence-H.

A World Without Work: Technology, Automation, and How We Should Respond
by Daniel Susskind
Published 14 Jan 2020

Robert Gordon, The Rise and Fall of American Growth (Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2017). 77.  In eighty-seven years’ time because 100 × 1.00887 = 200.01, to two decimal places. If the United States were to return to the 2.41 percent growth rate, the same doubling of wealth would take just twenty-nine years: 100 × 1.024129 = 199.50. Thomas Piketty makes a similar point in Capital in the Twenty-First Century (London: Harvard University Press, 2014), p. 5, noting that “the right way to look at the problem is once again in generational terms. Over a period of thirty years, a growth rate of 1 percent per year corresponds to cumulative growth of more than 35 percent. A growth rate of 1.5 percent per year corresponds to cumulative growth of more than 50 percent.

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There are very few exceptions to this…” 11.  See, for instance, Piketty, Capital in the Twenty-First Century, p. 266. 12.  These are post-tax and transfer Gini coefficients for 2017, or latest available year. This is an updated version of Figure 1.3 in OECD, “In It Together: Why Less Inequality Benefits All” (2015), using OECD (2019) data; http://www.oecd.org/social/income-distribution-database.htm (accessed April 2019). 13.  John Rawls, A Theory of Justice (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999), p. 266. 14.  These are pre-tax income, from Appendix Data FS40 in Thomas Piketty, Emmanuel Saez, and Gabriel Zucman, “Distribution National Accounts: Methods and Estimates for the United States,” Quarterly Journal of Economics 133, no. 2 (2018): 553–609.

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Alibaba and Amazon are nominally classified in the “consumer services” category, but both are better thought of as technology companies instead. 41.  Piketty, Capital in the Twenty-First Century, p. 244. 42.  Melanie Kramers, “Eight People Own Same Wealth as Half the World,” Oxfam press release, 16 January 2017. 43.  “Are Eight Men as Wealthy as Half the World’s Population?,” Economist, 19 January 2017. 44.  Dabla-Norris, Kochhar, Ricka, et al., “Causes and Consequences of Income Inequality,” p. 16. 45.  Here, “richest” is “richest in wealth”; see Piketty, Capital in the Twenty-First Century, table 7.2, pp. 248–49 and 257. 46.  Ibid., p. 257. 47.  Joseph Stiglitz, “Inequality and Economic Growth,” Political Quarterly 86, no. 1 (2016): 134–55. 48.  

Money and Government: The Past and Future of Economics
by Robert Skidelsky
Published 13 Nov 2018

Replying to Marx’s charge that the capitalist exploited the worker, the American economist John Bates Clark, in his 1899 book The Distribution of Wealth, used a simple aggregate production function to show that, in a competitive market equilibrium, the two factors of production, capital and labour, would be paid their marginal products – that is, in proportion to their contribution to satisfying individual preferences.1 Distribution was off the economic agenda. Recently, discussion of distribution has centred on the fact, and meaning, of the sharp rise in inequality since the 1970s, particularly in the United States and Britain. The most notable contributions here 288 di s t r i bu t ion a s a m ac roe c onom ic p robl e m are Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century (2013), a documentation of long-run trends in the distribution of wealth and income in developed capitalist economies, and Walter Scheidel’s The Great Leveler (2017). 2 Piketty’s data show both a widening dispersal of incomes and a fall in labour’s wage share since the 1970s and 1980s.

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Trying to restore the profit rate by cutting wages only reduced prices and consumer demand further. Devine called this the under-consumption trap.28 I V. T h e Mode r n U n de rc onsu m p t ion is t S t ory The modern under-consumptionist story starts with the big increase in inequality, noticeable in all developed countries since the 1970s. Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century documented 298 di s t r i bu t ion a s a m ac roe c onom ic p robl e m in exhaustive detail the increase in inequality over the last forty years.29 Coming on top of the crash of 2008, it rekindled interest in distributional issues in both their moral and efficiency aspects.

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J. (1994), Constitutionalizing the economy: German neoliberalism, competition law and the ‘new’ Europe. American Journal of Comparative Law, 42 (1), pp. 25–84. Giffen, R. (1892), The Case Against Bimetallism. London: George Bell & Sons. Giles, C. (2014), Data problems with capital in the 21st century. Financial Times. Available at: http://blogs.ft.com/money-supply/2014/05/23/dataproblems-with-capital-in-the-21st-century/ [Accessed 28 July 2017]. Giles, C. (2017), Setting policy in the dark. Financial Times, 12 October. Goodhart, C. A. E. (2014), Competition and credit control. LSE Financial Markets Group Special Paper No. 229. Goodhart, C. A.

The Sharing Economy: The End of Employment and the Rise of Crowd-Based Capitalism
by Arun Sundararajan
Published 12 May 2016

And as Andrey Fradkin has shown us using his research at Airbnb, improvements in search and ranking technologies make it progressively more likely that a host and guest will actually match and transact on the platform.32 The resulting increases in consumption will drive economic growth, even measured as traditional GDP. On this front, it seems quite clear that the dramatic increases in quality and variety brought by crowd-based capitalism are bound to accelerate, rather than slow, the growth of the economy. The Democratization of Opportunity In summer 2014, a book titled Capital in the 21st Century, Thomas Piketty’s treatise into the persistence of inequality over the last two centuries, was at the center of discussion in both academic and Silicon Valley circles. At the core of Piketty’s book is a simple argument: inequality persists because the returns on capital (r)—whether invested financial capital, or the sort of entrenched wealth of property and other types of physical investments (i.e., the type of capital that the sharing economy promises to increase the impact of)—are persistently higher than the overall rate of growth (g) in the economy, while the rate of growth of wages is roughly the same as this overall rate of growth g.

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Josh Barro, “Taxi Mogul, Filing Bankruptcy, Sees Uber-Citibank Plot,” New York Times, July 22, 2015. http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/23/upshot/taxi-mogul-filing-bankruptcy-sees-a-uber-citibank-plot.html?abt=0002&abg=1. 32. Andrey Fradkin, “Search Frictions and the Design of Online Marketplaces,” September 30, 2015. http://andreyfradkin.com/assets/SearchFrictions.pdf. 33. Thomas Piketty, Capital in the 21st Century (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2014), 571. 34. Ibid., 471. 35. Samuel P. Fraiberger and Arun Sundararajan, “Peer-to-Peer Rental Markets in the Sharing Economy,” NYU Stern School of Business Research Paper, March 6, 2015. http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2574337. 36. We also detected a fourth effect—the idea that people who used to buy low-end cars will now “buy up to rent out”—but as of 2015, its magnitude was fairly small in our analysis. 6 The Shifting Landscape of Regulation and Consumer Protection Societies that get “stuck” embody belief systems and institutions that fail to confront and solve new problems of societal complexity.

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See also Car sharing platform, 77 trust and, 98, 145 Black Rock, 25 Blecharczyk, Nathan, 7, 8, 131 Blinder, Alan S., 159, 163–164 Blockchain, 18–19, 59–60, 86, 88 blockchain economies, 58–60, 87–95, 100–102 Blockchain: Blueprint for a New Economy (Swan), 93 Blurring of boundaries/lines, 8, 27, 46, 76, 141–142, 148, 171 Botsman, Rachel, 27–30, 35, 70, 81, 82 Bradley, Jennifer, 157 Brand-based trust, 144–146 Brastaviceanu, Tiberius, 199 Bresnahan, Timothy, 75 Brookings Institute, 179, 184 Brown-Philpot, Stacy, 157 Brynjolfsson, Erik, 75, 112, 165–166 Budelis, Katrina, 14 Burnham, Brad, 85–86, 187 Business of Sharing, The (Stephany), 28 Buterin, Vitalik, 95, 101–102 Button, 201 Byers, John W., 121 California Fruit Exchange, 197 California Labor Commissioner, 160 California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC), 153–154 Capalino, James, 136 Capital in the 21st Century (Piketty), 123 Card, David, 166 Car sharing, 1, 3. See also BlaBlaCar; Getaround; Lyft; Turo; Uber data science and, 157 La’Zooz, 94–95 local network effects, 119–120 regulatory challenges, 135 trust and, 98 Cartagena, Juan, 65 Castor, Emily, 9 Center for Global Enterprise, 119 Centers for Disease Control Chain, 86–87, 91 Chandler, Alfred, 4, 69, 71–72 Chase, Robin, 27, 66 Chen, Edward M., 160 Cheng, Denise, 184 Chéron, Guilhem, 16 Chesborough, Henry, 75–76 Chesky, Brian, 1, 7–9, 113, 122, 125, 131 Chhabra, Ashwini, 136 Chhabria, Vince, 160, 177 Choukrun, Marc-David, 16, 17 Clark, Shelby, 190 Clinton, Hillary, 161 Clothing and accessories rentals, 15–16 “Coase’s Penguin, or, Linux and the Nature of the Firm” (Benkler), 210n19 Cohen, Molly, 139, 153 Coleman, James, 60 Collaborative consumption, 28, 82 Collaborative economy, 25–28 Collaborative Economy Honeycomb, 82–84 Collaborative-Peer-Sharing Economy Summit, 105, 114–115 Commercial exchange, history of peer-to-peer, 4–5 Commons-based peer production, 30–32, 210n19 Community accommodation platforms and, 38–43 creation of, 36 funding, 41–43 human connectedness and, 44–46 service platforms and, 43–44 Congressional Sharing Economy Caucus, 137, 182 Consumer Electronic Show, 100 Consumerization of the digital, 54–55 Contractor dependent contractor, 183–184 versus employee, 159–160, 174–175, 178–182 Cooperatives; platform cooperativism, 19, 106, 178, 196–198 Couchsurfing, 38–40, 45, 121.

Basic Income And The Left
by henningmeyer
Published 16 May 2018

The precariat The precariat’s position must be understood in is the first mass class in history that has been terms of the changing character of global capitalism systematically losing the acquired rights of citizen‐ and its underlying distribution system, something ship – civil, cultural, political, social and economic. that Thomas Piketty did not address in his book 6 7 Capital in the 21st Century. In the 20th century, uniquely in human history, the distribution of Rentier Income income was primarily between capital and labour, In this new context, rental income has become a between profits and wages, mediated by the state major and growing component of total income.

Capital Without Borders
by Brooke Harrington
Published 11 Sep 2016

Arthur Kennickell, “Ponds and Streams: Wealth and Income in the US, 1989 to 2007,”Finance and Economics Discussion Series, Federal Reserve Board, Washington, DC, 2009. 7. Thomas Piketty, “On the Long-Run Evolution of Inheritance: France 1820–2050,” Working Paper, Paris School of Economics, 2010. 8. Santiago Budría, Javier Díaz-Giménez, José-Victor Ríos-Rull, and Vincenzo Quadrini, “Updated Facts on the US Distributions of Earnings, Income, and Wealth,” Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis Quarterly Review 26 (2002): 2–35. 9. John Langbein, “The Secret Life of the Trust: The Trust as an Instrument of Commerce,” Yale Law Journal 107 (1997): 165–189. 10. Thomas Piketty, Capital in the Twenty-First Century (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2014). 11.

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Cap-Gemini, World Wealth Report. 32. William Robinson, “Social Theory and Globalization: The Rise of a Transnational State,” Theory and Society 30 (2001): 165. 33. James Davies, Rodrigo Lluberas, and Anthony Shorrocks, Global Wealth Report (Zurich: Credit Suisse, 2013). 34. Ibid. 35. Thomas Piketty, Capital in the Twenty-first Century (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2014). 36. Melvin Oliver and Thomas Shapiro, Black Wealth, White Wealth: A New Perspective on Racial Inequality (New York: Routledge, 1995). 37. Palan, Murphy, and Chavagneux, Tax Havens, 12. 38. For the $21 trillion figure, see Heather Stewart, “Wealth Doesn’t Trickle Down—It Just Floods Offshore, New Research Reveals,” The Guardian, July 21, 2012.

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Emma Duncan, “Your Money, His Life,” Intelligent Life (supplement to The Economist), September 2007, 73–79. 2. George Marcus, “The Fiduciary Role in American Family Dynasties and Their Institutional Legacy,” in George Marcus, ed., Elites: Ethnographic Issues (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1983), 227. 3. Thomas Piketty, Capital in the Twenty-First Century (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2014). See also Arthur Kennickell, “Ponds and Streams: Wealth and Income in the US, 1989 to 2007,” Federal Reserve Board Finance and Economics Discussion Series, Washington, DC, 2009, www.federalreserve.gov/pubs/feds/2009/200913/200913pap.pdf.

Open: The Progressive Case for Free Trade, Immigration, and Global Capital
by Kimberly Clausing
Published 4 Mar 2019

A robust estate tax helps counter the worries of patrimonial capitalism raised in Thomas Piketty’s best-selling book, Capital in the Twenty-First Century. The masterful data collection efforts of this book documented worrisome trends in the role of capital in the economy.2 Left unchecked, high capital-to-income ratios risk creating societies where wealth and political power are too concentrated. ________________________ 1.  Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, “Policy Basics: The Estate Tax,” Report, August 14, 2017. 2.  Thomas Piketty, Capital in the Twentyb-First Century (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2014).

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But many argue that the bargaining process between workers and their managers is affected by tax rates. If tax rates at the top of the distribution decline, this provides more incentive for those at the top to aggressively increase their compensation. Figure 2.17: US Tax Rates and Income Shares for the Top 1 Percent Data sources: World Top Incomes Database; Thomas Piketty, Capital in the Twenty-First Century, (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2014). The era of increasing income inequality has also corresponded to lower tax rates on capital income, a source of income that is far more concentrated in the hands of high-income households. Capital gains tax rates were over 30 percent for most of the 1970s, fell to between 20 percent and 29 percent during the 1980s and the 1990s, and then fell to about 15 percent for most of this century, before increasing to 25 percent in 2013.40 Dividends were taxed as ordinary income until 2003, but have since been taxed at far lower rates, with a top rate of 15 percent before 2013, and a top rate of 20 percent since then.41 Indeed, high tax rates serve as a brake, or speed limit, on earnings by high-income earners.

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American Economic Review 99:1 (2009), 25–48; Peter Diamond and Emmanuel Saez, “The Case for a Progressive Tax: From Basic Research to Policy Recommendations,” Journal of Economic Perspectives 25:4 (2011), 165–190; Emmanuel Farhi, Christopher Sleet, Iván Werning, and Sevin Yeltekin, “Non-Linear Capital Taxation Without Commitment,” The Review of Economic Studies 79:4 (2012), 1469–1493; Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez, “A Theory of Optimal Capital Taxation,” Working Paper 17989, NBER Working Papers, National Bureau of Economic Research, 2012; Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez, “A Theory of Optimal Inheritance Taxation,” Econometrica 81:5 (2013), 1851–1886. 5. In recent years, there was a large preference for pass-through income relative to corporate income for domestic companies.

Makers and Takers: The Rise of Finance and the Fall of American Business
by Rana Foroohar
Published 16 May 2016

Financiers and the corporate supermanagers whom they enrich represent a growing percentage of the nation’s elite precisely because they control the most financial resources. These assets (stocks, bonds, and such) are the dominant form of wealth for the most privileged,51 which actually creates a snowball effect of inequality. As French economist Thomas Piketty explained so thoroughly in his 696-page tome, Capital in the Twenty-First Century, the returns on financial assets greatly outweigh those from income earned the old-fashioned way: by working for wages.52 Even when you consider the salaries of the modern economy’s supermanagers—the CEOs, bankers, accountants, agents, consultants, and lawyers that groups like Occupy Wall Street rail against—it’s important to remember that somewhere between 30 and 80 percent of their income is awarded not in cash but in incentive stock options and stock shares.

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Indeed, finance has become more costly and less efficient as an industry as it deployed new and more advanced tools over time.16 It’s also telling that during the last few decades financiers have earned three times as much as their peers in other industries with similar education and skills.17 As Thomas Piketty put it in Capital in the Twenty-First Century, financiers are, in some ways, like the landowners of old. Instead of controlling labor, they regulate access to things even more important in the modern economy: capital and information. As a result, they represent the largest single group of the richest and most powerful people on earth.

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The CEO, who grew up working class in Detroit and worked a welding line for years before going to college on scholarship, has continued to push forward his agenda within Aetna; in 2015 he gave all his top executives something that’s not yet on the typical MBA reading list—a copy of Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century. Companies, says Bertolini, shouldn’t just be moneymaking machines. They also have to invest in people, the real economy, and society as a whole if they want to succeed in the long term. “Capital is the resource that we often manage well, but in my opinion, the scarce resource is a talented and engaged workforce.”

A Fine Mess
by T. R. Reid
Published 13 Mar 2017

But in those early months of 2014, there was enormous prepublication buzz about a forthcoming Harvard book. It was an unlikely blockbuster, to be sure: a 699-page treatise on economics written by a scholar who was hardly a household name even in his own neighborhood in Paris. But Professor Thomas Piketty’s tome Capital in the Twenty-First Century, thick as a brick and somewhat heavier, rocketed to the top of the bestseller lists as soon as it hit America’s bookstores. A New York Times story on the Frenchman’s U.S. book tour was headlined “Economist Receives Rock Star Treatment.” The reason that an unknown French economist suddenly achieved rock-star stature in the United States was that Piketty’s book focused squarely on an increasingly worrisome issue in the American zeitgeist: the inequality of wealth and income

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Whatever changes we eventually make, almost every observer agrees that the current corporate income tax is not working. The corporate income tax, once a key source of funding for the U.S. government, has become just another minor revenue source. There are already many of those. 9. THE SINGLE TAX, THE FAT TAX, THE TINY TAX, THE CARBON TAX—AND NO TAX AT ALL Thomas Piketty’s surprising bestseller, Capital in the Twenty-First Century, sold nearly a million copies in the year after its publication, a stunning development for a heavyweight economics tome. But Piketty is a piker compared with an earlier author who wrote a similarly hefty volume on the same subject. The newspaperman Henry George’s economic magnum opus, Progress and Poverty, first published in 1879, sold more than three million copies in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

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Widespread concern over this trend was the reason Piketty’s heavy economics tome became a number one bestseller in the United States. Still, it was not exactly beach reading. Because you, gentle reader, have been kind enough to read this book, I will repay the favor by providing a summary of the professor’s argument, thus saving you the $40 price of the book and the hours required to read it. Capital in the Twenty-First Century is actually more like three books than one. First, it’s a history of the rich/poor divide, based on three centuries of wealth and income data that Piketty and his colleagues gathered from the United States, the U.K., France, and Sweden. Piketty relies heavily on mathematical models and statistical tables, but he thoughtfully spares his readers all that stuff, sticking it in a “technical appendix” on the Internet.

The Tyranny of Merit: What’s Become of the Common Good?
by Michael J. Sandel
Published 9 Sep 2020

In the United States, most of the economic growth since 1980 has gone to the top 10 percent, whose income grew 121 percent; almost none went to bottom half of the population, whose average income (about $16,000) in 2014 was about the same as it was in real terms in 1980. For working-age men, the median income was “the same in 2014 as in 1964, about $35,000. There has been no growth for the median male worker over half a century.” Piketty, Saez, and Zucman, “Distributional National Accounts,” pp. 557, 578, 592–93. See also Thomas Piketty, Capital in the Twenty-First Century (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2014), p. 297, where Piketty states that from 1977 to 2007, the richest 10 percent absorbed three-quarters of the entire economic growth of the U.S. 32. Americans agree by 77 to 20 percent that “most people can succeed if they are willing to work hard.”

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There has been no growth for the median male worker over half a century.” Thomas Piketty, Emmauel Saez, and Gabriel Zucman, “Distributional National Accounts: Methods and Estimates for the United States,” Quarterly Journal of Economics 133, issue 2 (May 2018), pp. 557, 578, 592–93, available at eml.berkeley.edu/~saez/PSZ2018QJE.pdf ; Facundo Alvaredo, Lucas Chancel, Thomas Piketty, Emmanuel Saez, and Gabriel Zucman, World Inequality Report 2018 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2018), pp. 3, 83–84. Income distribution data for the U.S. and other countries is also available at the online World Inequality Database, wid.world . See also Thomas Piketty, Capital in the Twenty-First Century (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2014), p. 297, where Piketty states that from 1977 to 2007, the richest 10 percent absorbed three-quarters of the entire economic growth of the United States.

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60 Throughout much of the twentieth century, parties of the left attracted those with less education, while parties of the right attracted those with more. In the age of meritocracy, this pattern has been reversed. Today, people with more education vote for left-of-center parties, and those with less support parties of the right. The French economist Thomas Piketty has shown that this reversal has unfolded, in striking parallel, in the U.S., the U.K., and France. 61 From the 1940s to the 1970s, those without a university degree voted reliably for the Democratic Party in the United States, the Labour Party in Britain, and the various left-of-center parties in France.

Two Nations, Indivisible: A History of Inequality in America: A History of Inequality in America
by Jamie Bronstein
Published 29 Oct 2016

My New Mexico State University (NMSU) colleague Mark Walker, who was writing a book on the Basic Income Guarantee as I wrote this one, first encouraged me to consider inequality from a historical perspective. The NMSU conference that Mark organized on the Basic Income Guarantee in 2014 introduced me to scholars who have long worked on the philosophy of contemporary inequality. Simultaneously, participation in an ad hoc reading group facilitated by NMSU student Alan Dicker on Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century helped to get my thoughts flowing My NMSU colleagues Lori Keleher, Peter Kopp, and Julie Rice, and my former graduate student Ryan MacLennan, all provided helpful suggestions at crucial moments. In the later stages of the project’s completion, Tim Ketelaar of the psychology department at NMSU gave me the opportunity to present the ideas contained in this book to a wider general audience, allowing me to better focus my message.

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The New York Times in 2005 ran a series of articles on class, pointing out for its readership that, contrary to popular belief, the United States is not the most upwardly mobile country in the world.9 A number of recent books question the notion that deregulation, budget cuts to safety nets, free trade promotion, and privatization have promoted growth to benefit all.10 Despite its length and serious subject matter, economist Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century (2014) was widely read and reviewed. Historian Steven Fraser’s Age of Acquiescence (2015) compared the modern American public unfavorably with Americans in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, who were not afraid to call out class warfare against the working poor when they saw it.11 Former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich’s documentary Inequality for All (2013) reached a wide audience, with an accessible message: the prosperity of the United States hinges on the middle class having an income to spend.

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They called for austerity instead, and President Barack Obama lacked the political capital to press the issue.20 The Great Recession thus came and went with no significant steps taken to prevent inequality from causing another economic panic. Many structural features of the modern American economy promote inequality. In his well-received book Capital in the Twenty-First Century (2013), economist Thomas Piketty argued that out-of-control executive compensation has caused much of the growth in inequality across Europe and in the United States. Executives are granted enormous salaries by boards of directors whom the CEOs themselves control, in a direct conflict of interest.21 Executive compensation hides the real inequity in the share of compensation going to labor: “In 2002–2012 the bottom 90 percent of the population saw their average family income … drop by 11 percent, while those in the top .1 to .01 percent saw theirs rise by 30 percent.”

Capitalism, Alone: The Future of the System That Rules the World
by Branko Milanovic
Published 23 Sep 2019

These people are wage workers who need to work in order to draw their large salaries.8 But these same people, whether through inheritance or because they have saved enough money through their working lives, also possess large financial assets and draw a significant amount of income from them. The rising share of labor income in the top 1 percent (or even more select groups, like the top 0.1 percent) has been well documented by Thomas Piketty, in Capital in the Twenty-First Century (2014), and other authors.9 We shall return to that topic later in the chapter. What is important to realize here is that the presence of high labor income at the top of the income distribution, if associated with high capital income received by the same individuals, deepens inequality.

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Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. Rawls, John. 1999. The Law of Peoples. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Raworth, Kate. 2018. Doughnut Economics: Seven Ways to Think Like a 21st Century Economist. White River Junction, VT: Chelsea Green. Ray, Debraj. 2014. “Nit-Piketty: A Comment on Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century.” Unpublished manuscript, May 25, https://www.econ.nyu.edu/user/debraj/Papers/Piketty.pdf. Rognlie, Matthew. 2015. “Deciphering the Fall and Rise in the Net Capital Share: Accumulation or Scarcity?” Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Spring. https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/2015a_rognlie.pdf.

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As countries grow richer, they acquire more wealth from savings and successful investments (just like individuals do). Moreover, the increase in their capital overtakes the increase in their income, and they gradually become more “capital-intensive” or “capital-rich.” This relationship—the ratio between capital and income—was a central feature of Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century. Countries with higher income (GDP per capita) not only have more wealth per person, but their wealth-income ratio (denoted by β) is higher (Table 2.2). Thus in terms of GDP per capita, Switzerland is 53 times better off than India, but it has almost 100 times more wealth per adult than India.

Peers Inc: How People and Platforms Are Inventing the Collaborative Economy and Reinventing Capitalism
by Robin Chase
Published 14 May 2015

We know that when employers outsource labor, even within the same country, they do so to avoid paying for health insurance, worker’s comp, disability insurance, and retirement benefits (remember the FedEx case in the last chapter, where the company claimed—and lost—its California delivery drivers were independent contractors). All these services have to be paid for by somebody; the costs are simply being moved to the shoulders of the government. Thomas Piketty, the economist who burst into public consciousness with his bestselling book Capital in the 21st Century, calls for a global wealth tax that is impossible to evade by changing jurisdictions. This seems like a radical proposal indeed, but given the spread of multinational corporations and offshore profits, can multinational taxation be far away?

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American capitalism has moved from an industrial path that grew a middle class to one that seems to be increasingly taking the ugliest, most extractive form, reversing those gains. It’s essential that we bring economies back to a more sustainable distribution of productivity gains. In economist Thomas Piketty’s 2014 bestselling Capital in the 21st Century, his analysis found that the top 10 percent of Americans in 2010 owned 70 percent of the capital, trending toward the extreme capital inequality last observed in 1910 monarchical Europe. Today, in the countries experiencing the most economic equality (like Norway, Denmark, and Hungary as measured by the Gini coefficient), the top 10 percent control about 50 percent of the capital, an amount considered “medium inequality.”

The New Class Conflict
by Joel Kotkin
Published 31 Aug 2014

Consequently, the new progressive politics of inequality have become the primary themes of the nation’s political leaders and the Clerisy. Oddly enough, much of the thinking behind this new focus is drawn primarily from European models, even as Europe’s dismal prospects have inspired the lowest levels of political support in several decades.4 In his influential book Capital in the Twenty-First Century, French economist Thomas Piketty argues powerfully that the only way to confront increasing inequality and prevent deeper social fracturing is to expand the “social state” that forcibly redistributes wealth. In his mind, economic growth, traditionally a prime source of social uplift, is little more than an “illusory” solution.

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Pew Research Social & Demographic Trends, “The Lost Decade of the Middle Class: Fewer, Poorer, Gloomier,” report, August 22, 2012, http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/files/2012/08/pew-social-trends-lost-decade-of-the-middle-class.pdf. 5. Associated Press, “The Future’s NOT So Bright: Americans Predict a Dark Downward Spiral over the Next Four Decades,” Daily Mail, January 3, 2014. 6. Thomas Piketty, Capital in the Twenty-First Century, trans. Arthur Goldhammer (Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 2014), pp. 23–24, 192–96, 321–23, 347. 7. Annie Lowrey, “The Rich Get Richer Through the Recovery,” Economix (blog), New York Times, September 10, 2013, http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/09/10/the-rich-get-richer-through-the-recovery. 8.

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Braconi, Citizens Housing and Planning Council of New York, Inc., “Environmental Regulation and Housing Affordability,” Cityscape: A Journal of Policy Development and Research, vol. 2, no. 3 (September 1996): 82–106. 9. Annie Lowrey, “Even Among the Richest of the Rich, Fortunes Diverge,” New York Times, February 11, 2014; Piketty, Capital in the Twenty-First Century, p. 173; Ryan Dezember, “Blowout Haul for Buyout Tycoons,” Wall Street Journal, March 3, 2014; Lawrence Mishel and Natalie Sabadish, “CEO Pay and the Top 1%,” Economic Policy Institute Issue, Issue Brief, no. 331, May 2, 2012, http://www.epi.org/publication/ib331-ceo-pay-top-1-percent. 10.

The Captured Economy: How the Powerful Enrich Themselves, Slow Down Growth, and Increase Inequality
by Brink Lindsey
Published 12 Oct 2017

They need to recognize that inequality is a threat to the political consensus in favor of market competition and dynamism. Liberals and progressives have a mirror-image problem. Many on the left rail against unrestrained capitalism’s innate and immoral tendency toward invidious inequality. Thomas Piketty caused a sensation with his book Capital in the Twenty-First Century by arguing at magisterial length that this tendency reflects the workings of a basic law of economics.12 Because the rate of return on capital (allegedly) outstrips the rate of economic growth, increasing inequality is written into the DNA of capitalism, which means that only massive taxes and transfers are capable of reversing hyper-inequality.

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Finally, zoning’s contributions to economic inequality go beyond widening income gaps, whether geographic or socioeconomic in nature. In addition, tightening restrictions on building appear to be the driving force behind rising wealth inequality. At least that is the conclusion of Matt Rognlie, who as a 26-year-old grad student at MIT leaped to prominence with his bold critique of Thomas Piketty’s bestselling Capital in the Twenty-First Century. Piketty famously argued that there is a fundamental tendency in capitalism toward ever-greater concentration of wealth, a tendency that was checked in the twentieth century only because of global depression and war, and then only temporarily. Specifically, he argued that over the long run, the rate of return on wealth tends to outstrip the rate of economic growth, with the result that the share of national income that compensates owners of capital grows inexorably (and the share that goes to workers shrinks concomitantly).

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Moss, Preventing Regulatory Capture: Special Interest Influence and How to Limit It (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2014). 11.See, e.g., N. Gregory Mankiw, “Defending the One Percent,” Journal of Economic Perspectives 27, no. 3 (Summer 2013): 21–34, https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/jep.27.3.21. 12.See Thomas Piketty, Capital in the Twenty-First Century (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2014). 13.Barry Goldwater, The Conscience of a Conservative (New York: MacFadden Books, 1960), p. 23. 14.Interview on National Public Radio, Morning Edition, May 25, 2001. 15.Anna Persson and Bo Rothstein, “It’s My Money: Why Big Government Is Good Government,” Comparative Political Studies 47, no. 2 (January 2015): 231–49. 16.Joseph Stiglitz, Nell Abernathy, Adam Hersh, Susan Holmber, and Mike Konczal, “Rewriting the Rules of the American Economy,” http://rooseveltinstitute.org/rewriting-rules-report/. 17.Frank Levy and Peter Temin, “Inequality and Institutions in 20th Century America,” SSRN Working Paper 07-17, June 27, 2007. 18.The connection between excessive governmental informalism and capture by the organized was recognized on the left as far back as Theodore Lowi’s great book, The End of Liberalism (New York: W.

Social Class in the 21st Century
by Mike Savage
Published 5 Nov 2015

In making this argument, there is a clear overlap with our findings in Chapter 7 regarding the power of elite universities, all of which are located close to London. London is now a vortex – a voracious and intense space, in which an elite class finds its home. In the early twenty-first century, the very wealthy are subject to increasing attention. The remarkable reception of Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-first Century, allied to increasing concern about spiralling remuneration at the top, has made the sociological analysis of the elite essential. But we need to guard against the view that this new, wealth-elite marks a return to the aristocratic, landed and gentlemanly class which held sway in Britain until the later twentieth century.

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Subsequent analysis by Sam Friedman, David Laurison and Andrew Miles in ‘Breaking the “Class” Ceiling? Social Mobility into Elite Occupations’, Sociological Review, 63(2), 2015, 259–89 (which compares the GBCS findings with those from the Labour Force Survey on individual incomes), suggests that similar patterns can be found in both sources. 7. See Thomas Piketty, Capital in the Twenty-first Century (Cambridge, MA: 2014), p. 116, Figure 3.1. 8. Markus Jäntti, Eva Sierminska and Philippe Van Kerm, ‘The Joint Distribution of Income and Wealth’, in Janet C. Gornick and Markus Jäntti (editors), Income Inequality: Economic Disparities and the Middle Class in Affluent Countries (Redwood City, CA: 2013), pp. 312–33. 9.

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See Mike Savage, Brigitte Le Roux, Johannes Hjellbrekke and Daniel Laurison, ‘Espace culturel britannique et classes sociales’, in Frédérie Lebaron and Brigitte Le Roux (editors), La méthodologie de Pierre Bourdieu en action: espace culturel, espace social, et analyse des données (paris. 2015). 2. Danny Dorling, Inequality and the 1% (London: 2014), Thomas Piketty, Capital in the Twenty-first Century (Cambridge, MA: 2014). 3. The same general point also applies to gender: but because we asked about household income, gender differences are not well defined when using the GfK sample (since some badly paid women might be living with well-paid men, and vice versa). 4. We repeat our earlier comments about the problems of using the GBCS and the GfK survey to analyse ethnicity in detail.

The People vs. Democracy: Why Our Freedom Is in Danger and How to Save It
by Yascha Mounk
Published 15 Feb 2018

Josh Constine, “Facebook Now Has 2 Billion Monthly Users … and Responsibility,” Techcrunch, June 27, 2017, https://techcrunch.com/2017/06/27/facebook-2-billion-users/. 29. George Orwell, “Second Thoughts on James Burnham,” Polemic 3 (May 1946). 5. Economic Stagnation 1. See Thomas Piketty, Capital in the Twenty-First Century (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2014), 72–112. 2. S. N. Broadberry and Bas van Leeuwen, “British Economic Growth and the Business Cycle, 1700–1870: Annual Estimates,” Working Paper, Department of Economics, University of Warwick, Coventry, UK, February 2011, CAGE Online Working Paper Series, vol. 2010 (20), http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/economics/events/seminars-schedule/conferences/venice3/programme/british_economic_growth_and_the_business_cycle_1700-1850.pdf. 3.

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Keohane, “The Global Politics of Climate Change: Challenge for Political Science,” PS: Political Science & Politics 48, no. 1 (2015): 19–26. 48. There have been many reasons for this, from the Great Recession to Occupy Wall Street. But the book that has catalyzed most of this discussion has undoubtedly been Thomas Piketty, Capital in the Twenty-First Century (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2014). 49. On the role of lobbying in politics, see Jane Mayer, Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires behind the Rise of the Radical Right (New York: Doubleday, 2016); and Lee Drutman, The Business of America Is Lobbying: How Corporations Became More Politicized and Politicians Became More Corporate (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015).

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In effect, England had, in the span of a quarter century, gone from the level of income inequality recorded in today’s Iceland to the level of income inequality recorded in today’s India.3 Then another big aberration in human history set in: a period of unprecedented economic equality. Back in 1928, Thomas Piketty shows, the richest 1 percent could expect to capture 15–20 percent of income in European countries like France or the United Kingdom and almost 25 percent of income in the United States. By 1960, the wealth distribution had flattened considerably: In France and the United Kingdom, the richest 1 percent now captured less than 10 percent of income.

Angrynomics
by Eric Lonergan and Mark Blyth
Published 15 Jun 2020

Despite the fact that many of the features of the trends in income and wealth inequality date back to the early 1980s, the topic has only started to dominate political discourse across the developed world in the last five to ten years in particular, highlighted by the publication and extraordinary success of Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century. Also, it is a very complex area – measurement is extremely difficult, and there is a lot of difference in the trends geographically. I want to stress one of the sources for my caution about the role of inequality as a singular cause behind angrynomics is that anger is a universal feature of politics across the world, but trends in inequality are not.

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As such, the rate of capital formation, a core determinant of investment, is slowing as the dependency ratio – the ratio of workers to retirees – is shifting over time, which in turn slows future growth, while still compounding the massive amount of assets that those “top twenty” boomers have accumulated already. ERIC: This is why, at least in part, the economist Thomas Piketty thinks that intergenerational inequality is a necessary part of our future, unless we choose to do something about it. Piketty’s book, Capital in the Twenty-First Century, is famous for putting inequality back on the political agenda in a serious way. But his book is as much about economic growth as it is inequality. Piketty’s framework for thinking about economic growth allows us to see the long-run consequences of these observations about aging.

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Kate Raworth’s Doughnut Economics: Seven Ways to Think Like a 21st-Century Economist (London: Random House, 2017) is a brilliant rebalancing of how economics should be done, putting true sustainability at its core. For a much less hopeful, but equally plausible account, see Branko Milanovic’s brilliant Capitalism, Alone: The Future of the System that Rules the World (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2019). A huge amount has now been written about inequality. Thomas Piketty’s masterpiece, Capital in the Twenty-First Century (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2014) can take a lot of credit for this. But despite being a bestseller, and having influenced both of us in different ways, it is really a book for specialists – and if anything has provoked as much controversy as agreement, at least among economists.

Postcapitalism: A Guide to Our Future
by Paul Mason
Published 29 Jul 2015

, Oxford Martin School Working Paper, 2013, p. 38, http://www.futuretech.ox.ac.uk/news-release-oxford-martin-school-study-shows-nearly-half-us-jobs-could-be-risk-computerisation 37. A. Gorz Critique of Economic Reason (London, 1989), p. 127 7. BEAUTIFUL TROUBLEMAKERS 1. R. Freeman, ‘The Great Doubling: Labor in the New Global Economy’. Usery Lecture in Labor Policy, University of Atlanta, GA, 2005 2. T. Piketty, Capital in the 21st Century (Harvard, 2014) 3. http://newleftreview.org/II/21/fredric-jameson-future-city: ‘It seems easier for us today to imagine the thoroughgoing deterioration of the earth and of nature than the breakdown of late capitalism’ 4. http://shanghaiist.com/2010/05/26/translated_foxconns_employee_non-su.php 5.

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China – for all the soft power it has begun to project – cannot do what America did at the end of the Second World War: absorb the world’s debts, set explicit rules and create a new global currency system. Meanwhile, in the West, there is no sign of any strategy resembling the one outlined above. There is talk of it – from the lionizing of the French economist Thomas Piketty to the Bundesbank’s calls in 2014 for higher wages in Europe. But in practice, the mainstream parties remain wedded to neoliberalism. And without the escape route, the prospect looks more and more like long-term stagnation. In 2014, the OECD released its projections for the world economy in the years between now and 2060.40 World growth will slow to 2.7 per cent, said the Paris-based think tank, because the catch-up effects boosting growth in the developing world – growing population, education, urbanization – will peter out.

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We will have to privatize higher education – for the cost of expanding it to meet the demand for graduates would bankrupt many states – and assimilate tens of millions of migrants into the developed world. And as we struggle with all this, it is likely that the current means of financing the state will evaporate. The OECD points out that the polarization of populations into high-and-low-income groups will render income taxes ineffective. We will need – as Thomas Piketty suggests – to tax wealth instead. The problem here is that assets – whether they be a star racehorse, a secret bank account or the copyright on the Nike swoosh – tend to be held in jurisdictions dedicated to avoiding wealth taxes, even if anybody had the will to raise them, which they currently don’t.

The Great Leveler: Violence and the History of Inequality From the Stone Age to the Twenty-First Century
by Walter Scheidel
Published 17 Jan 2017

About a decade ago, Steve Friesen made me think harder about ancient income distributions, and Emmanuel Saez further piqued my interest in inequality during a shared year at Stanford’s Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences. My perspective and argument have been inspired in no small measure by Thomas Piketty’s work. For several years before his provocative book on capital in the twenty-first century introduced his ideas to a wider audience, I had read his work and pondered its relevance beyond the last couple of centuries (also known as the “short term” to an ancient historian such as myself). The appearance of his magnum opus provided much-needed impetus for me to move from mere contemplation to the writing of my own study.

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Machin, Stephen. 2008. “An appraisal of economic research on changes in wage inequality.” Labour 22: 7–26. Maddison project. “Maddison project.” http://www.ggdc.net/maddison/maddison-project/home.htm. Magness, Phillip W., and Murphy, Robert P. 2015. “Challenging the empirical contribution of Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the twenty-first century.” Journal of Private Enterprise 30: 1–34. Mahler, Vincent A. 2010. “Government inequality reduction in comparative perspective: a cross-national study of the developed world.” Polity 42: 511–541. Maisels, Charles K. 1990. The emergence of civilization: from hunting and gathering to agriculture, cities, and the state in the Near East.

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Bonica, Adam, McCarty, Nolan, Poole, Keith T., and Rosenthal, Howard. 2013. “Why hasn’t democracy slowed rising inequality?” Journal of Economic Perspectives 27: 103–123. Bonnet, Odran, Bono, Pierre-Henri, Chapelle, Guillaume, and Wasmer, Etienne. 2014. “Does housing capital contribute to inequality? A comment on Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the 21st century.” SciencesPo, Department of Economics, Discussion Paper 2014–07. Bordo, Michael D., and Meissner, Christopher M. 2011. “Do financial crises always raise inequality? Some evidence from history.” Working paper. Borgerhoff Mulder, Monique, et al. 2009. “Intergenerational wealth transmission and the dynamics of inequality in small-scale societies.”

Throwing Rocks at the Google Bus: How Growth Became the Enemy of Prosperity
by Douglas Rushkoff
Published 1 Mar 2016

Financial services, slowly but inevitably, become the biggest players in the economy. Between the 1950s and 2006, the percentage of the economy (as measured by GDP) represented by the financial sector more than doubled, from 3 percent to 7.5 percent.13 This is why, as Thomas Piketty demonstrated in Capital in the Twenty-First Century, the rate of return on capital exceeds the growth rate of the economy.14 Money makes money faster than people or companies can create value. The richest people and companies should, therefore, position themselves as far away from working or creating things, and as close to the money spigot, as possible.

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Vivek Wadhwa, “The End of Chinese Manufacturing and Rebirth of U.S. Industry,” forbes.com, July 23, 2012. 44. Daniel Bell, The Coming of Post-Industrial Society: A Venture in Social Forecasting (New York: Basic Books, 1976). 45. David Rotman, “How Technology Is Destroying Jobs,” technologyreview.com, June, 12, 2013. 46. Ibid. 47. Thomas Piketty, Capital in the Twenty-First Century, trans. Arthur Goldhammer (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press, 2014). 48. Bernard Lietaer, The Mystery of Money: Beyond Greed and Scarcity, 148 [PDF]. 49. Jeff Tyler, “Banks Demolish Foreclosed Homes, Raise Eyebrows,” Marketplace, American Public Media, October 13, 2011. Transcript available at www.marketplace.org/topics/business/banks-demolish-foreclosed-homes-raise-eyebrows/. 50.

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Betsy Corcoran, “Blackboard’s Jay Bhatt Strikes Up the Brass Band,” edsurge.com, July 23, 2014. 35. Justin Pope, “E-Learning Firm Sparks Controversy with Software Patent,” washingtonpost.com, October 15, 2006. 36. withknown.com. 37. Carlota Perez, Technological Revolutions and Financial Capital (Cheltenham, England: Edward Elgar Press, 2002). 38. Thomas Piketty, Capital in the Twenty-First Century, trans. Arthur Goldhammer (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press, 2014). 39. Mario Preve, quoted in Ernst & Young and Family Business Network International, “Built to Last: Family Businesses Lead the Way to Sustainable Growth” (n.p.: Ernst & Young Global Limited, 2012), www.ey.com/Publication/vwLUAssets/EY-Built-to-last-family-businesses-lead-the-way-to-sustainable-growth/$FILE/EY-Built-to-last-family-businesses-lead-the-way-to-sustainable-growth.pdf. 40.

The Alternative: How to Build a Just Economy
by Nick Romeo
Published 15 Jan 2024

Eli Cook, “Naturalizing Inequality: The Problem of Economic Fatalism in the Age of Piketty,” Capitalism: A Journal of History and Economics 1, no. 2 (2020): 338, https://www.academia.edu/43792802/Naturalizing_Inequality_The_Problem_of_Economic_Fatalism_in_the_Age_of_Piketty. 16. Adrian Cho, “Physicists Say It’s Simple,” Science 344, no. 6186 (May 23, 2014): 828, https://doi.org/10.1126/science.344.6186.828. Cited in Cook, “Naturalizing Inequality.” 17. Thomas Piketty, Capital in the Twenty-First Century (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2017), 27. 18. David Ricardo, The Works of David Ricardo: With a Notice of the Life and Writings of the Author (London: John Murray, 1846), 59. 19. Joseph Townsend, A Dissertation on the Poor Laws: By a Well-Wisher to Mankind (London: Charles Dilly, 1786), 21. 20.

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Urté Fultinavicuité and Fiona Barry, “California’s Low-Cost Insulin Plans Receive $100m Manufacturing Boost,” Pharmaceutical Technology, July 15, 2022, https://www.pharmaceutical-technology.com/news/california-insulin/. 47. California Legislative Information. “AB-2053 The Social Housing Act. (2021–2022),” June 23, 2022, https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtml?bill_id=202120220AB2053. Conclusion: Inflation and the Inevitable 1. Thomas Piketty and Arthur Goldhammer, Capital in the Twenty-First Century (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2014), 367. 2. Albert O. Hirschman, “Rival Interpretations of Market Society: Civilizing, Destructive, or Feeble?,” Journal of Economic Literature 20, no. 4 (1982): 1463–1484, http://www.jstor.org/stable/2724829. 3. Leo Tolstoy, The Slavery of Our Times (Christ Church, UK: Free Age Press, 1901), 67. 4.

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Even if certain patterns emerge from the study of economic history—and the quality, sample size, and categories of data are all intensely debated—there’s no reason to suppose that a past pattern must continue. Someone surveying the world economy in the year 1800 might posit “laws” about the inevitability of child labor or the gold standard. There’s no reason to assume that some of our current “laws” will survive any better. French economist Thomas Piketty makes this point well: “The history of the distribution of wealth has always been deeply political, and it cannot be reduced to purely economic mechanisms.”17i The practice of presenting fragile political claims as inescapable physical laws has been present since the dawn of economics.ii Critiquing the early nineteenth-century system of wage supplements to the rural poor, English economist David Ricardo wrote in an 1817 treatise, “The principle of gravitation is not more certain than the tendency of such laws to change wealth and power into misery and weakness… until at last all classes should be infected with the plague of universal poverty.”18 Ricardo suggests that anyone who disagrees with him is as foolish as an opponent of gravity.

The New Urban Crisis: How Our Cities Are Increasing Inequality, Deepening Segregation, and Failing the Middle Class?and What We Can Do About It
by Richard Florida
Published 9 May 2016

In New York’s SoHo, the artistic and creative ferment I had observed as a student was giving way to a new kind of homogeneity of wealthy people, high-end restaurants, and luxury shops. Truth be told, the downsides of the urban revival had captured my attention fairly early on. Back in 2003, well before Occupy Wall Street drew attention to the rise of the “one percent,” or Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century opened our eyes to global inequality, I warned that America’s leading creative cities were also the epicenters of economic inequality. My research found that the metros with the highest levels of wage inequality were also those with the most dynamic and successful creative economies—San Francisco, Austin, Boston, Seattle, Washington, DC, and New York.3 But even as I was documenting these new divides, I had no idea how fast they would metastasize, or how deeply polarized these cities would become.

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Sugrue, The Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996). 2. Richard Florida, The Rise of the Creative Class: And How It’s Transforming Work, Leisure, Community, and Everyday Life (New York: Basic Books, 2002); Florida, The Rise of the Creative Class Revisited (New York: Basic Books, 2012). 3. Thomas Piketty, Capital in the Twenty-First Century (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2013); Richard Florida, “The New American Dream,” Washington Monthly, March 2003; Richard Florida, The Flight of the Creative Class (New York: HarperCollins, 2005). 4. Richard Florida, “More Losers Than Winners in America’s New Economic Geography,” CityLab, January 30, 2013, www.citylab.com/work/2013/01/more-losers-winners-americas-new-economic-geography/4465. 5.

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The correlation between housing cost and creative-class wages left over after paying for housing is positive and significant (0.58). The correlations between housing costs and wages left over after paying for housing are negative and significant for the service class (–0.36) and the working class (–0.20). 31. Thomas Piketty, Capital in the Twenty-First Century (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2013); Matthew Rognlie, “Deciphering the Fall and Rise in the Net Capital Share,” Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Brookings Institution, March 2015, www.brookings.edu/~/media/projects/bpea/spring-2015/2015a_rognlie.pdf.

Arguing With Zombies: Economics, Politics, and the Fight for a Better Future
by Paul Krugman
Published 28 Jan 2020

Today we are once again living in an era of extraordinary wealth concentrated in the hands of a few people, with the net worth of the wealthiest 0.1 percent of Americans almost equal to that of the bottom 90 percent combined. And this concentration of wealth is growing; as Thomas Piketty famously argued in his book Capital in the 21st Century, we seem to be heading toward a society dominated by vast, often inherited fortunes. So can today’s politicians rise to the challenge? Well, Elizabeth Warren has released an impressive proposal for taxing extreme wealth. And whether or not she herself becomes the Democratic nominee for president, it says good things about her party that something this smart and daring is even part of the discussion.

…

L., 147 mercantilism, 250 Merkel, Angela, 98 microeconomics, 407, 408 middle class: cutting benefits for, 30, 196, 309 and financial managers, 92–94 and income distribution, 266, 273 and income mobility, 277, 278 raising taxes on, 199 Mildenberger, Matto, 305, 306 Minskyism, 409 Mississippi, income inequality in, 291–92 Mnuchin, Steven, 322 moderation, instability of, 407–10 financial instability, 409–10 intellectual instability, 407–8 political instability, 408–9 Modern Monetary Theory (MMT), 125, 152, 154, 203 monetarism, 133, 409 monetary economics, 176 monetary policy, 128–29, 140, 143, 144, 153 money: conventional (currency), 412–14 cryptocurrency, 411–14 dollar cash holdings, 413 dollar notes, 413–14 fiat currencies, 414 speculative, 413 as store of value, 112 “Money and Morals” (Krugman), 260, 285–87 money managers, 92–94 money supply, central banks’ control of, 110, 112, 124, 133 “Monopolistic Competition and Optimum Product Diversity” (Dixit and Stiglitz), 396–98 monopoly power, 228, 236 monopsony power, 316–17 Moore, John, 147 Moore, Michael, 44, 45 Moore, Roy, 309 Moretti, Enrico, The New Geography of Jobs, 292 mortgage rates, 87 mortgages, subprime, 90–91, 136 “Most Important Thing, The” (Krugman), 327–28 motives, talk about, 8 Moulton, Seth, 76 movement conservatism, 297–98, 302–4, 307 definition of, 302 keeping zombie ideas alive via, 8 and Republican Party, 297, 299–301, 302, 368 and Tea Party, 303 white resentment as basis of, 343 “Movement Conservativism” (Krugman), 297–98 Moynihan, Daniel Patrick, 5 Mueller, Robert, 307 Mueller investigation, 360 Mulford, David, 405 Mulligan, Casey, 144 Mulvaney, Mick, 207, 225 Murdoch, Rupert, 297, 375 Murphy, Kevin, 279 Murray, Charles, Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960–2010, 285–86 Mussolini, Benito, 346 “Myths of Austerity” (Krugman), 158, 160–62, 165 NAFTA, 372 NAIRU (non-accelerating-inflation rate of unemployment), 114 NASA, 163 National Association of Realtors, 84 National Climate Assessment, 332, 336 National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform, 198–200 nationalism, 343 National Older Women’s League, 198 National Review, The, 301 national security: and elections, 306 and tariffs, 251, 253, 255 NATO, 244 neoclassical economics, 132, 133, 139–40, 147 neoliberal ideology, 315 Netherlands, economy of, 184 New Deal, 107, 293, 308 New Geography of Jobs, The (Moretti), 292 New Hampshire, economic freedom in, 317, 317 New Jersey, health care in, 76, 78 New Keynesian views, 129, 139–40, 143, 145, 147 New York: health care in, 74, 318 infant mortality in, 317, 317 Medicaid expanded in, 318 New York Times, The, 348, 349 Nicaragua, and Iran-Contra, 300 Nimbyism, 291 Nixon administration, and media, 300 Nordhaus, William, 396 Norman, Victor, 398 “normative” economics, 1 Northam, Ralph, 308, 309 North Carolina: health care in, 77 Republican Party in, 359 Norway, economy of, 323 Obama, Barack: conservatives vs., 150, 208, 302, 320, 362 on health care, 53–55, 66, 339, 361 and international trade, 252 and taxes, 216, 219, 229 Obama administration: on debt and unemployment, 208 “hijacked” commission of, 198–200 and revenue growth, 225 stimulus plan of, 104, 107–8, 113–14, 115–17, 118–20, 131, 193, 206, 362 Obamacare, see Affordable Care Act O’Brien, Michael, 126 Ocasio-Cortez, Alexandria (AOC), 234, 236, 237, 320–21 Occupy Wall Street, 285 O’Connor, Reed, 367, 369 oil shocks, 126 Oklahoma, tax cuts in, 293 Okun’s Law, 113 oligarchy, 283, 349, 350 Olson, Mancur, The Logic of Collective Action, 354–55 Operation Coffee Cup (1961), 322 optimum currency areas, 177 Palin, Sarah, 54 Panama Papers, 349 Pangloss, Doctor (fict.), 135, 140 “paperclip maximizers,” 357 “Paranoid Style in American Politics, The” (Hofstadter), 346 parasites, 354–57 Paulson, Henry, 91 PBS Newshour, 169–71 Pelosi, Nancy: achievements of, 361–63 and Affordable Care Act, 35–36, 55, 361, 367 and financial reform, 362 as House Speaker, 76, 344, 362, 363 on “monstrous endgame,” 367, 369 on Social Security, 15, 35, 306, 361 and stimulus plan, 362 and trade agreement, 372 on the wall as “manhood thing,” 370 Pence, Mike, 73 pensions: defined benefit, 14 defined contribution, 14–15 401(k)-type plans, 31–32 private, decline of, 31–32 Perlstein, Rick, 302, 354, 355 Perot, H. Ross, 245 personal savings rate, 88 Peterson, Pete, 193 Piketty, Thomas, 219 Capital in the 21st Century, 238 Pimco bond fund, 83, 89 Pizzagate, 375 Poland: Law and Justice Party in, 358 threats to democracy in, 188, 189, 344, 346, 358, 359, 360 white nationalism in, 346 polarization, 5–9, 291, 297–98, 356 policy discussion, absence of, 13 political action, 355–56 political realism, 251–52 politicization: pressures from the right, 3–4 and racism, 4–5, 226, 301, 307, 308–10, 360 roots of, 2–5 PolitiFact, 386 Ponzi scheme, 92–93 population, aging of, 16 population density, 87 population growth, 225, 271, 272 “populism,” use of term, 351–53 Portugal, economy of, 178 “positive” economics, 1 post-truth politics, 61 poverty: and cuts in benefits, 30 of elderly, 23–24 and health care, 47, 66 precious metals, 411 Prescott, Edward, 139 productivity, 283 and income distribution, 268–69, 272, 273 slowdown in, 267, 289 and technology, 289 and wages, 289 professional conservative economists, 149 profit, appearance of, 92–93 progressive expenditure, categories of, 210–11 propagandists, 149 protectionism, 353 prudence, downside of, 104, 106, 107–8, 117 “public good,” use of term, 354–55 public goods, 30 public health, 355 public works, spending on, 116, 133, 143, 205–6, 206 punditry: author’s rules for, 5–9 honesty about dishonesty, 7–8 staying with easy stuff, 6 talking about motives, 8–9 writing in English, 6–7 Putin, Vladimir, 371 racism: and hate-mongering, 54 interracial marriages, 215 and politicization, 4–5, 226, 301, 307, 308–10, 360 Rajan, Raghuram, 136 Rampell, Catherine, 5 Rand, Ayn, Atlas Shrugged, 219 rationality: assumption of, 134, 138, 139, 144–45, 148 investor irrationality, 135 limitations of, 131, 132 Rawls, John, 3 Reagan, Ronald: and economic growth, 262, 275–76 and health care, 45, 53, 322 as icon of conservative purity, 300, 302 and supply-side economics, 271 and taxes, 7, 19, 215, 299 and Voting Rights Act, 300 Reagan administration: and income inequality, 271 and Iran-Contra, 300 and private contractors, 300 “real business cycle” theory, 139 real estate: housing bubble, 82, 83–85, 86–88 land-use restrictions, 87 recessions: causes of, 138–39, 185 central banks’ roles in, 103–4, 124, 133 demand-side view of, 139 desirability of, 144, 147 “double-dip” (1979–1982), 215 effects of, 126–27 fears of, 81–82 and fiscal policy, 140, 141, 215, 275 and government debt, 124, 142 and printing money, 4, 104, 105 and unemployment insurance claims, 106 Reciprocal Trade Agreements Act (1934), 250, 252, 254–55 “Red-Baiting in the 21st Century” (Krugman), 313–14 red ink, fear of, 107, 116 Regan, Trish, 319, 320 regulation, minimal, 315 Reid, Harry, 28, 29 Reinhardt, Uwe, 35 Reinhart, Carmen, 158, 163 Repealing the Job-Killing Health Care Law Act (2011), 59 Republican Party: campaign (2020), 313 center-right delusion of, 305–7 climate denial of, 337, 365 conspiracy theorizing by, 345–46, 365 corruption in, 335–37, 343, 358, 368 dark side of, 334, 336, 368 democracy undermined by, 367–69 double standards of, 208, 209 double talk of, 225–26 economic doctrine of, 229 facts or logic ignored by, 28, 237, 366 “Flimflam Man” of, 194, 195–97, 362 frauds promoted by, 74–75, 224–26 and health care, 65–66, 69, 70, 71–72, 73–75, 76–77, 309, 338 hostility to science, 335, 337 and immigration, 303 IRS defunded by, 350 lying by, 225–26 and movement conservatism, 8, 297–98, 299–301, 302–4, 307, 343, 368 one-party rule sought by, 358–60 paranoid style in, 345–47 and party loyalty, 67, 150–51, 226, 368 policy analysis shunned by, 73–74, 77 power plays by, 359–60, 369 privatization of public assets as goal of, 338 racism of, 226 radicalization of, 189, 298, 309 realities of, 197 state governments controlled by, 65–66, 68, 77 and Supreme Court, 345, 346, 352 tax plans of, 222, 224–26, 236, 309 Trumpism of, 335–37, 343, 345–46, 359–60, 370–72 voter preferences vs., 309 workable ideas lacking in, 69, 74 retirement, economics of, 15, 22, 23–24, 31–32, 362 retirement accounts: private, 17, 19, 22–24 real rate of return on, 23 Return of Depression Economics, The (Krugman), 82 Reynolds, Alan, 273, 274 Ricardo, David, 289 risk: elimination of, 81 in financial innovation, 90–91 reward vs., 135 Rivlin, Alice, 263 Roach, Stephen, 83, 85 Roberts, David, 307 Roberts, Paul Craig, 273, 274, 279 Robin, Corey, 315–16 robot, defined, 288 Rodgers, Cathy McMorris, 60 Rogers, Will, 297 Rogoff, Ken, 158, 163 Romer, Christina, 234, 236 Romer, David, 139 Romney, Mitt, 51–52, 54, 219, 320 Roosevelt, Franklin D.: and balanced budget, 107 on health care, 46 and reciprocal trade act, 247, 250, 252, 254 and Social Security, 25, 26 Roosevelt, Theodore, 239 Roosevelt (FDR) administration, and international trade, 244 rule of law: disdain of, 252, 256, 301, 347 interpretation and enforcement of, 367–68 rules for research, 399–404 dare to be silly, 401–2, 404 listen to the gentiles, 399–400, 404 question the question, 400–401, 404 simplify, simplify, 402–4 Russia, and trade, 256 Ryan, Jack, 381 Ryan, Paul, 28, 203, 219, 363 as flim-flam man, 194, 195–97, 362 and Medicare, 225 and Ryan plan, 193–94, 195–97, 201–2 super PAC of, 225 Saez, Emmanuel, 219, 234–35, 236, 238–39 safety-net programs, 4, 224, 313, 317, 320, 321, 323, 370 Samuelson, Paul, 124, 403, 407, 408, 410 San Diego, housing in, 87 “sand states,” unemployment in, 170 Santorum, Rick, 303 Sawhill, Isabel, 280 Scaife, Richard Mellon, 380 Schultz, Howard, 212, 308, 310 Schumer, Chuck, 93 Schumpeter, Joseph A., 132, 134, 395 Schwartz, Anna, 133 SeaWorld, 352 secular stagnation, 206 Securities and Exchange Commission, 93 segregationists, 346 Seltzer, Marlene, 166 Senate, role of, 368 September 11, 2001, attacks, aftermath of, 13 Sessions, Pete, 59 Shapiro, Ben, 354, 355, 356, 357 Shiller, Robert, 84, 136, 141, 146 Shleifer, Andrei, 146 Sicko (movie), 44–45 silver and gold coins, 411, 412 “silver-loading,” 71 Simple Art of Murder, The (Chandler), 327 Simpson, Alan, 198, 199, 203, 218 Sinema, Kyrsten, 365 “Skewing of America, The” (Krugman), 259–60 “skills gap,” 159, 166–68, 290 Slemrod, Joel, 277 Smith, Adam, 132, 138, 411 Smith, Noah, 95 smoking, dangers of, 333, 334 Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act (1930), 247 snake oil, peddling, 357 Snow, John, 81 social democracy, 313–14, 317, 320–21, 323 social dysfunction, indicators of, 286 socialism, 219, 313–14, 316, 319–21, 322–24 social justice, 3 social media, see media Social Security: cuts in benefits, 17, 32 expansion of, 30, 32, 212, 240 financial condition of, 16–17, 20, 28–29 guaranteed benefits of, 24 historic success of, 21, 22, 24, 31–32 importance to voters, 14, 26, 31, 306 as independent entity, 20 “Life Expectancy for Social Security” (Web site), 26 percentage of revenues going to benefits, 22 politicization of, 25–27 privatization of, 14–15, 19–21, 22–24, 25–27, 28–29, 32, 35, 302, 306, 361, 377, 378 retirement age for, 199 supported by dedicated tax on payroll earnings, 19 threats to, 16–18, 198, 199, 200, 223, 224 Trump administration’s lies about, 225 trust fund of, 20 Social Security Act (1934), 26 Solow, Bob, 396, 405 Soros, George, 345, 346, 365 Soviet Union: central planning by, 323 economy of, 324 fall of, 177 Spain: anti-establishment forces in, 99 economy of, 178–80, 184 and euro, 177, 178–79, 181, 187, 188 housing bubble in, 181 internal devaluation in, 179 loans to, 182 public debt of, 179 unemployment in, 182, 184 speculation: destructive, 135 short-term, 133 stagflation (1970s), 124, 133 Stalin, Joseph, 239, 324 “State of Macro, The” (Blanchard), 130 statistics, uses and abuses of, 262 Stein, Herbert, 271 Stiglitz, Joseph E., 5, 396–98, 403 “Stimulus Arithmetic” (Krugman), 104, 113–14 stock market bubble, 83, 84, 86 Stokes, Leah, 305, 306 Stone Center for the Study of Socioeconomic Inequality (CUNY), 259 Stross, Charlie, 357 sugar, import quotas on, 250 Summers, Larry, 136, 145–46 “Sum of All Fears, The” (Krugman), 81 supply-side economics, 128, 275–76, 299 Supreme Court, U.S.: on Affordable Care Act, 65, 68, 77 Kavanaugh appointment to, 345, 346, 352 moral authority destroyed, 345, 360 partisanship in, 346 sustainable growth rate, 153–54, 204 Sweden, economy of, 239, 323 Switzerland, health care in, 37 system overhaul, 210, 212 tanning parlors, tax on, 211 tariffs, 244, 246–48, 251, 252–53, 254–56 taxes: carbon tax, 339 corporate, see corporate taxes cutting, 8, 16–17, 19, 20, 116–17, 199, 201, 215–17, 218–20, 224–26, 227–29, 230–33, 231–33, 232, 236–37, 306–7, 351, 361, 370, 371 and debt, 154, 222–23, 224–26 economic effects of, 7, 222–23, 224–26, 233, 236–37 incentive effects of, 154 and income inequality, 238–39 low, 315 on middle class, 221–23 and monopoly power, 236 narrow-gauge, 211 optimal top rates of, 234–35 on payroll, 212 political trade-offs in, 153 on pollution, 339 progressive taxation, 238–40, 323 raising, 185, 196, 199, 219, 229, 380 tariffs, 244, 246–48, 251, 252–53, 254–56 temporary breaks, 222 top marginal income tax rates, 236–37, 236 Trump’s frauds, 348–50 value-added, 154, 212 on the wealthy, see wealthy on working class, 20, 221–23 tax evasion, 349–50, 413, 414 tax liabilities, 414 tax loopholes, 93, 349 Tax Policy Center, 196, 202, 283 tax reform, 26, 198–99 Tea Party, 53–54, 303 technology, and income inequality, 260, 288–90 Tennessee, health care in, 68 tethering, 413–14 Thatcher, Margaret, 22, 23, 128 “That Eighties Show” (Klugman), 124 “Theoretical Framework for Monetary Analysis, A” (Friedman), 144 Thompson, Fred, 47, 52 tobacco companies, 333, 334 Toles, Tom, 333 torture, 300 totalitarianism, 324 trade theory, 399–400, 401, 403 trade war, 353, 361, 371–72 see also international trade transcription costs, 411–14 transportation, greenhouse gases from, 339–40 Treasury, U.S.: on income gains, 279–81 Office of Tax Analysis, 278 partisan functions of, 26 and Social Security, 16 Trichet, Jean-Claude, 161 “Triumph of Macroeconomics, The” (Krugman), 103–5 Trotsky, Leon, 324 trucking industry, 290 Trump, Donald: attacks on media by, 347 attitude toward truth, 364–66 belligerent ignorance of, 246, 307, 337, 345, 346–47, 352 campaigning, 309, 370 contempt for rule of law, 252, 256, 347 corruption of, 335–37, 338, 343, 349, 350, 368, 389 and cronyism, 256, 343 as deal-maker, 348–50 election of (2016), 13, 343, 372, 375, 387–89 family history of, 348–49 foreign dictators admired by, 346–47, 365, 371 humiliating others, 352–53 and inequality, 260, 291 and international trade, 245, 246, 247–48, 249, 252–53, 254–56, 353, 361 laziness of, 352 as liar, 348, 353, 364, 365 on manhood, 370, 371, 372 on neo-Nazis as “very fine people,” 365 and populism, 351–53 and racism, 246, 310, 360 and Republican Party, 335–37, 359, 372 scandals about, 388–89 and socialism, 322–23 State of the Union address (2019), 207–9, 322 supporters scammed by, 353, 372, 389 and taxes, 216, 221–23, 224–26, 227–29, 230–33, 306–7, 308, 350, 361, 371 tax returns of, 359 tough-guy posturing by, 334, 346–47, 370–72 and 2020 election, 227, 347, 361 and the wall, 370, 371 Trump, Fred (father), 348 Trump administration: anti-science views of, 332 as anti-worker, 351–53 appointments to, 352 bad faith of, 151, 332, 365 charlatans and cranks in, 149, 151, 329, 331, 333 climate change deniers in, 329–31, 332–34, 335–37 and collapse of freedom, 187 compared to that of G.

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The vast mansions, armies of servants, and huge yachts of the 1920s were no more; by 1955 the typical executive, Fortune claimed, lived in a smallish suburban house, relied on part-time help, and skippered his own relatively small boat. The data confirm Fortune’s impressions. Between the 1920s and the 1950s real incomes for the richest Americans fell sharply, not just compared with the middle class but in absolute terms. According to estimates by the economists Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez, in 1955 the real incomes of the top 0.01 percent of Americans were less than half what they had been in the late 1920s, and their share of total income was down by three-quarters. Today, of course, the mansions, armies of servants, and yachts are back, bigger than ever—and any hint of policies that might crimp plutocrats’ style is met with cries of “socialism.”

Wealth, Poverty and Politics
by Thomas Sowell
Published 31 Aug 2015

Armine Yalnizyan, The Rise of Canada’s Richest 1% (Ottawa: Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, December 2010). 10. Thomas Piketty, Capital in the Twenty-First Century (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2014), p. 252. 11. Thomas A. Hirschl and Mark R. Rank, “The Life Course Dynamics of Affluence,” PLoS ONE, January 28, 2015, p. 5. 12. Ibid. 13. Paul Krugman, “Rich Man’s Recovery,” New York Times, September 13, 2013, p. A25. 14. U.S. Department of the Treasury, “Income Mobility in the U.S. from 1996 to 2005,” November 13, 2007, p. 4. 15. Thomas Piketty, Capital in the Twenty-First Century, pp. 253, 254. 16. Ibid., p. 278. 17. U.S. Department of the Treasury, “Income Mobility in the U.S. from 1996 to 2005,” November 13, 2007, pp. 2, 4. 18.

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Transients in the various income brackets are spoken of as if they were continuous residents in those brackets. Time and Turnover Understandable and commendable as it may be to be concerned about the fate of fellow human beings, that is very different from being obsessed with the fate of numbers in abstract categories. To say, as Professor Thomas Piketty does in his much acclaimed book, Capital in the Twenty-First Century, that “the upper decile is truly a world unto itself”10 is to fly in the face of the fact that most American households— 53 percent— are in the top decile at some point in their lives,11 usually in their older years. For most Americans to envy or resent the top ten percent would be to envy or resent themselves.

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Schumpeter, History of Economic Analysis (New York: Oxford University Press, 1954), p. 529. 24. Martin Feldstein, “Piketty’s Numbers Don’t Add Up,” Wall Street Journal, May 15, 2014, p. A15; Alan Reynolds, “Why Piketty’s Wealth Data Are Worthless,” Wall Street Journal, July 10, 2014, p. A11. 25. Thomas Piketty, Capital in the Twenty-First Century, pp. 473, 507; Robert A. Wilson, “Personal Exemptions and Individual Income Tax Rates, 1913–2002,” Statistics of Income Bulletin, Spring 2002, p. 219. 26. W. Michael Cox and Richard Alm, Myths of Rich & Poor: Why We’re Better Off Than We Think (New York: Basic Books, 1999), p. 16. 27.

The Code of Capital: How the Law Creates Wealth and Inequality
by Katharina Pistor
Published 27 May 2019

Contracts and property rights support free markets, but capitalism requires more—the legal privileging of some assets, which gives their holders a comparative advantage in accumulating wealth over others.12 Uncovering the legal structure of capital also helps solve the puzzle Thomas Piketty presented in his seminal book, Capital in the Twenty-First Century.13 In advanced economies, he showed, the average rate of return on capital exceeds the average rate of economic growth (r > g). Piketty did not explain this puzzle, but settled on documenting its remarkable empirical regularity. Yet his own data offer important cues for solving it.

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See Francis Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man (New York: Free Press, 1992). 4. See, for example, Ellen Meiksins Wood, The Origin of Capitalism: A Longer View (London, New York: Verso, 1999). 5. Joseph E. Stiglitz, Globalization and Its Discontents (New York, London: Norton, 2002); Dani Rodrik, The Globalization Paradox (New York: Norton, 2011). 6. Thomas Piketty, Capital in the 21st Century (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2014). 7. This is, according to Padgett, the key question in the evolution of institutions. See the introduction to John F. Padgett and W. W. Powell, eds., The Emergence of Organizations and Markets (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2010). 8.

…

INDEX AAA rating, 86, 99–100, 251n19 ad hoc privileges, 119, 218, 223, 228 Advisory Committee for Trade Negotiations (ACTN), 121–24 Amazon, 130 American Civil War, 41, 50, 138, 174 American College of Medical Genetics, 113 American Express, 50 American International Group (AIG), 191 American Society for Clinical Pathology, 113 anti-usury rules, 90, 236n26 Apple, 72 arbitrage: optimizing legal, 67, 161; RASCAL and, 73–75; regulatory, 48, 56, 73–76, 90–91, 226; tax, 48, 56, 73 arbitration: as alternative to slow courts, 181–82; capital rule and, 215, 217, 223, 226; code masters and, 161–62, 178, 180–82; corporations and, 48, 56, 67, 73–76; digital code and, 190, 204; empire of law and, 15, 18; global code and, 136, 139–43, 146, 152, 154–57, 261n27; lawyers and, 161–62, 178, 180–82; minting debt and, 90–91; private, 143, 146, 152, 154, 157, 162, 180–81, 217, 223, 226 Arendt, Hannah, 243n40 Arruñada, Benito, 239n56 artisans, 118–19, 128 asset-backed securities (ABS), 85, 87 assets: bearer, 198; Bitcoin and, 197–202; capital rule and, 205–34; cloning legal persons and, 47–75, 247n24; code masters and, 158–61, 164–69, 174–75, 177, 180–82, 267n26; coding land and, 23–26, 30, 35–46; Debt Recovery Act and, 39–40; digital code and, 187–94, 197–204, 271n17; empire of law and, 2–22, 235n9, 238n51; eviction and, 41, 233; exclusive use rights and, 35, 209; foreclosure and, 39, 95–98, 253n44; genetic knowledge and, 109; global code and, 132, 135–38, 142–50, 154, 260n8, 262n45; homeowners and, 59, 80–84, 86, 88, 94–98, 100, 106; intangible capital and, 13, 24, 115–21, 143, 212, 216; landowners and, 24, 34–39, 42, 45, 56, 78, 128, 158–59, 166; legal coding and, 2–8, 11–12, 15, 19–24, 40, 52, 87, 92, 107–8, 116, 118, 132, 143, 168, 177, 180, 205, 208, 211–12, 215–18, 222–27, 233; legal personality and, 55; lock-in and, 15, 47, 65–67, 77, 81, 117, 196; MBS, 82–83, 86–87, 94–95, 97, 99, 101; Medici empire and, 57–58, 247n21; minting debt and, 77, 251n19, 253n41 (see also minting debt); monopolies and, 17, 41, 66, 91, 109, 111, 114–26, 257n29; partitioning and, 48, 52, 54, 56–57, 59, 107, 238n51; pooling of, 13–14, 16, 19, 45, 47, 52, 55–56, 66, 83–84, 86, 93, 96, 164–65, 211, 251n19; property and, 1–5 (see also property); rating agencies and, 80, 86–87, 98–100, 251n6, 251n19; scalability of, 145; securitization and, 43, 45, 78–86, 91–101, 165, 251n11, 251n13, 253n41; self-interest and, 6, 8–9, 18, 232, 236n18; shielding of, 3, 14, 20, 22, 44, 47–48, 51–63, 65, 67, 71, 78, 84, 86, 99, 107, 129, 161, 165, 205, 215, 238n51, 246n16, 247n20; stage-contingent, 41; titles and, 13, 25–27, 30–35, 37, 43, 46, 75, 96–97, 110, 125, 194, 206; toxic, 86, 100, 167; trade secrets and, 126–31; tranched, 83–87, 94, 98, 101, 251n19 Association for Molecular Pathology, 113 attorneys, 21, 32, 143, 160–62, 171–74, 181–82, 217, 269n54 Australia, 29, 33 Austro-Hungarian Empire, 120 autonomy: capital rule and, 209, 212–13, 215, 218–20, 232, 272n29; coding land and, 33; corporations and, 50; digital autonomous organizations (DAO) and, 194–97, 272n29, 272n30, 272n33; digital code and, 194–97; global code and, 134–35; lawyers and, 171–73 bailouts, 55, 62, 64, 84, 104–5, 151, 226, 247n17 Baldwin, Simeon E., 169 Bank for International Settlement (BIS), 149–50 bankruptcy, ix–x; capital rule and, 207, 209, 211, 227; cloning legal persons and, 48–49, 51, 55, 62–63, 73, 75; code masters and, 160, 168, 269n58; coding land and, 27; derivatives and, 144–52; empire of law and, 3, 13–14, 16, 21; global code and, 137, 144–53, 262n42; ISDA and, 147–51; law and, 3, 13, 16, 21, 73, 78, 87, 107, 137, 144–52, 160, 168, 209, 239n55, 262n42, 269n58; Lehman Brothers and, 48–58, 61–65, 70–75, 80, 85, 96, 101, 103–4, 106, 135, 149, 175, 190, 245n4, 246n6, 248n33; minting debt and, 78–80, 83–84, 87, 107, 255n71; safe harbors and, 63, 145, 148–50, 152, 207, 211, 227, 262n44, 263n49; United States and, 55, 148, 239n55, 255n71, 262n44 Banque de France, 104 Barclays, 203 barristers, 169–70 Bayerische Landesbank, 85 bearer assets, 198 Bear Stearns, 64, 83 Belize: British colonialism and, 26–27; coding land and, 23–29, 230, 241n7, 261n21; Constitution of, 25, 28, 241n7; courts and, 23–24, 27–29, 126, 230, 261n21; global code and, 261n21; independence of, 26–27; Maya people and, 23–29, 230, 261n21; mining and, 25–27, 29, 37; Privy Council and, 27–29, 126 beneficiaries, 43–45, 53, 81, 115, 164, 181–82 big data, 126–31 bilateral investment treaties (BITs), 140, 155, 264n67 bilateral trade, 122, 132, 136, 140, 154–56, 256n23 bills of exchange, 57, 78, 88–92, 108, 198–99, 252n31 Bitcoin, 197–202 Black Act, 243n42 blacklisting, 73, 225 Blackstone, William, 46 blockchain, 184, 187–90, 192, 195, 197–98, 203–4, 270n2 blue-chip corporations, 83, 175–76, 269n55 BNP Paribas, 85 Bonaparte, Louis, 104 Bonaparte, Napoleon, 133, 242n27 bourgeoisie, 10, 208 Brandeis, Louis, 109 Braudel, Fernand, 9 Breast Cancer Susceptibility Gene (BRCA), 111–14, 116, 127, 130, 214 Brexit, 179 bright-line rule, 224–25 Bristol-Myers, 124 Bruges, 57–58 bubbles, 59, 247n26 bugs, 185, 188, 196 Campbell, Lord, 158, 170 Canada: coding land and, 29; Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) and, 156–57, 264n69; Eli Lilly and, 138–43, 152–55, 261n17, 261n19; Federal Court of, 139; global code and, 138–43, 156–57, 261n17, 261n18, 263n57, 264n69; intellectual property and, 138–43, 152–55, 261n17, 261n19; NAFTA and, 124, 138, 138–42, 155, 261n20; USMCA and, 139, 261n20 Canadian Patent Act, 140, 261n23 Cancer Genetics Network Project, 113 capital: attributes of, 3–4, 11–15, 21, 39, 78, 161, 183, 205, 211–12, 233; coding land and, 24, 26, 29, 34–45; Commons on, 12; convertibility and, 3–4, 11, 13, 15, 19, 77–78, 183, 193, 199, 211, 229, 233; corporations and, 47–48, 52–53, 56–57, 64–67, 70, 73–76; digital code and, 183–86, 189, 195–200, 203; durability and, 3, 211, 229, 233 (see also durability); economic growth and, 2; empire of law and, 2–22; enigma of, 9–13; global code and, 132–38, 143, 149, 152–57; intangible, 8, 115–18; intellectual property and, 108, 112–20, 126, 130; labor and, 2, 9–11, 116, 160, 169, 217, 237n37; legal attributes and, 13–15; legal codes and, 2 (see also legal code); Levy on, 12; Marxism and, 9–11; minting debt and, 77–79, 83, 92, 100–102, 107; Piketty on, 4–5; priority rights and, 206–7, 215 (see also priority rights); in service of, 152–57; Smith on, 6, 46, 134, 220, 240n68; state power and, 15–19 (see also state power); universality and, 3–4, 11, 13–14, 19, 21, 54, 211, 229, 233; venture, 112; wealth and, 12–13 (see also wealth) capital gains, 235n9 Capital in the Twenty-First Century (Piketty), 4–5 capitalism: capital rule and, 205–9, 212, 217, 222, 224, 228–29, 234; cloning legal persons and, 47; code masters and, 168, 179, 182, 266n24; coding land and, 26; digital code and, 199–200; empire of law and, 2, 4, 8, 10–14, 17–21, 238n44; free markets and, 4, 19, 106–7, 128–29; global code and, 132–33; historiography of, 10; nature’s code and, 112; substance of, 238n44 Capitalism without Capital (Haskel and Westlake), 115–16 capital rule: arbitration and, 215, 217, 223, 226; autonomy and, 209, 212–13, 215, 218–20, 232, 272n29; bankruptcy and, 207, 209, 211, 227; bright-line rule and, 224–25; capitalism and, 205–9, 212, 217, 222, 224, 228–29, 234; coercive power and, 220, 232–33; collateral and, 224; contracts and, 209–18, 222–27, 231, 276n37; convertibility and, 211, 226–27, 229, 233; corporate law and, 209–11, 224; costly externalities and, 226; courts and, 206–7, 211–18, 221–24, 227, 230; creditors and, 206–7, 211, 216; debt and, 206–7, 209, 219, 228; derivatives and, 211, 227; durability and, 211, 229, 233; elitism and, 218; enclosure and, 229; enforcement and, 210, 220, 223; enigma of capital and, 9–13; feudalism and, 5–6, 205, 211, 223, 276n24; first-mover advantage and, 214–15; global code and, 152–57; globalization and, 219–23, 277n51; governing the code and, 222–29; growth and, 220; harmonization and, 227; inequality and, 223; intangible capital and, 212, 216; International Center for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID) and, 154–55; investment and, 225–26; knowledge and, 229; law’s inherent incompleteness and, 210–13; lawyers and, 206–16, 221, 224, 227–29, 234; legal attributes and, 13–15; legal code and, 205, 211–13, 216, 218–20, 225, 227, 230; legal structures and, 225; Marxism and, 207–8, 216, 234; mortgages and, 206–7, 211; New York Arbitration Convention and, 154; partnerships and, 228; patents and, 211–15, 230; priority rights and, 206–7, 215; private code and, 20, 209–19; private law and, 209–15; property and, 206, 209, 212–20, 222, 224, 230, 276n24; public power and, 216–19; reform and, 218, 231; regulation and, 211, 213, 216–17, 221, 224–27, 274n1; resurrecting limitations and, 227; risk and, 207, 226, 229; roll-back strategies for, 224–29; roving, 219–21; safe harbors and, 63, 145, 148–50, 152, 207, 211, 227, 262n44, 263n49; shareholders and, 213, 229; slavery and, 205; sovereignty and, 234, 277n51; state power and, 15–18, 205, 208–9, 212, 216, 221–23; treaty law and, 225; United Kingdom and, 228, 234; United States and, 219, 227–28, 234; universality and, 211, 229, 233; veils and, 8, 13, 48, 207, 246n16; wealth and, 205–9, 215, 217, 221–22, 224, 230; Weber and, 206; without law, 229–34 Cayman Islands, 50, 71, 99, 135, 249n53 central banks: code masters and, 167; empire of law and, 6; global code and, 151; minting debt and, 77–78, 89, 102–6, 255n72 Chase, 64, 83–85, 248n32, 255n70 Chicago Mercantile Exchange, 200 China, 178 China Investment Corporation (CIC), 85 Chrysler, 247n17 Citigroup, 60, 248n32; foreign help for, 84; Kleros clones and, 100; NC2 and, 79–87, 94, 98–100, 106–7, 135, 251n4, 251n19 Citigroup Mortgage Realty Corporation (CMRC), 80–85 City Group Global Markets (CGGM), 85 civil law, 42–43, 133, 168–73, 178, 249n48 civil rights, 232 claims to future pay, 78, 84, 88 cloning legal persons: bankruptcy and, 48–49, 51, 55, 62–63, 73, 75; capitalism and, 47; collateral and, 51; contracts and, 47–48, 52–55, 58–60, 64–65, 68–69, 247n24; corporate law and, 47–56, 60–62, 65, 67–72, 74, 76, 246n14, 246n16, 248n30; courts and, 58, 68–70, 73–76, 247n24; creditors and, 47–48, 51, 54–67, 71, 73, 75, 246n16, 247n24; debt and, 47–53, 56, 59–60, 67, 73–74; durability and, 47, 54–55; elitism and, 66, 75; immortality and, 50, 55, 65–67; incorporation theory and, 69–70, 74, 136, 246n10; investment and, 48–53, 60–65, 67, 72, 75, 248n39; Kleros and, 99; labor and, 49; lawyers and, 48, 52, 70; legal entities and, 51–53, 55, 57, 65, 69–71; Lehman Brothers and, 48–58, 61–65, 70–75, 80, 85, 96, 101, 103–4, 106, 135, 149, 175, 190, 245n4, 246n6, 248n33, 250n59; limited liability and, 60–61; loss shifting and, 55, 59–64, 67; monopolies and, 66; NC2 and, 79–87, 94, 98–100, 106–7, 135, 251n4, 251n19; priority rights and, 55–56, 63; private law and, 68; property and, 47, 68; regulation and, 249n46; risk and, 48, 54–56, 59, 63–66, 70, 74–75; Roman law and, 51; slavery and, 49, 54, 57, 60; universality and, 54; wealth and, 48, 56, 59, 64, 66–67 Coase, Ronald, 45, 192 code masters: arbitration and, 161–62, 178, 180–82; assets and, 158–61, 164–69, 174–75, 177, 180–82; bankruptcy and, 160, 168, 269n58; capitalism and, 168, 179, 182, 266n24; central banks and, 167; coercive power and, 177, 180; collateral and, 160, 177; common law and, 168–73, 176–78; contracts and, 159–60, 172, 178, 181–82; corporate law and, 159–60, 163–64, 168, 174–79, 269n60; courts and, 159–64, 168–73, 177, 180–82; creditors and, 158–59, 168; debt and, 158, 167, 174; durability and, 159, 161, 182; elitism and, 158, 162, 164, 175–77; enforcement and, 168, 180; globalization and, 176–79, 270n71; growth and, 166, 175, 267n26, 270n71; inequality and, 167; investment and, 160–61, 165, 167–68; labor and, 160, 169; legal code and, 158–59, 167, 177, 180; legal origin of, 167–76; Lehman Brothers and, 175; partnerships and, 162–63, 166, 175–78; poison pills and, 163–64, 266n15, 266n17; priority rights and, 158, 161; private law and, 169–73, 182; private money and, 175; property and, 158–60, 164, 172, 177; reform and, 158–59, 171; regulation and, 160–63, 168, 171–77, 182, 267n37, 268n42; risk and, 161–62, 165; securitization and, 165; shareholders and, 164, 168; sovereignty and, 160; United Kingdom and, 168, 178–79; United States and, 162, 168, 171, 174–79; wealth and, 159, 162, 164–67, 174, 176 coding land: acquired rights and, 45–46; autonomy and, 33; bankruptcy and, 27; Belize and, 23–29, 230, 241n7, 261n21; British colonies and, 39–42; capitalism and, 26; collateral and, 30, 35–36; common law and, 31–32, 40, 243n43; common use and, 29–30; contracts and, 41–42; Conveyance Act and, 38–39; corporate law and, 24, 35, 37, 44; courts and, 23–34, 38–45, 244n63; creditors and, 24, 30, 35–45; debt and, 30, 35–42; decoding the trust and, 42–45; digital code and, 183–90, 194, 197, 203–4; discovery doctrine and, 34–35; durability and, 24, 39, 42–43, 46; elitism and, 8, 40–41, 75, 158, 164, 254n55; emerging land market and, 32; enclosure and, 29–35, 39, 229, 256n14; eviction and, 41, 233; important role of land and, 23–24; inequality and, 46; investment and, 25, 37, 45, 241n13; landowners and, 24, 34–39, 42, 45, 56, 78, 128, 158–59, 166, 254n55; lawyers and, 24, 31–32, 35, 37–38, 40, 43–45, 164, 240n6, 242n29; legal code and, 24, 39–40, 43; legal title and, 24–29, 33–34, 45–46; Maya people and, 23–29, 230, 261n21; monopolies and, 41; mortgages and, 35–38, 43; ownership and, 30, 34–35, 136; priority rights and, 24–25, 29, 37, 39, 46; property and, 23–39, 42–46, 240n2, 241n10, 241n13, 242n27, 242n36, 243n41, 245n75; protecting spoils and, 35–39; reform and, 38–41, 244n58, 244n64; regulation and, 44; risk and, 35, 41; securitization and, 43, 45; Settled Land Acts and, 38–39; settlers and, 33–35, 42, 125, 192–93; shielding and, 44; slavery and, 39; sovereignty and, 26–27, 33–34; state power and, 23, 46; Statute of Enrollments and, 44; Statute of Uses and, 44; titles and, 25–27, 30–35, 37, 43, 46, 125, 194; trust law and, 42–45; turning land into private, 29–35; usage and, 24–29; wealth and, 24, 27, 35–46 coercive power: capital rule and, 220, 232–33; code masters and, 177, 180; digital code and, 187, 193; empire of law and, 4, 7, 15–21, 239n60; global code and, 132, 154; minting debt and, 90; trade secrets and, 126, 129; World Trade Organization (WTO) and, 125 Cohen, Morris, 137–38 Coindesk, 203 collateral, ix–x; capital rule and, 224; cloning legal persons and, 51; code masters and, 160, 177; coding land and, 30, 35–36; digital code and, 187, 190–91, 271n19; empire of law and, 3, 7, 11–13, 16, 21, 238n49; global code and, 144, 148, 263n48; minting debt and, 78, 81, 86–87, 92, 97, 99, 103, 107; mortgages and, 13–14; slavery and, 11–12 collateralized debt obligations (CDOs), 87, 99–101, 108, 165, 211, 254n53 Columbia Law School, 270n4 Commerce Clause, 70, 177 commercial codes, 13, 238n48, 260n8 common law: code masters and, 168–73, 176–78; coding land and, 31–32, 40, 243n43; digital code and, 271n13; empire of law and, 5, 8; English law and, 27, 38–40, 43, 146, 178, 262n41; frustration of contracts and, 271n13; global code and, 133, 264n65; law schools and, 243n43; nature’s code and, 119; New York State laws and, 8, 76, 80, 132–33, 135, 143, 146, 150, 168, 178; Roman law and, 30, 42, 132–33, 135, 170, 177, 242n27, 243n43; United Kingdom and, 176–77 Common Pleas, 32 Commons, John, 12, 238n44 Companies Act, 61 competition: free trade and, 38; guild barriers and, 128–29; intangible capital and, 118; investment banking and, 50, 91–92; lawyers and, 174, 176; private rights and, 122; property and, 121; regulatory, 68, 135, 221, 227; Schumpeter on, 118, 276n30; state power and, 221; tax shelters and, 72; trade secrets and, 128–29 Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA), 156–57, 264n69 conflict-of-law rules, 9, 68–69, 134–35, 212, 225, 249n48, 276n37 contingent convertibles (CoCos), 202 contracts, ix–x; blockchain and, 184, 187–90, 192, 195, 197–98, 203–4, 270n2; capital rule and, 209–18, 222–27, 231, 276n37; cloning legal persons and, 47–48, 52–55, 58–60, 64–65, 68–69, 247n24; code masters and, 159–60, 172, 178, 181–82; coding land and, 41–42; credible enforcement and, 1–2; digital code and, 183–92, 195, 198, 203, 271n13, 271n17, 271n18, 272n32; empire of law and, 2–8, 13, 15–16, 21, 238n48; enforcement of, 2, 16, 203; frustration of in common law, 271n13; global code and, 135–37, 139, 145–53; insurance, 190, 271n17; minting debt and, 78–81, 86, 88–89, 107; nature’s code and, 129; nexus of, 48; rise of West and, 4; Roman law and, 187; smart, 187–91; theory of firms and, 272n32 convertibility: capital rule and, 211, 226–27, 229, 233; debt and, 3, 15, 77–78, 87–91; digital code and, 183, 193, 199; empire of law and, 3–4, 11, 13, 15, 19; state money and, 3 Conveyance Act, 38–39 copyright, 11, 115, 256n23 corporate law, ix–x; asset partitioning and, 53; capital rule and, 209–11, 224; choosing, 69–71; cloning legal persons and, 47–56, 60–62, 65, 67–72, 74, 76, 246n14, 246n16, 248n30; code masters and, 159–60, 163–64, 168, 174–79, 269n60; coding land and, 24, 35, 37, 44; digital code and, 185, 189, 196, 202; empire of law and, 3, 5, 8, 11, 13, 21, 238n54; enabling, 55; global code and, 135–36, 155; incorporation theory and, 69–70, 74, 136, 246n10; international private, 68–69; international treaty, 9, 120, 136–39, 225; legal personality and, 55; minting debt and, 78, 80, 86, 91, 98–102, 107, 252n22, 253n41; nature’s code and, 108, 115, 122, 125; seat theory and, 53, 69–70; shopping for, 67–69; sunset provisions and, 76; treaty law and, 70; veils and, 8, 13, 48, 246n16 corporations: arbitration and, 48, 56, 67, 73–76; autonomy and, 50; blue-chip, 83, 175–76, 269n55; bonds and, 5, 16, 44, 48–49, 83, 86, 102–5, 108, 128, 195, 198, 202, 211, 252n22, 262n32; choosing tax rate and, 71–73; coding modern, 54–56; conflict of law and, 9, 68–69, 134–35, 212, 225, 249n48, 276n37; contracts and, 47–48, 52–55, 58–60, 64–65, 68–69; durability and, 47, 54–55; essence of, 52; immortality and, 50, 55, 65–67; incorporation theory and, 69–70, 74, 136, 246n10; legal entities and, 14, 51–59, 65, 69–71, 249n46, 253n41; legal structures and, 48–51, 54, 58, 70–71, 76, 80; Lehman Brothers’ bankruptcy and, 48–58, 61–65, 70–75, 80, 85, 96, 101, 103–4, 106, 135, 149, 175, 190, 245n4, 246n6, 248n33; limited liability and, 51, 53–54, 60–61, 63, 99, 254n49; loss shifting and, 55, 59–64, 67; mobility and, 68, 70; ownership and, 59, 67, 92, 118, 136; partnerships and, 65 (see also partnerships); poison pills and, 163–64, 266n15, 266n17; PRIMA and, 136; put option and, 55, 64, 226; RASCAL and, 73–75, 250n60, 250n62; rating agencies and, 80, 86–87, 98–100, 251n6, 251n19; regulation and, 47–48, 50, 56, 68, 73–76, 226, 249n46; risk and, 48, 54–56, 59, 63–66, 70, 74–75; Roman law and, 51, 54; shareholders and, 48–56 (see also shareholders); shielding and, 3, 14, 20, 22, 44, 47–48, 51–63, 65, 67, 71, 78, 84, 86, 99, 107, 129, 161, 165, 205, 215, 238n51, 246n16, 247n20; sovereignty and, 53, 66–70; subsidiaries and, 50–53, 58–59, 61–64, 70–74, 84, 131, 135, 149, 151, 191, 196, 247n17, 250n59, 259n80; United States and, 139, 142, 148, 151, 156; US Supreme Court and, 68 cotton, 41, 49, 246n5 courts: appeals and, 26–27, 72, 113, 139, 143, 155–56, 261n18; arbitration and, 180–82 (see also arbitration); Belize and, 23–24, 27–29, 126, 230, 261n21; Canada and, 138–43, 152–57, 261n17, 261n19; capital rule and, 206–7, 211–18, 221–24, 227, 230; cease and desist orders and, 113; certiorari writ and, 261n18; cloning legal persons and, 58, 68–70, 73–76, 247n24; code masters and, 159–64, 168–73, 177, 180–82; coding land and, 23–34, 38–45, 244n63; Common Pleas and, 32; Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) and, 156–57; digital code and, 187, 204; discovery doctrine and, 34–35; empire of law and, 7–8, 12, 15–20; equity rule and, 31–32; European Court of Justice and, 70, 156; first-mover advantage and, 214–15; genetics and, 109–16, 127, 211, 214; global code and, 133, 136, 138–46, 150, 152–56, 261n18, 261n21, 262n45; Ibanez case and, 95–97; Indian Removal Act and, 34; indigenous rights and, 126; Inns of Court and, 242n29; International Court of Justice and, 125, 146; ISDA and, 146; jingle rule, 247n24; King’s Council and, 27, 31; landowners and, 38–39; minting debt and, 87, 90–91, 96–98, 104, 252n31; nature’s code and, 110–16; patents and, 120; plaintiffs and, 32, 58, 69, 113, 142, 214, 265n5, 275n17; Privy Council and, 27–29, 126; property and, 17, 23–28, 30, 38–39, 43–44, 96–97, 126, 136, 140, 143, 159–60, 172, 214–15, 218, 262; Star Chamber and, 31; sunset provisions and, 76; trade secrets and, 127–31; tribunals and, 18, 136–43, 146, 152, 155–57, 261n21, 264n70; US Supreme Court and, 34, 68, 110–13, 116, 127, 211, 214 credit cooperatives, 93–95 credit default swaps (CDS), 190–91, 271nn17–19 credit derivatives, 78, 145, 165, 227 Crédit Mobilier, 102–6 creditors: bailouts and, 55, 62, 64, 104–5, 151, 226, 247n17; capital rule and, 206–7, 211, 216; cloning legal persons and, 47–48, 51, 54–67, 71, 73, 75, 246n16, 247n24; code masters and, 158–59, 168; coding land and, 24, 30, 35–45; Debt Recovery Act and, 39–40; digital code and, 187–88, 202; empire of law and, 3, 13–16, 20; eviction and, 41, 233; global code and, 144, 147–50, 262n41, 262n45; landlords and, 206–7; Lehman Brothers and, 61, 63–64, 71, 73, 103; limited liability and, 51, 53–54, 60–61, 63, 99, 254n49; lobbying by, 207; minting debt and, 77–79, 88–89, 92–93, 95, 103–5, 107; reciprocal claims and, 262n41; Roman law and, 54; shareholders and, 14, 48, 55–56, 60–67, 71, 104, 168, 202, 246n16; shielding assets from, 14, 20, 47–48, 54–61, 63, 65, 67, 71, 107, 247n20; Statute of Enrollments and, 44; Statute of Uses and, 44; tort, 55, 59; trade secrets and, 128 Crick, Francis, 108–10 Critique of Rights (Menke), 209, 231 cryptocurrencies, 15, 192, 196–203, 238n53, 270n4, 273n43, 274n57 debt, ix; bills of exchange and, 57, 78, 88–92, 108, 198–99, 252n31; capital rule and, 206–7, 209, 219, 228; cloning legal persons and, 47–53, 56, 59–60, 67, 73–74; code masters and, 158, 167, 174; coding land and, 30, 35–42; convertibility and, 3, 15, 77–78, 87–91; credit cooperatives and, 93–95; Crédit Mobilier and, 102–6; creditors and, 3, 13 (see also creditors); default and, 14, 35–36, 38, 42, 56, 62, 81–83, 88–89, 92, 96–97, 100, 102, 105, 137, 146–48, 151, 153, 170, 174, 180, 187, 190, 223, 233, 262n45; derivatives and, 78, 81, 86, 91; digital code and, 187, 190, 198–203; empire of law and, 3, 13–16, 20–21; foreclosure and, 39, 95–98, 253n44; global code and, 144, 147, 149–50, 262n41; Kleros clones and, 79, 86, 98–100, 107, 135, 165; minting, 77–107 (see also minting debt); NC2 and, 79–87, 94, 98–100, 106–7, 135, 251n4, 251n19; notes and, 78, 88–92, 98, 108, 198–200, 202; private money and, 86, 89, 92, 101–7, 147, 202; regulation and, 85, 90–91, 99–100, 103–7, 251n6, 255n73; risk and, 78–87, 90–95, 98–100, 104–5, 251n6, 251n19; securitization and, 78–86, 91–95, 98–101, 251n11, 251n13, 253n41; state money and, 77–78, 88–93, 106; unsecured, 79 Debt Recovery Act, 39–40 Deposit Trust Corporation, 254n49 derivatives: Bank for International Settlement (BIS) and, 149–50; bankruptcy and, 144–52; capital rule and, 211, 227; collateralized debt obligations (CDOs) and, 87, 99–101, 108, 165, 211, 254n53; comeback of, 262n36; complex credit, 165; digital code and, 189, 202; empire of law and, 5, 8; Financial Stability Board (FSB) and, 150–51; global code and, 143–53, 262n36, 263n49; International Swaps and Derivatives Association (ISDA) and, 145–53, 261n31, 271n18; Lehman Brothers and, 63; Loan Market Association (LMA) and, 262n32; Master Agreement (MA) and, 146–47, 150–51, 153; minting debt and, 78, 81, 86, 91; paving way for, 143–52; PRIME and, 146; safe harbors for, 263n49; transnational, 150–51 De Soto, Hernando, 14 digital autonomous organizations (DAO), 194–97, 272n29, 272n30, 272n33 digital code: arbitration and, 190, 204; assets and, 187–94, 197–204; autonomy and, 194–97; Bitcoin and, 197–202; blockchains and, 184, 187–90, 192, 195, 197–98, 203–4, 270n2; bugs and, 185, 188, 196; capitalism and, 199–200; capital rule and, 205, 208–9, 212, 216, 221–23; “code is law” and, 183, 196; coercive power and, 187, 193; collateral and, 187, 190–91, 271n19; common law and, 271n13; contracts and, 183–92, 195, 198, 203, 271n13, 271n17, 271n18, 272n32; convertibility and, 183, 193, 199; corporate law and, 185, 189, 196, 202; courts and, 187, 204; creditors and, 187–88, 202; debt and, 187, 190, 198–203; derivatives and, 189, 202; durability and, 183, 193; elitism and, 186; enclosure and, 183, 203; enforcement and, 187, 190, 203; exogenous shocks and, 188; hierarchy and, 185–86, 201–2; immutable ledgers and, 188–90; investment and, 195–97, 200–202, 272n33; knowledge and, 183; lawyers and, 183–86, 188, 204; legal code and, 183–90, 194, 197, 203–4; legal entities and, 195; Lehman Brothers and, 190; LIBOR and, 190; Marxism and, 185; as meritocracy, 186; mining and, 200–201; patents and, 203–4; priority rights and, 193; private code and, 198; private money and, 198–99, 202; property and, 184–86, 191–94, 198, 203–4, 272n28; realists and, 184–86; reform and, 273n46; regulation and, 185–86, 190, 271n17, 272n30; replacing law by, 183–84; residual rights and, 191–92; scalability and, 184; shareholders and, 195–96, 202; state money and, 198–203; state power and, 184, 193, 197; Szabo on, 192–93, 198; United States and, 202; utopists and, 184; wealth and, 198, 200 discovery doctrine, 34–35 dividends, 11, 53, 61–62, 103 DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid), 108–11, 114 Drahos, Peter, 124 dry exchange, 90 Du Pont, 124 durability: capital rule and, 211, 229, 233; cloning legal persons and, 47, 54–55; code masters and, 159, 161, 182; coding land and, 24, 39, 42–43, 46; digital code and, 183, 193; empire of law and, 3–5, 11, 13–15, 19, 21; intangible capital and, 117; minting debt and, 78 Dutch East India Company (VOC), 65–67, 196 East Asian Financial Crisis, 105 Economist, The (magazine), 37 Edward III, King of England, 118 Egypt, 133 Eichengreen, Barry, 240n64 elephant curve, 1, 8 Eli Lilly, 138–43, 152–55, 261n17, 261n19 elitism: capital rule and, 218; cloning legal persons and, 66, 75; code masters and, 158, 162, 164, 175–77; coding land and, 8, 40–41, 75, 158, 164, 254n55; digital code and, 186; empire of law and, 2, 8; global code and, 133; gold coins and, 254n55; Goldman Sachs and, 175; Lehman Brothers and, 175; minting debt and, 85, 254n55; Roman law and, 132–33; WASPs and, 176 Elizabeth I, Queen of England, 32, 119 empire of law: arbitration and, 15, 18; bankruptcy and, 3, 13–14, 16, 21; capitalism and, 2, 4, 8, 10–14, 17–21, 238n44; coercive power and, 4, 7, 15–21, 239n60; collateral and, 3, 7, 11–13, 16, 21, 238n49; common law and, 5, 8; contracts and, 2–4, 7–8, 13, 15–16, 21, 238n48; convertibility and, 3–4, 11, 13, 15, 19; corporate law and, 3, 5, 8, 11, 13, 21, 238n54; courts and, 7–8, 12, 15–20; creditors and, 3, 13–16, 20; debt and, 3, 13–16, 20–21; derivatives and, 5, 8; durability and, 3–5, 11, 13–15, 19, 21; elephant curve and, 1, 8; elitism and, 2, 8; enforcement and, 2, 9, 12, 16–19, 239n60; enigma of capital and, 9–13; globalization and, 2; growth and, 1, 4, 8, 20, 235n10; inequality and, 1–3, 6, 21–22, 235n9, 240n69, 240n70; inheritance and, 238n48; intangible capital and, 13; investment and, 12, 14, 16; labor and, 2, 9–11, 237n37; law’s guiding hand and, 6–9; lawyers and, 3–4, 6, 8, 15, 19–20, 22, 165, 236n26; legal attributes and, 13–15; legal code and, 2–15, 19–22; legal entities and, 14; legal norms and, 16–17; legal structures and, 4, 6, 9, 18, 21; Marxism and, 2, 9–11, 22; monopolies and, 17; mortgages and, 13–15; patents and, 11; priority rights and, 13–14, 16, 18; private law and, 20–21; property and, 1–5, 11–14, 17, 19, 21, 238n44, 238n48, 238n50, 239n56, 240n68; reform and, 1; regulation and, 7; risk and, 14, 17; self-interest and, 6, 8–9, 18, 232, 236n18; shielding and, 3, 14, 20, 22; slavery and, 11–12, 237n38, 237n40; state power and, 4, 14–19; universality and, 3–4, 11, 13–14, 15, 19, 21; wealth and, 1–8, 12–14, 17–22 enclosure: capital rule and, 229; coding land and, 229; digital code and, 183, 203; intangible capital and, 117, 256n14; knowledge and, 35, 108–9, 115, 117, 131, 183; nature’s code and, 109–12, 115; property and, 29–35, 39, 229; trade secrets and, 131 Enclosure Acts, 29–30, 242n22 enforcement: capital rule and, 210, 220, 223; code masters and, 168, 180; contract, 2, 16, 203; digital code and, 187, 190, 203; empire of law and, 2, 9, 12, 16–19, 239n60; global code and, 134, 139–40, 147, 152, 154; International Court of Justice and, 125; law, 16–19, 125, 152, 154, 168, 180, 187, 220, 259n80; minting debt and, 88; priority rights and, 16; trade secrets and, 130; World Trade Organization (WTO) and, 125 Engels, Friedrich, 185 English law.

The Meritocracy Trap: How America's Foundational Myth Feeds Inequality, Dismantles the Middle Class, and Devours the Elite
by Daniel Markovits
Published 14 Sep 2019

Inequality’s modern critics no doubt employ a less systematic method and strike a more moderate tone, but the conventional wisdom to this day pursues a similar style of argument, a variation on Marx’s rentier theme. Critics still commonly connect economic inequality to the familiar political and economic battle between capital and labor, associating the rich with capital and inequality’s increase with capital’s renewed dominance. Thomas Piketty’s formidable book Capital in the Twenty-First Century gives this view its now-canonical statement. Familiar laments about the decline of labor unions, rising market power among large employers, and outsourcing and globalization also share this general attitude. These complaints capture something real. Unions have been systematically dismantled in recent decades.

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outright fraud: See, e.g., Russell Sobel, “Crony Capitalism Pays Well for Rent-Seeking CEOs,” Investor’s Business Daily, July 9, 2014, accessed June 14, 2018, www.investors.com/politics/commentary/political-activity-and-connections-dont-make-business-profitable/. a rising oligarchy: See Thomas Piketty, Capital in the Twenty-First Century, trans. Arthur Goldhammer (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2014). Hereafter cited as Piketty, Capital. denounce real targets: In addition to Piketty’s work, canonical accounts along these lines include Joseph E. Stiglitz, The Price of Inequality (New York: W.

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See elites, burdens on; middle class, burdens on Bureau of Labor Statistics, U.S., 181, 317nn(18), 330n(67), 335n(87), 337n(93), 341n(104), 351n(127), 352n(130), 355n(134), 364n(166), 365n(171), 366nn(174), 369n(179), 371–72nn(182–83), 375nn(185–87), 383n(220), 396n(267), 401n(282), 402nn(293, 298), burnout, 43 Bush, Barbara, 229 Bush, George W., 68, 197, 198, 224 Bush, Jenna, 229 campaign financing, 52 Cantor, Eric, 57 capital asset pricing model, 237–38 capital deepening, 253–54 capital dominance, 13, 15, 18, 88–89, 92–94 Capital in the Twenty-First Century (Piketty), 88 Cappelli, Peter, 333n(83), 358nn(140–41), 359n(141), 364n(167), 365nn(169–70), 366–67nn(173–74, 176), 368nn(176–77), 370n(180), 371n(182), 379n(203), 392n(248) Carnegie, Andrew, 51 Carnevale, Anthony, 353n(132), 354n(132), 356nn(136), 359nn(141), 372nn (182–83), 374n(183), 403nn(305) carried interest, 91–92 casino lobby, 54 celebrities, 85, 97 Census Bureau, U.S., 314n(3), 316n(13), 318nn(21–23), 319nn(23, 25), 322nn(41), 324n(46), 325nn(48, 50), 334nn(85–86), 339nn(99–100), 340–41nn(102–4), 345n(117), 346nn(118), 349n(125), 350–51n(126–27), 354nn(132–33), 357n(138), 359nn(141–42), 365n(169), 368nn(177–78), 372nn(182), 375n(186), 378n(201), 382nn(216), 393n(251), 401n(292), 402n(293), 403nn(305–6) Center for American Progress, 283 CEOs.

Automation and the Future of Work
by Aaron Benanav
Published 3 Nov 2020

Meanwhile, in Italy, the economy has completely stagnated. 3 See William Baumol, “Macroeconomics of Unbalanced Growth: The Anatomy of Urban Crisis,” in American Economic Review, vol. 57, no. 3, June 1967, pp. 415–26; Robert Rowthorn and Ramana Ramaswamy, “Deindustrialization: Causes and Implications,” IMF Working Paper 97/42, 1997, pp. 9–11; Dani Rodrik, “Premature Deindustrialization,” Journal of Economic Growth, vol. 21, no. 1, 2016, p. 16. 4 Data on capital stock derives from the Penn World Table 9.1, last updated September 2019, retrieved from FRED, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis on May 9, 2020. 5 See Joseph Schumpeter, Business Cycles, vol. 1, McGraw-Hill, 1939, pp. 93–4. 6 Some economists have attempted to theorize tendential economic stagnation and its relationship to rising inequality. See, for example, Thomas Piketty, Capital in the Twenty-First Century, Harvard University Press, 2014; Robert J. Gordon, Rise and Fall of American Growth, Princeton University Press, 2016; and the essays collected around Lawrence Summers’s hypothesis in Coen Teulings and Richard Baldwin, eds., Secular Stagnation: Facts, Causes, and Cures, Vox, 2014. 7 For the original account of this phenomenon, see Nicholas Kaldor, Causes of the Slow Rate of Economic Growth in the United Kingdom, Cambridge University Press, 1966.

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See also Loukas Karabarbounis and Brent Neiman, “The Global Decline of the Labour Share,” Quarterly Journal of Economics, vol. 129, no. 1, 2014. 46 Andrew Sharpe and James Uguccioni, “Decomposing the Productivity-Wage Nexus in Selected OECD Countries, 1986– 2013,” in International Productivity Monitor, no. 32, 2017, p. 31. 47 See Thomas Piketty, Capital in the Twenty-First Century, Harvard University Press, pp. 407–9, on the number of servants the top 1 percent of wealth inheritors can employ, compared to top labor-income earners. 48 Ford, Rise of the Robots, p. 219; Mike Davis, Planet of Slums, Verso, 2006, p. 199. 49 Some portion of the income gains of the poorest 50 percent was eaten up by higher living costs in cities, which are notoriously difficult to measure; urbanization increased from 39 to 54 percent over the same period. 50 Facundo Alvaredo et al., eds., World Inequality Report 2018, Harvard University Press, 2018, p. 52. 51 See the analysis of this global phenomenon in United Nations, Human Development Report 2019: Beyond Income, beyond Averages, beyond Today: Inequalities in Human Development in the 21st Century, 2019. 52 See Kalleberg, Precarious Lives, pp. 130–49; and Blanchflower, Not Working, pp. 212–37. 53 OECD, Employment Outlook, 2019, p. 29. 54 Marcel van der Linden, “The Crisis of World Labor,” Solidarity, no. 176, May–June 2015.

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In fact, the share of the world’s population suffering from the most extreme forms of poverty has declined over time, alongside the urbanization of the world’s population.49 However, poorer workers’ share of overall income growth remains much smaller than their share of the population. As economist Thomas Piketty and his colleagues have shown, incomes for the poorest half of the global population doubled between 1980 and 2016 (though rising by only a tiny amount in absolute terms), but that accounted for only 12 percent of overall income growth; the richest 1 percent captured more than twice that share—27 percent—over the same period.50 As inequality has risen, social mobility has fallen.51 Whether working as home health aides in Minnesota, adjunct university lecturers in Italy, fruit vendors in Tunisia, or construction workers in India, more and more people feel that they are stuck in place.

The Wealth of Humans: Work, Power, and Status in the Twenty-First Century
by Ryan Avent
Published 20 Sep 2016

For an awful lot of people, work has become a less certain and often less remunerative contributor to material security. It is a development that makes political forces of populist outsiders, such as Donald Trump and Marine Le Pen, and bestsellers of wonky economics books, such as Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century,10 an analysis of global inequality published in 2014 that flew off the shelves. Work is not just the means by which we obtain the resources needed to put food on the table. It is also a source of personal identity. It helps give structure to our days and our lives. It offers the possibility of personal fulfilment that comes from being of use to others, and it is a critical part of the glue that holds society together and smoothes its operation.

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Authors like Martin Ford, whose 2015 book Rise of the Robots20 described a vision of a post-work world, argue that robots and machine intelligence will create a world wholly different from anything that has come before, and that a techno-socialism of sorts will need to be adopted to keep society functioning. Economist Thomas Piketty’s aforementioned masterpiece, Capital in the Twenty-First Century, set out a bold theory of inequality and predicted trouble ahead, as did Chris Hayes, whose book Twilight of the Elites21 was an incisive examination of the loss of faith in elite institutions and technocrats, who have struggled to manage recent economic change.

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The rising tide didn’t wash away inequities, but it kept both capital and labour satisfied enough to hold the revolution at bay. From 1875 until the eve of the First World War, the world’s industrialized economies were extraordinarily unequal, but rising living standards for workers kept revolutionary fervour in check. Yet societies were not exactly living harmoniously, either. As Thomas Piketty notes, in Capital in the Twenty-First Century, it took the turmoil of the first half of the twentieth century to undo the inequality that developed in the nineteenth. War, taxation, inflation and economic depression destroyed many of the great fortunes of the industrial era. They ushered in an entirely new state structure, in which extensive taxation was used to fund massive welfare states.

Restarting the Future: How to Fix the Intangible Economy
by Jonathan Haskel and Stian Westlake
Published 4 Apr 2022

Wilkinson and Pickett’s best-selling book The Spirit Level argues that inequality leads to crime, poor health, and unhappiness not just among the poor but also across society.6 In 2011, the Occupy movement popularised the meme of “The 99%,” highlighting the dichotomy between a rich elite and the population as a whole. And Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century brought decades of empirical work on wealth inequality to bear on the public debate.7 FIGURE 1.3: Growth by Income Group in the World, 1980–2016. Source: Figure E4 in Alvardero et al. (2020). We observe the material inequality in rich countries both in people’s wealth and in their income.

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Intangible investment allows professional services employers to replace egalitarian work cultures, where pay is often based on seniority, with sharply incentivised ones, where workers “eat what they kill.” The rise of intangible investment also has an indirect but powerful effect on wealth inequality. Following the publication of Thomas Piketty’s landmark Capital in the Twenty-First Century, it became clear that a significant proportion of the increased wealth inequality that Piketty observed (almost all of it, according to Matt Rognlie)11 derived from the dizzying increase in property prices in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. These increases did not arise everywhere.

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Mass Flourishing: How Grassroots Innovation Created Jobs, Challenge, and Change. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Philippon, Thomas. 2019. The Great Reversal: How America Gave Up on Free Markets. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. Piketty, Thomas. 2014. Capital in the Twenty-First Century. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Porta, Rafael La, Florencio Lopez-De-Silanes, Andrei Shleifer, and Robert W. Vishny. 1997. “Legal Determinants of External Finance.” Journal of Finance 52 (3): 1131. https://doi.org/10.2307/2329518. Posner, Eric, and E. Glen Weyl. 2018. Radical Markets: Uprooting Capitalism and Democracy for a Just Society.

Rentier Capitalism: Who Owns the Economy, and Who Pays for It?
by Brett Christophers
Published 17 Nov 2020

Using the neoliberal UK as its primary focus, this book explores the forms that Western rentier capitalism takes, the factors accounting for its materialization, and the consequences of its ascendancy. In recent years, much has been written about Western rentierism and rentier capitalism by some of the world’s highest-profile commentators on the economy. Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century, published in 2014, was a catalytic intervention in this regard.1 It is not a book about rent and rentiers per se; its primary focus is inequality. But rent is a pivotal variable in the book and in Piketty’s theorization of capitalism. As is by now well known, Piketty argues that, unless actively checked, wealth inequality tends under capitalism inexorably to rise because of the famous r > g dynamic, where g represents the rate of economic growth and r represents the rate of return on capital, or the rate at which rents can be extracted from the existing stock of assets.

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This ideology legitimizes wage deflation, and thus the channelling of income and wealth into the hands of manipulative capitalist rentiers. What is needed above all, then, is a fundamental revaluation of work and of what workers do. Notably, Piketty’s own follow-up to Capital in the Twenty-First Century, 2020’s Capital and Ideology, treads similar ground.18 Where Capital in the Twenty-First Century examined how and why capitalism creates inequality (giving a starring if abstracted role to rent), Capital and Ideology examines how social elites – capitalist or otherwise – historically have ideologically justified such inequality; and although rent and the rentier barely merit a mention this time, it is indisputably rentier capitalist societies whose ‘inequality regimes’ (his term) Piketty is principally concerned to elucidate.

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Harvey, The Limits to Capital (Oxford: Blackwell, 1982), p. 360. 61. Land Reform Review Group, The Land of Scotland and the Common Good (Edinburgh: Scottish Government, 2014), p. 87. 62. Piketty, Capital in the Twenty-First Century, pp. 115–16. 63. D. Harvey, Seventeen Contradictions and the End of Capitalism (London: Profile Books, 2014), pp. 139–40. 64. Piketty, Capital in the Twenty-First Century, p. 395. 65. Mann, In the Long Run We Are All Dead, pp. 355, 298. 66. K. Marx, ‘The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte’, in T. Carver, ed., Marx: Later Political Writings (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), pp. 31–127, at p. 57. 67.

The Levelling: What’s Next After Globalization
by Michael O’sullivan
Published 28 May 2019

The reality that there are winners and losers from globalization has exposed the narrative of the upper echelons of Western society, for whom inequality is now a preoccupation. For example, the IMF, the World Bank, and the McKinsey Global Institute all profess alarm that inequality is too high. This newfound sympathy for the less-well-off may have several motivations, not least the popular reception of Thomas Piketty’s book on inequality, Capital in the 21st Century, which has managed to stir interest in an arcane topic.15 In general, the lion’s share of evidence shows that inequality is at historically very high levels, especially in the larger economies of the world such as the United States and, to a growing degree, China.16 In recent years, inequality has not risen sharply (though the number of news reports on it has done so), but it has been persistently high.

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Teeth: The Story of Beauty, Inequality, and the Struggle for Oral Health in America. New Press, 2016. Perkins, F. The Roosevelt I Knew. Penguin Classics, 2011. Pettit, P. Republicanism: A Theory of Freedom and Government. Oxford University Press, 1997. Pew Research Center, Global Attitudes and Trends Survey. 2017. http://www.pew global.org/database/. Piketty, T. Capital in the 21st Century. Harvard University Press, 2014. Piketty, T., L. Yang, and G. Zucman. “Capital Accumulation, Private Property, and Inequality in China, 1978–2015.” VOX CEPR Policy Portal, July 20, 2017. https://voxeu.org/article/capital-accumulation-private-property-and-inequality-china-1978-2015. Piris, J.

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Pew Research Center, Global Indicators Database, http://www.pewglobal.org/database/indicator/5/. 15. Another interesting viewpoint appears in Walter Schneider’s book The Great Leveller, which points out that often a crisis or regime change is required to alter the sociopolitical landscape. 16. A paper by Thomas Piketty and his colleagues shows that inequality in China may be higher than thought. See Piketty, Yang, and Zucman, “Capital Accumulation, Private Property, and Inequality in China, 1978–2015.” 17. World Bank, Visualize Inequality, http://www1.worldbank.org/poverty/visualizeinequality/; OECD Data, Income Inequality, https://data.oecd.org/inequality/income-inequality.htm; Milanovic, Global Inequality. 18.

Fully Grown: Why a Stagnant Economy Is a Sign of Success
by Dietrich Vollrath
Published 6 Jan 2020

But the evidence indicates that taxation and regulation did not have a significant effect on the ability of firms to produce real goods and services, and specifically there was no substantial shift in government policies around 2000 that could explain the growth slowdown. 15 Did Inequality Cause the Slowdown? From the Occupy Wall Street movement to Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century, economic inequality has gathered a lot of attention over the previous decade. And given that this coincided with the growth slowdown, it is natural to wonder whether inequality was a material cause of the slowdown in any way. From the perspective of the growth slowdown, though, the best way to view the rise in inequality is as just another symptom of the increasing market power of firms that we’ve already discussed rather than a separate cause in and of itself.

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The evidence here shows that much of the increase in inequality came from an increase in the wages earned by the top 1%. This shift toward wage income as a source of top-end inequality represented a distinct change from inequality in the past. The Piketty, Saez, and Zucman data gives us some information on the top 1%, but Thomas Piketty’s data from Capital in the Twenty-First Century provides more extensive insight into the fraction of income that is accounted for by capital (dividends, capital gains), labor (wages), and mixed income for subsets of the top 10%. Figure 15.3 shows wages as a percentage of total income for different groups within the top 10% for both 1929 and 2007.

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The real source of that decline in your tomato yield was the drought the year before, which in turn affected your ability to invest. The tomato analogy is oversimplified, but the same principle applies to talking about physical capital accumulation in the economy. Because physical capital depends on our ability to produce real GDP, the drop in the growth rate of physical capital in the twenty-first century may be as much a consequence of the growth slowdown as it is a cause. While arguments could be made that both human capital and the residual suffer from the same issue, they suffer far less than physical capital does. Lower growth in real GDP could, for example, limit the resources available to staff schools or universities, but most of the changes in human capital growth are driven by the demographics of people aging into or out of the labor force.

Straight Talk on Trade: Ideas for a Sane World Economy
by Dani Rodrik
Published 8 Oct 2017

Anat Admati and Martin Hellwig, The Bankers’ New Clothes: What’s Wrong with Banking and What to Do about It, Princeton University Press, Princeton and Oxford, 2013; Simon Johnson and James Kwak, White House Burning: The Founding Fathers, Our National Debt, and Why It Matters to You, Vintage Books, New York, 2012; Thomas Piketty, Capital in the Twenty-First Century, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, 2014; Anthony B. Atkinson, Inequality: What Can be Done? Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, 2015; Mariana Mazzucato, The Entrepreneurial State: Debunking Public vs. Private Sector Myths, Public Affairs Press, New York, 2015; Ha-Joon Chang, Economics: The User’s Guide, Penguin, London, 2014; J.

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Theodore Pelagidis, “Why Internal Devaluation is Not Leading to Export-Led Growth in Greece,” Brookings Online, September 12, 2014, http://www.brookings.edu/blogs/up-front/posts/2014/09/12-internal-devaluation-export-growth-greece-pelagidis. 10. “Pour l’économiste Thomas Piketty: Macron, c’est ‘l’Europe d’hier’,” Le Point, February 20, 2017, http://www.lepoint.fr/presidentielle/pour-l-economiste-thomas-piketty-macron-c-est-l-europe-d-hier-19-02-2017-2105950_3121.php#section-commentaires. 11. “Emmanuel Macron proposes Nordic economic model for France,” Financial Times, February 23, 2017, https://www.ft.com/content/3691a448-fa1d-11e6-9516-2d969e0d3b65. 12.

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During the presidential campaign, he was frequently accused of lacking specifics. To many on the left and the extreme right, he is a neoliberal, with little to distinguish himself from the mainstream policies of austerity that failed Europe and brought it to its current political impasse. The French economist Thomas Piketty, who supported the socialist candidate Benoit Hamon, described Macron as representing “yesterday’s Europe.”10 Many of Macron’s economic plans did indeed have a neoliberal flavor. He has vowed to lower the corporate tax rate from 33.5 percent to 25 percent, cut 120,000 civil service jobs, keep the government deficit below the EU limit of 3 percent of GDP, and increase labor-market flexibility (a euphemism for making it easier for firms to fire workers).

The Bill Gates Problem: Reckoning With the Myth of the Good Billionaire
by Tim Schwab
Published 13 Nov 2023

In a functioning democracy, everyone is supposed to pay their fair share of taxes and to have some basic, common claims to certain rights, opportunities, and privileges. If we lived in that world, there would be no obscenely rich people like Bill Gates, and there would be no need for philanthropic organizations like the Gates Foundation. * * * THOMAS PIKETTY’S 2013 book, Capital in the 21st Century—at nearly seven hundred pages, including economic equations and theory—did not seem like the kind of book that would be an international bestseller, but it was. It managed to strike a chord by explaining in detail that the rich are getting richer and that extreme wealth and inequality are bad for society.

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See also specific grant recipients; and projects administrative costs and advocacy groups funded by annual letter annual reports board of “Board Service Policy” catalytic role of chameleon nature of colonial and racial dynamics and dark money and divorce of Bill and Melinda and donations to private companies donations to governments endowment and evaluations and female employees and focus on people of color forward funding and founding of future of global access agreements and Goalkeepers gala and government agencies and grant management by grants database and headquarters and investment income and lawsuits and lives saved claims and lobbying and media and micromanagement and Microsoft overlap and organizational culture and PR and priorities of private-sector partners and regulation and oversight of size and wealth of spending requirements and sub-grants and surrogates taxes and transparency and Bill & Melinda Gates Medical Research Institute Billions (TV show) Bio Farma Biological E Limited Biolyse BioNTech biotechnology Britt, Glenn Black Enterprise Black Lives Matter Bloomberg Bloomberg, Michael Blumberg, Alex Blunt, Roy Boeing Bomba, Khalid Bono Booker, Cory Borlaug, Norman Bornstein, David Bose, Niranjan Boston College Boston Consulting Group Breakthrough Energy Bridge International Academies British Medical Journal Broken (podcast) Brookings Institution Brooks, Susan Brunswick Group Buffett, Peter Buffett, Warren Bulgaria Bureau of Investigative Journalism Bureau of Labor Statistics Burkina Faso Burma Bush, George H. W. Bush, George W. Byass, Peter California Callahan, Bryan Callahan, David Cambodia Cambridge Analytica Cameroon campaign contributions Campaign for High School Equity Canada Canadian National Railway Capital in the 21st Century (Piketty) CARE Learning Tours Carnegie, Andrew Carnevale, Anthony Cascade Investment Caterpillar Catholic Church Cato CDC Foundation Census Bureau Center for Global Development Center for Global Health Policy Center for Investigative Reporting Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Centre for Analytics and Behavioural Change (CABC) Cepheid Chad Chagas disease Chalkbeat Chan, Priscilla Charles Koch Foundation Chasing Ghislaine (podcast) Chauvin, Derek Chekweko, Jackson chemotherapy Chevron Chicago Public Schools Chiefs for Change child care child mortality child slavery China Chronicle of Higher Education Cipla Cisco Clarity project Clark, Sam Class Size Matters climate change Clinton, Bill Clinton, Chelsea Clinton family, charitable initiatives Bill, Hillary, and Chelsea Clinton Foundation Clinton Health Access Initiative Clinton, Hillary Clooney Foundation for Justice CNBC CNN Coalition for Effective and Efficient Tax Administration Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI) Coats, Dan Coca-Cola FEMSA Code.org Cody, Anthony Cody, William F.

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“We want our children to make their own way”: The Gateses’ children enjoy ultra-wealthy lifestyles, and each will almost certainly inherit a large sum of money. It is preposterous to claim that they will have to “make their own way in the world.” It was a private call: Aimee Picchi, “Thomas Piketty: Bill Gates Doesn’t Want to Pay More Tax,” CBS News, January 5, 2015, https://www.cbsnews.com/news/thomas-piketty-bill-gates-doesnt-want-to-pay-more-tax/. “It isn’t always popular”: Bill Gates, “What I’m Thinking About This New Year’s Eve,” GatesNotes, December 30, 2019, https://www.gatesnotes.com/About-Bill-Gates/Year-in-Review-2019. meaningful resources pursuing tax policy: The only record I could find of Gates putting money into tax reform was a $250,000 donation in 2006 to oppose a ballot initiative aimed at repealing Washington state’s estate tax.

The Myth of Capitalism: Monopolies and the Death of Competition
by Jonathan Tepper
Published 20 Nov 2018

Voters know that something is rotten in capitalism, and the elite does as well. If voting for political outsiders is what the average person does, then pretending to read weighty books on capitalism is what the elite does. Nothing highlights the search for a diagnosis of our ills more than the extraordinary, puzzling success of Thomas Piketty's Capital in the Twenty-First Century. A 700-page economics book that is full of data tables and charts is hardly anyone's idea of a bestseller. There were no murder cases like in a Grisham book or any magical spells like in a J.K. Rowling book, yet Piketty's book sold more than 1.5 million copies. Everyone bought and pretended to read the book.

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Who cared about hundreds of pages of text when he had such good charts? Figure 10.1 Income Inequality in the United States, 1910–2015 The reviews of the book were ecstatic, even rapturous. The Economist said it was “the economics book that took the world by storm.” According to the Financial Times, “Thomas Piketty's book, ‘Capital in the Twenty-First Century’, has been the publishing sensation of the year. Its thesis of rising inequality tapped into the zeitgeist and electrified the post-financial crisis public policy debate.” Lawrence Summers's said this research “has transformed political discourse and is a Nobel Prize–worthy contribution.”

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In Houston, United has around a 60% market share, in Newark 51%, in Washington Dulles 43%, in San Francisco 38%, and in Chicago 31%.5 This situation is even more skewed for other airlines. For example, Delta has an 80% market share in in Atlanta and 77% in Philadelphia, while in Dallas-Fort Worth it has 77%.6 For many routes, you simply have no choice. The episode became a metaphor for American capitalism in the twenty-first century. A highly profitable company had bloodied a consumer, and it didn't matter because consumers have no choice. When consumers see a man bloodied by a big company or see a suffering patient gouged by a hospital, they get the sense that something is profoundly wrong with companies. All around the world, people have an overwhelming sense that something is broken.

What Would the Great Economists Do?: How Twelve Brilliant Minds Would Solve Today's Biggest Problems
by Linda Yueh
Published 4 Jun 2018

Ross, Life of Adam Smith, p. 302. 26.  Smith, Wealth of Nations, bk IV, ch. 5, Digression concerning the Corn Trade and Corn Laws, para. 43. 2 – David Ricardo: Do Trade Deficits Matter? 1.    John E. King, 2013, David Ricardo, Basingstoke: Macmillan, p. 5. 2.    Ibid., pp. 15–16. 3.    Thomas Piketty, 2014, Capital in the Twenty-First Century, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, pp. 314–15. 4.    Nicholas Crafts, 2005, ‘The First Industrial Revolution: Resolving the Slow Growth/Rapid Industrialization Paradox’, Journal of the European Economic Association, 3(2/3), pp. 525–34. 5.    David Ricardo, 2011 [1817], The Works and Correspondence of David Ricardo, vol.

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Myth and Reality’, Centre for Economic Performance, London School of Economics and Political Science Discussion Paper No. 1246; http://cep.lse.ac.uk/pubs/download/dp1246.pdf Pigou, A. C., 1953, Alfred Marshall and Current Thought, London: Macmillan Pigou, A. C., ed., 1925, Memorials of Alfred Marshall, London: Macmillan Piketty, Thomas, 2014, Capital in the Twenty-First Century, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press Ranelagh, John, 1991, Thatcher’s People: An Insider’s Account of the Politics, the Power and the Personalities, London: HarperCollins Reagan, Ronald, 1986, ‘The President’s News Conference’, 12 August; www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=37733 ________, 1986, ‘Remarks to State Chairpersons of the National White House Conference on Small Business’, 15 August; www.reaganlibrary.gov/archives/speeches/1986/081586e.html Reich, Robert, 2012, Beyond Outrage: What Has Gone Wrong with Our Economy and Our Democracy, and How to Fix It, New York: Vintage Books Ricardo, David, 2011 [1817], On the Principles of Political Economy and Taxation, London: John Murray Robinson, Joan, 1932, Economics is a Serious Subject: The Apologia of an Economist to the Mathematician, the Scientist and the Plain Man, Cambridge: Heffer ________, 1962, Economic Philosophy, Harmondsworth: Pelican Books ________, 1969 [1933], The Economics of Imperfect Competition, London: Palgrave Macmillan ________, 1974, Reflections on the Theory of International Trade: Lectures Given in the University of Manchester, Manchester: Manchester University Press ________, 1980, ‘Marx, Marshall, and Keynes’, Collected Economic Papers, vols.

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How would Marshall have viewed inequalities that have burgeoned as the benefits of a growing economy disproportionately accrue to the top 1 per cent? There’s no doubt that inequality is high on the policy agenda, a reminder that we must consider the quality and not just the speed of economic growth. A best-selling book on the topic of inequality is by the French economist Thomas Piketty. Its popularity reflects a widespread concern that inequality is as high now in America as the Gilded Age of the late nineteenth century. A recent economics Nobel laureate, Joseph Stiglitz, has even pointed to inequality as one of the causes of the slow recovery after the Great Recession. So, how would Marshall view the worsening of income inequality which is often perceived as an indictment of capitalism?

The Great Economists: How Their Ideas Can Help Us Today
by Linda Yueh
Published 15 Mar 2018

Ross, Life of Adam Smith, p. 302. 26. Smith, Wealth of Nations, bk IV, ch. 5, Digression concerning the Corn Trade and Corn Laws, para. 43. Chapter 2 – David Ricardo: Do Trade Deficits Matter? 1. John E. King, 2013, David Ricardo, Basingstoke: Macmillan, p. 5. 2. Ibid., pp. 15–16. 3. Thomas Piketty, 2014, Capital in the Twenty-First Century, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, pp. 314–15. 4. Nicholas Crafts, 2005, ‘The First Industrial Revolution: Resolving the Slow Growth/Rapid Industrialization Paradox’, Journal of the European Economic Association, 3(2/3), pp. 525–34. 5. David Ricardo, 2011 [1817], The Works and Correspondence of David Ricardo, vol.

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Myth and Reality’, Centre for Economic Performance, London School of Economics and Political Science Discussion Paper No. 1246; http://cep.lse.ac.uk/pubs/download/dp1246.pdf Pigou, A. C., 1953, Alfred Marshall and Current Thought, London: Macmillan Pigou, A. C., ed., 1925, Memorials of Alfred Marshall, London: Macmillan Piketty, Thomas, 2014, Capital in the Twenty-First Century, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press Ranelagh, John, 1991, Thatcher’s People: An Insider’s Account of the Politics, the Power and the Personalities, London: HarperCollins Reagan, Ronald, 1986, ‘The President’s News Conference’, 12 August; www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=37733 ———, 1986, ‘Remarks to State Chairpersons of the National White House Conference on Small Business’, 15 August; www.reaganlibrary.gov/sites/default/files/archives/speeches/1986/081586e.htm Reich, Robert, 2012, Beyond Outrage: What Has Gone Wrong with Our Economy and Our Democracy, and How to Fix It, New York: Vintage Books Ricardo, David, 2011 [1817], On the Principles of Political Economy and Taxation, London: John Murray Robinson, Joan, 1932, Economics is a Serious Subject: The Apologia of an Economist to the Mathematician, the Scientist and the Plain Man, Cambridge: Heffer ———, 1962, Economic Philosophy, Harmondsworth: Pelican Books ———, 1969 [1933], The Economics of Imperfect Competition, London: Palgrave Macmillan ———, 1974, Reflections on the Theory of International Trade: Lectures Given in the University of Manchester, Manchester: Manchester University Press ———, 1980, ‘Marx, Marshall, and Keynes’, Collected Economic Papers, vols.

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How would Marshall have viewed inequalities that have burgeoned as the benefits of a growing economy disproportionately accrue to the top 1 per cent? There’s no doubt that inequality is high on the policy agenda, a reminder that we must consider the quality and not just the speed of economic growth. A best-selling book on the topic of inequality is by the French economist Thomas Piketty. Its popularity reflects a widespread concern that inequality is as high now in America as the Gilded Age of the late nineteenth century. A recent economics Nobel laureate, Joseph Stiglitz, has even pointed to inequality as one of the causes of the slow recovery after the Great Recession. So, how would Marshall view the worsening of income inequality which is often perceived as an indictment of capitalism?

The AI Economy: Work, Wealth and Welfare in the Robot Age
by Roger Bootle
Published 4 Sep 2019

These data come from World Inequality Database, https:/​/​wid.​world/​data/​ and Office for National Statistics, Effects of taxes and benefits on household income: historical datasets, https:/​/​www.​ons.​gov.​uk/​peoplepopulationandcommunity/​personalandhouseholdfinances/​incomeandwealth/​datasets/​theeffectsoftaxesandbenefitsonhouseholdincomehistoricaldatasets 6 Quoted by Schwab, K. (2018) Shaping the Future of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, Penguin Radom House: London, p. 23. 7 Kelly, K. (2012) Better than Human: Why Robots Will – and Must – Take Our Jobs, Wired, December 24, 2012, p. 155. 8 Brynjolfsson, E. and McAfee, A. (2016) The Second Machine Age, Work, Progress, And Prosperity in a Time of Brilliant Technologies, New York: W. W. Norton & Company, p. 157. 9 Ibid., p. 179. 10 Piketty, T. (2014) Capital in the Twenty-First Century, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. 11 See “Thomas Piketty’s Capital, Summarised in Four Paragraphs,” The Economist, May 2014, Lawrence Summers, “The Inequality Puzzle, Democracy: A Journal of Ideas, No. 33 (Summer 2014; Mervyn King, “Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty,” review, The Daily Telegraph, May 10, 2014. 12 See M. Feldstein in G. Wood and Steve Hughes, (eds) (2015) The Central Contradiction of Capitalism?

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So, globalization and digitization have been two powerful forces operating over the last two decades to drive an increase in inequality. And now into this world of burgeoning inequality there steps a Frenchman bearing (intellectual) gifts. In 2014 Thomas Piketty published a book explaining the trend toward increased inequality in a different and powerful way and forecasting that it would intensify. Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century became an international publishing sensation. It has proved to be the launching pad for thousands of books, academic papers, and PhD theses.10 Piketty’s thesis is that the distribution of wealth and income is set to become ever more unequal because, quite simply, the return on capital exceeds the economic growth rate.

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Third, Chris Giles, the Economics Editor of the Financial Times, has shown that there are serious problems with Piketty’s data at a detailed level, including discrepancies between the data in original sources and Piketty’s reproduction of them, as well as the crude insertion of “assumed” data where there are gaps in the original data. Giles says that: “The conclusions of Capital in the Twenty-First Century do not appear to be backed by the book’s own sources.”14 Theory and evidence Given how devastating these criticisms of Piketty’s data are, you might well think that it is superfluous to comment on the theoretical defects of Piketty’s thesis. Nevertheless, we should briefly consider the theory.

Ten Lessons for a Post-Pandemic World
by Fareed Zakaria
Published 5 Oct 2020

Lesson Nine: The World Is Becoming Bipolar 187 “failed state”: George Packer, “We Are Living in a Failed State,” Atlantic, June 2020. 187 “secular stagnation”: Lawrence H. Summers, “Reflections on Secular Stagnation,” February 19, 2015, remarks at Princeton University’s Julis-Rabinowitz Center for Public Policy and Finance. 187 highlighted rising inequality: See, inter alia, Thomas Piketty, Capital in the Twenty-First Century (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2013). 187 “deaths of despair”: Anne Case and Angus Deaton, Deaths of Despair and the Future of Capitalism (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2020). 188 Fintan O’Toole: Fintan O’Toole, “Donald Trump Has Destroyed the Country He Promised to Make Great Again,” Irish Times, April 25, 2020.

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Lesson Seven: Inequality Will Get Worse 147 “death is democratic”: Adriana Gomez Licon, “Mexican Day of Dead ‘Skeleton Lady’ Spreads Look,” Associated Press, October 31, 2013. 147 La Catrina: Simon Ingram, “La Catrina: The Dark History of Day of the Dead’s Immortal Icon,” National Geographic, October 18, 2019. 147 The Skull of Morbid Cholera: José Guadalupe Posada, La calavera del cólera morbo (1910), accessed via Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/99615954/. 148 “a very big problem”: Richard Wike, “The Global Consensus: Inequality Is a Major Problem,” Pew Research, November 15, 2013, https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2013/11/15/the-global-consensus-inequality-is-a-major-problem/. 148 narrowing over the same period: Taking on Inequality: Poverty and Shared Prosperity 2016, The World Bank Group, 9, 81, https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/bitstream/handle/10986/25078/9781464809583.pdf. 149 forty-two saw rises: “Table 4.1: Trends in the Within-Country Gini Index, 1993–2013,” Taking on Inequality: Poverty and Shared Prosperity 2016, The World Bank Group, 86, https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/bitstream/handle/10986/25078/9781464809583.pdf. 149 two where it fell: Ibid, 88. 149 twelve of the sixteen: Ibid. 149 gap has widened dramatically: Facundo Alvaredo, Lucas Chancel, Thomas Piketty, Emmanuel Saez, and Gabriel Zucman, “World Inequality Report 2018,” 46, https://wir2018.wid.world/files/download/wir2018-full-report-english.pdf. 150 highest level since 1928: Markus P. A. Schneider and Daniele Tavani, “Tale of Two Ginis in the United States, 1921–2012,” Levy Institute Working Paper (January 2015), http://www.levyinstitute.org/pubs/wp_826.pdf; see also Thomas Piketty, Paris School of Economics, excerpted figures and tables, Table 1.1, http://piketty.pse.ens.fr/files/capital21c/en/Piketty2014FiguresTables.pdf. 150 “defining challenge”: Barack Obama, “Remarks by the President on Economic Mobility,” White House, Office of the Press Secretary, December 4, 2013, https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/the-press-office/2013/12/04/remarks-president-economic-mobility. 151 five years ahead of schedule: United Nations, “Millennium Development Goals Report 2015,” 15, https://www.un.org/millenniumgoals/2015_MDG_Report/pdf/MDG%202015%20rev%20(July%201).pdf. 151 to 650 million: Max Roser and Esteban Ortiz-Ospina, “Global Extreme Poverty,” Our World in Data, 2019, https://ourworldindata.org/extreme-poverty. 151 mortality rate for young children dropped 59%: “Under-Five Mortality,” Global Health Observatory (GHO) data, WHO, https://www.who.int/gho/child_health/mortality/mortality_under_five_text/en/#:~:text=Trends,1%20in%2026%20in%202018. 151 just 14% of the world’s known deaths from Covid-19: Philip Schelle­kens and Diego Sourrouille, “Tracking COVID-19 as Cause of Death: Global Estimates of Relative Severity,” Brookings Institution, May 2020, https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/Tracking_COVID-19_as_-Cause_of_Death-Global_Estimates_of_Severity.pdf. 151 Heat may have some effect: Islam et al., “Temperature, Humidity, and Wind Speed Are Associated with Lower COVID-19 Incidence,” 2020, https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.03.27.20045658, cited in: Rapid Expert Consultation on SARS-CoV-2 Survival in Relation to Temperature and Humidity and Potential for Seasonality for the COVID-19 Pandemic (April 7, 2020), National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine, https://www.nap.edu/read/25771/chapter/1. 152 170 million in 2019: “Chinese Tourists Made 169 Million Outbound Trips in 2019: Report,” China Global Television Network, February 29, 2020, citing China’s National Bureau of Statistics, https://news.cgtn.com/news/2020–02–29/Chinese-tourists-made-169-million-outbound-trips-in-2019-report-OtIYWsZmOQ/index.html. 152 thirty times: “Dharavi slum has a population density almost 30 times greater than New York—about 280,000 people per square kilometer”: Vedika Sud, Helen Regen, and Esha Mitra, Mercury News, citing CNN, April 4, 2020, https://www.mercurynews.com/2020/04/03/doctors-india-must-prepare-for-onslaught-of-coronavirus/. 152 two-thirds of people live in congested slums: According to Leilani Farha, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on housing, as of 2019: Paul Wallace and Tope Alake, “Lagos Building Luxury Homes in Face of Affordable Housing Crisis,” Bloomberg, December 20, 2019. 152 eight hospital beds for every 10,000 people: World Bank DataBank, “Hospital Beds (Per 1,000 People)—Bangladesh, European Union, United States,” https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SH.MED.BEDS.ZS?

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A study looking at college admissions from 1999 to 2013 found a staggering result—the top 1% of earners are seventy-seven times more likely to have a child attend Ivy League or other elite schools, compared to poorer children from families in the bottom 20% of earners. Meanwhile, as the economist Thomas Piketty and others have noted, investment income is growing faster than wages. And as we have seen, routine work—at first blue-collar and now increasingly white-collar—can be done by someone in a low-wage country or a computer. The premium that labor could once command simply does not exist in a postindustrial world.

Hubris: Why Economists Failed to Predict the Crisis and How to Avoid the Next One
by Meghnad Desai
Published 15 Feb 2015

Thus we might have a discussion about the cross-country linkages at an informal, journalistic level but no attempt to weave together a systematic theoretical account. But evidence of long cycles can still be seen in data even when we analyze single countries. Recently Thomas Piketty has analyzed the long-run trends in inequality in his book Capital in the Twenty-First Century. He finds evidence of long cycles of 40 to 50 years. Thus the share of labor income in Britain peaks in 1920 and again in 1970. In France the wage share exhibits a 40-year cycle with peaks in 1900, 1940 and 1980. In the US, Piketty’s data show a fall in income inequality from a peak in 1940 which is regained in the mid-1990s.1 Given the average length of 40 to 50 years, there can only have been about four or five cycles since the Industrial Revolution.

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See also Alan Greenspan, The Age of Turbulence, with a new epilogue (Penguin, New York, 2008). 7.Financial Services Authority, The Turner Review: A Regulatory Response to the Global Banking Crisis (Financial Services Authority, London, 2009), p. 39. 8.The case for the Keynesians is argued by Robert Skidelsky, Keynes: The Return of the Master (Penguin, London, 2009). 9.Milton Friedman and Anna Schwartz, A Monetary History of the United States 1867–1960 (Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ, 1963). 10.For the background to the euro, see David Marsh, The Euro: The Battle for the New Global Currency (Yale University Press, New Haven, CT, 2009). 7 The Search for an Answer 1.Thomas Piketty, Capital in the Twenty-First Century (Belknap Press, Cambridge, MA, 2014), see figure 6.1, p. 200; figure 6.2, p. 201; figure 8.5, p. 291. 2.Meghnad Desai, “An Econometric Model of the Share of Wages in National Income: UK 1855–1965” (1984), republished in The Selected Essays of Meghnad Desai, vol. 1: Macroeconomics and Monetary Theory (Edward Elgar, Cheltenham, 1995). 3.Andrew Glyn and Robert Sutcliffe, “The Collapse of UK Profits,” New Left Review, 66 (Mar.

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See also Alan Greenspan, The Age of Turbulence, with a new epilogue (Penguin, New York, 2008). 7.Financial Services Authority, The Turner Review: A Regulatory Response to the Global Banking Crisis (Financial Services Authority, London, 2009), p. 39. 8.The case for the Keynesians is argued by Robert Skidelsky, Keynes: The Return of the Master (Penguin, London, 2009). 9.Milton Friedman and Anna Schwartz, A Monetary History of the United States 1867–1960 (Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ, 1963). 10.For the background to the euro, see David Marsh, The Euro: The Battle for the New Global Currency (Yale University Press, New Haven, CT, 2009). 7 The Search for an Answer 1.Thomas Piketty, Capital in the Twenty-First Century (Belknap Press, Cambridge, MA, 2014), see figure 6.1, p. 200; figure 6.2, p. 201; figure 8.5, p. 291. 2.Meghnad Desai, “An Econometric Model of the Share of Wages in National Income: UK 1855–1965” (1984), republished in The Selected Essays of Meghnad Desai, vol. 1: Macroeconomics and Monetary Theory (Edward Elgar, Cheltenham, 1995). 3.Andrew Glyn and Robert Sutcliffe, “The Collapse of UK Profits,” New Left Review, 66 (Mar.–Apr. 1971). 4.Gerard Duménil and Dominique Lévy, “The Crisis of the Early 21st Century: Marxian Perspectives,” in R. Bellofiore and G. Vertova, eds, The Great Recession and the Contradictions of Contemporary Capitalism (Edward Elgar, Cheltenham, 2014). 5.Piketty, Capital in the Twenty-First Century, ch. 5. 6.Carmen M. Reinhart and Kenneth S. Rogoff, This Time Is Different: Eight Centuries of Financial Folly (Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ, 2009). 7.Lawrence Summers, “Why Stagnation May Prove to Be the New Normal,” Financial Times, Dec. 15, 2013. 8.Julia Leung, The Tides of Capital: How Asia Surmounted the Crisis and Is Now Guiding World Recovery (Official Monetary and Financial Institutions Forum, London, 2015). 9.Karl Marx, Preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy (1859), trans.

The Shifts and the Shocks: What We've Learned--And Have Still to Learn--From the Financial Crisis
by Martin Wolf
Published 24 Nov 2015

On the forces driving inequality and their consequences, see Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, Divided We Stand: Why Inequality Keeps Rising (Paris: OECD, 2011), Joseph Stiglitz, The Price of Inequality: How Today’s Divided Society Endangers our Future (New York and London: Norton, 2012), and Thomas Piketty, Capital in the Twenty-First Century (Cambridge, MA, and London, England, 2014). 59. See, in particular, a remarkable paper by Christoph Lakner and Branco Milanovic of the World Bank, ‘Global Income Distribution: From the Fall of the Berlin Wall to the Great Recession’, World Bank Research Working Paper 6719, December 2013, http://www-wds.worldbank.org/external/default/WDSContentServer/IW3P/IB/2013/12/11/000158349_20131211100152/Rendered/PDF/WPS6719.pdf. 60.

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Mervyn King, ‘Banking from Bagehot to Basel, and Back Again’, 25 October 2010, The Second Bagehot Lecture, Buttonwood Gathering, New York City, http://www.bankofengland.co.uk/publications/Documents/speeches/2010/speech455.pdf, p. 18. 4. Luc Laeven and Fabian Valencia, ‘Systemic Crises Database: An Update’, International Monetary Fund Working Paper, WP/12/163, June 2102, http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/wp/2012/wp12163.pdf. 5. This proposition is supported by Thomas Piketty, Capital in the Twenty-First Century, trans. Arthur Goldhammer (Cambridge, MA, and London: Harvard University Press, 2014). 6. For a detailed discussion of the evolution of real interest rates, see International Monetary Fund, World Economic Outlook, April 2014, ch. 3, http://www.imf.org/external/Pubs/ft/weo/2014/01/. 7.

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A fully worked out plan for such a reform is in Andrew Jackson and Ben Dyson, Modernising Money: Why our Monetary System is Broken and How it Can be Fixed (London: Positive Money, 2013). 17. See Andrew Smithers, The Road to Recovery: How and Why Economic Policy Must Change (London: Wiley, 2013). 18. See Piketty, Capital in the Twenty-First Century, Part Four. 19. For elements of the new Eurozone policy system, see ‘Stability and Growth Pact’, http://ec.europa.eu/economy_finance/economic_governance/sgp/index_en.htm; ‘Macroeconomic Imbalance Procedure’, http://ec.europa.eu/economy_finance/economic_governance/macroeconomic_imbalance_procedure/index_en.htm; ‘Treaty on Stability, Co-ordination and Governance’ (also known as the Fiscal Compact), http://european-council.europa.eu/media/639235/st00tscg26_en12.pdf; ‘European Semester’, http://ec.europa.eu/europe2020/making-it-happen; ‘Euro Plus Pact’, http://ec.europa.eu/europe2020/pdf/euro_plus_pact_background_december_2011_en.pdf; and ‘European Stability Mechanism’, http://www.esm.europa.eu/index.htm; ‘European Financial Supervision’, http://ec.europa.eu/internal_market/finances/committees; and ‘Banking Union’, http://ec.europa.eu/internal_market/finances/banking-union. 20.

The Vanishing Middle Class: Prejudice and Power in a Dual Economy
by Peter Temin
Published 17 Mar 2017

The lines in figure 1 were horizontal before 1970, but they are continuing their movements after 2014. Figure 1 shows that the income share lost by the middle class went to people earning more than double the median income. In short, the rich got richer, the poor did not disappear, and the middle class shrank sharply. We know from the work of Thomas Piketty in Capital in the Twenty-First Century that inequality has been increasing since 1970.2 Now we see that the income distribution is hollowing out. We are on our way to become a nation of the rich and the poor with only a few people in the middle. Figure 1 Percent of aggregate U.S. household income. Note: The assignment to income tiers is based on size-adjusted household incomes in the year prior to the survey year.

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John Edwards, a presidential candidate, observed in 2004, “We shouldn’t have two different economies in America: one for people who are set for life, they know their kids and their grand-kids are going to be just fine; and then one for most Americans, people who live paycheck to paycheck.”1 Where did the rest of the national product go? Not to the lower group shown in figure 1. It went instead to the upper group as shown in figure 3. This well-known graph comes from Thomas Piketty, author of Capitalism in the Twenty-First Century, and his colleagues who have developed data for the richest 1 percent of the population for many countries as far back as the data allow. The top group in figure 1 contains 20 percent of the population, and the path of what is called the “one percent” shows the pattern.

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Page, Bartels, and Seawright 2013; Ferguson 1995; Hacker and Pierson 2010; Gilens and Page 2014. 5. Autor 2015; Feinstein 1998. 6. Dewey 1935, 62; Piketty 2014, 481. 7. Heckman, Pinto, and Savelyev 2013. 8. Kremer 1993. 9. Dewey 1935, 66; Rawls 1999. Appendix: Models of Inequality The big book about inequality around the world is Thomas Piketty’s classic, Capital in the Twenty-First Century. Piketty worked mainly with tax data from various countries, and his sample was restricted to those developed countries that had good records extending back into history. In terms of figure 7, he focused on the growth of the global elite. And to show that politics matter, he contrasted the experiences of France and the United States.

How Elites Ate the Social Justice Movement
by Fredrik Deboer
Published 4 Sep 2023

For example, a 2018 paper: Jonathan Wai and Kaja Perina, “Expertise in Journalism: Factors Shaping a Cognitive and Culturally Elite Profession,” Journal of Expertise 1, no. 1 (June 2018): 57–78. Some of the most important work: Thomas Piketty, Capital in the Twenty-First Century (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2014). Piketty’s 2018 article “Brahmin”: Thomas Piketty, “Brahmin Left vs Merchant Right: Rising Inequality and the Changing Structure of Political Conflict,” WID.world Working Paper 7, 2018. the paper found that income: “Educated Voters’ Leftward Shift Is Surprisingly Old and International,” The Economist, May 29, 2021, https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2021/05/29/educated-voters-leftward-shift-is-surprisingly-old-and-international.

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To understand where we are, it’s essential to understand the rise of educational polarization as a defining factor—perhaps the defining factor for the more politically educated and engaged—in contemporary American political life. Education polarization refers to the way that the education level of a certain group predicts their ideological and political affiliation. Some of the most important work on educational polarization has been conducted by Thomas Piketty, the French economist whose bestselling 2014 book, Capital in the Twenty-First Century, argued that wealth inequality rises over time due to the structural relationship between interest and growth. The book caused a sensation, a remarkable feat for a dry academic text of economic history. Following its success, Piketty aimed to explain why traditional divides in ideological coalitions appeared to be changing—why the left, so long the political vehicle of the common man, was becoming associated with elitism.

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(Davis), 51 armed resistance movements, 88–95 Arons, David F., 110 Asian Americans, 33–34 Atlantic, The, 84 Bacon, Perry, Jr., 17 bank bailouts, 16 Batista, Fulgencio, 92 Berry, Jeffrey M., 110 Biden, Joe, 41, 42, 50, 197 Black Americans and “Black bodies,” 201 classes among, 65 current status of, 47 education of, 47, 66 as liberal Democrats, 136 as moderate Democrats, 64 non-police violence against, 59–63 police presence desired by, 57–58, 64 police violence against, 47–49, 55–57, 199–200 professional-managerial class of, 54–68 and racial politics, 74–76 unjustified killing of, 37, 45–46, 55–57 violence within community of, 37, 59–62 Black Lives Matter (BLM), 45–77, 213 achievements of, 67–68 and defunding police, 38, 51–54 and Floyd’s murder, 6 lack of coherent demands of, 43 money donated to, 70–71 organizational difficulties in, 43 perceived criticisms of, 34, 35 profiteering from, 70–72 and racial violence, 47–51 responses to, 68–77 riots with, 94 those who speak for, 64–67 violence at protests of, 81 and voices for racial justice, 53–64 Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation, 71 Bland, Sandra, 46 bobos, 137–139, 142 Bobos in Paradise (Brooks), 137 Bond, Lisa, 72 “Brahmin Left vs Merchant Right” (Piketty), 145 Bridgespan Group, 102 Bright, Liam Kofi, 63, 70 British NHS pamphlet, 202, 203 Brookings Institution, 167–168 Brooks, David, 137, 138, 142 Brown, Michael, 46 Bush, Cori, 52 Bush, George W., 14, 16, 25, 189 Campbell, David, 146 canceling, 132 Capital in the Twenty-First Century (Piketty), 144–145 capitalism, 52, 91–92, 135, 140–141 Carmichael, Stokely (Kwame Ture), 76, 77 Castro, Fidel, 93 “centering,” 176 Central Connecticut State University (CCSU), 3 Central Park Karen, 56 Chait, Jonathan, 25, 34 Charity Navigator, 101, 103 Chauvin, Derek, 5, 14, 39 civil rights movement, 69–70, 75, 182 class(es) Black, 65 and Occupy movement, 19 organizing along lines of, 194–197 revolutionary, 215 upper-middle, 150–151 class-first leftism, 164–192 advantages of, 174–183 both/and arguments in, 187–192 class reductionist view vs., 168–174 as pejorative term, 164–165 problems with, 196–197 and right-wing identity politics, 183–187 salience of, 168 class reductionists, 168–174 Clinton, Bill, 27, 28 Clinton, Hillary, 27–31, 152, 165–168, 186 Clough, Alina, 100–101 Coffey, Clare, 140–141 Cohn, Nate, 145–146, 148 Common Dreams, 106 communism, 29, 152, 190 Community Justice Action Fund, 60 Confederate statues, 81–82 Conference on College Composition and Communication, 67 Connecticut United for Peace (CutUP), 2 consensus decision-making, 23–24 conservatism, 114 conservatives as “classical liberals,” 134 Clinton obsession of, 27 Democrats identifying as, 136 focus of, 203 fundamental message of, 186 home field advantage of, 43 King presented as pacifist by, 85 and meritocratic system, 142 Obama as, 17 Republicans identifying as, 136 self-professed, 210–211 and violence among and toward Black people, 37 consistency, in justice, 123–125 conspiracy theories, 204 Cosby, Bill, 120 Cotton, Tom, 56 Covid-19 pandemic, 5, 13–14, 32, 41 crime, 37, 59–62 criminal justice reforms, 7, 49–54 Cuba, 88, 92, 93 Cuomo, Andrew, 122–123 D’Arcy, Stephen, 69 Davis, Angela, 51 Debs, Eugene, 9 decision-making, 19, 21–24 deep state, 114–115 deference politics, 155–163 defunding police, 38, 51–54, 58, 62–64 demands carefully developed and expressed, 117 coherent, 19–20, 43, 172 essential purpose of, 20 following Floyd murder, 38–39 framing of, 181–182 from #MeToo movement, 132 for political violence, 78–79 democracy, American, 92 Democratic National Committee, 41 Democratic Party as center-right party, 78 and education polarization, 148–149 leftist complaints about, 11 as left-leaning party, 135–136 liberals in, 136, 137 (see also liberals) messaging around economic issues in, 197 nonprofits as vehicles for, 107 and Obama’s cult of personality, 17 as overwhelmingly white, 136 as party of elites, 31 Perez appointment influenced by, 41 and political action, 207–209 Sanders’ impact on, 29 2016 primaries of, 27–29, 165–168 in 2020 election, 11, 40–42 2008 primaries of, 27 voters’ disillusionment with, 28 youth in, 79 Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), 29–30, 168, 177–179 Democrats center-left, analyses of, 134–135 and George Floyd Justice in Policing Act, 39 and labor unions, 195 liberals’ votes for, 135 moderates and liberals, 64 and police funding, 52 political positions of, 136, 189, 190 technocratic liberal voice of, 25 denunciation, 154 Depp, Johnny, 40, 120–121 DiAngelo, Robin, 71 direct democracy system, 21, 23–24 disabled people, 173, 178–180, 205–206 Dream Hoarders (Reeves), 150–151 Du Bois, W.

The Finance Curse: How Global Finance Is Making Us All Poorer
by Nicholas Shaxson
Published 10 Oct 2018

As a Citibanker in Mexico told the financial investigator James Henry, ‘The money my clients put offshore is for safekeeping: when they want 200 per cent returns, they keep the money here.’ James Henry, ‘The Price of Offshore Revisited’, Tax Justice Network, July 2012. 11. The inequality data comes from Thomas Piketty, Capital in the 21st Century, Belknap Press, 2014. The high net worth individuals data comes from the Credit Suisse ‘Global Wealth Report 2016’, principally Figure 4, p.26. But this data raises the question: what constitutes ‘ownership’? Does it include ‘ownerless’ wealth held in, say, discretionary trusts?

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Atkinson, Wealth and Inheritance in Britain from 1896 to the Present, Centre for Analysis of Social Exclusion, London School of Economics, November 2013. He estimated an average ratio of around 5–8 per cent from 1950 to 2010, which, applied to the UK’s £2 trillion annual income in 2016, gives a very rough £100–150 billion (Source: ONS, GDP at Market Prices, annual, adjusted seasonally). Facundo Alvaredo, Bertrand Garbinti, and Thomas Piketty gave a 9 per cent figure for the UK in 2010: see Figure 4, ‘The inheritance flow in Europe 1900–2010’, in ‘On the share of inheritance in aggregate wealth Europe and the United States, 1900–2010’ Post-Print halshs-01511115, HAL, 2017. Another reason for the low tax haul is not a loophole but the fact that a substantial amount of inherited wealth is in small enough individual sums to not incur top tax rates. 5.

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And that was that until John Thompson, an independent statistician, investigated for the Tax Justice Network. He found a classic case of ‘policy-based evidence’: cherry-picking helpful data while disregarding, even misrepresenting, the other side. For instance, the Treasury had cited a paper by the French economist Thomas Piketty in support of its tax-cut conclusions. Thompson ran the Treasury conclusion past Piketty, who replied, ‘It is indeed quite surprising to learn that our paper with Saez and Stantcheva was used in this manner, given that we basically find the opposite.’ See the article I authored in collaboration with Thompson, ‘UK political parties rely on unsafe top tax rate estimates’, Tax Justice Network press release, 21 April 2015; and ‘The exchequer effect of the 50 per cent additional rate of income tax’, HMRC, March 2012, especially the section ‘Laffer Curves’ on pp.51–2.

Deaths of Despair and the Future of Capitalism
by Anne Case and Angus Deaton
Published 17 Mar 2020

American Community Survey 2017. 4. Lawrence Mishel and Julia Wolfe, 2019, “CEO compensation has grown 940% since 1978,” Economic Policy Institute, August 14, https://www.epi.org/publication/ceo-compensation-2018/. 5. Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez, 2003, “Income inequality in the United States, 1913–1998,” Quarterly Journal of Economics, 118(1), 1–39; Thomas Piketty, 2013, Capital in the 21st century, Harvard; Matthew Smith, Danny Yagan, Owen M. Zidar, and Eric Zwick, 2019, “Capitalists in the 21st century,” Quarterly Journal of Economics, 134(4), 1675–745. 6. Robert D. Putnam, 2015, Our kids: The American dream in crisis, Simon and Schuster; Charles Murray, 2012, Coming apart: The state of white America, 1960–2010, Crown; Sara McLanahan, 2004, “Diverging destinies: How children are faring under the second demographic transition,” Demography, 41(4), 607–27. 7.

The Glass Half-Empty: Debunking the Myth of Progress in the Twenty-First Century
by Rodrigo Aguilera
Published 10 Mar 2020

The idea that, despite rising incomes and prosperity, the rich were getting an exaggeratedly large piece of the pie during this period is borne out by the statistics: the Gilded Age was one in which income and wealth inequality skyrocketed, and it was only the triple shocks of the two world wars and the Great Depression that brought down inequality to more acceptable levels (Figures 6.1-6.2). French economist Thomas Piketty, in his landmark study of inequality Capital in the Twenty-First Century (as well as his earlier work with Emmanuel Saez), showed just how the accumulation of wealth by the top 1% in the US and Europe fell dramatically during this time, reverting the “endless inegalitarian spiral” that occurs when the return on capital outpaces economic growth.2 Piketty summarized this relationship with the now famous equation r > g.

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The authors are open about the many caveats regarding accurate income data before 1950. 58 “Corn Laws”, UK Parliament Historic Hansard, HL Deb 02 April 1840 vol 53 cc398-404, https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/lords/1840/apr/02/corn-laws Chapter Six: And Justice for All 1 Pilon, M., “Monopoly Was Designed to Teach the 99% About Income Inequality”, Smithsonian Magazine, Jan. 2015, https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/monopoly-was-designed-teach-99-about-income-inequality-180953630/ 2 Piketty, T., Capital in the Twenty-First Century (Belknap Press, 2014), pg. 8. 3 Jordà, O. et al., “The Rate of Return on Everything, 1870-2015”, NBER Working Paper Series, 24112, May 2019, https://www.nber.org/papers/w24112 4 Milton Friedman himself stated that it would be the “least bad tax”. The Economist also tacitly supported it in a 2015 piece even if remaining skeptical about its implementation: “Why Henry George had a point”, Economist, 2 Apr. 2015, https://www.economist.com/blogs/freeexchange/2015/04/land-value-tax 5 Sheidel, W., The Great Leveler: Violence and the History of Inequality from the Stone Age to the Twenty-First Century (Princeton University Press, 2017), pg. 94 6 A 1997 study showed that as many as 8% of CEOs were directly interlocked.

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A Literature Review”, Institute for Global Prosperity. 2019, https://ubs-hub.org/litreview2019/ 38 “Our Common Wealth: A Citizen’s Wealth Fund for the UK”, IPPR, Mar. 2018, https://www.ippr.org/files/2018-04/cej-our-common-wealth-march-2018.pdf 39 It has not been published in English at time of writing. Information on his proposals is from Elliott, L. “Thomas Piketty’s new War and Peace-sized book published on Thursday”, Guardian, 9 Sep. 2019, https://www.theguardian.com/business/2019/sep/09/thomas-pikettys-new-magnum-opus-published-on-thursday 40 Graeber, D., Bullshit Jobs: A Theory (Simon & Schuster, 2018), pg. 23 41 Brady-Turner, C., “The Relentless Misery of Working Inside an Amazon Warehouse”, OneZero, 11 Mar. 2019, https://onezero.medium.com/relentless-com-life-as-a-cog-in-amazons-e-tail-machine-d46b3ef05eb8 42 An excellent recent account of the authoritarian personality is Milburn, M.A. and Conrad, S.D., Raised to Rage: The Politics of Anger and the Roots of Authoritarianism (MIT Press, 2016) 43 “Was the EU Referendum Advisory?”

How Will Capitalism End?
by Wolfgang Streeck
Published 8 Nov 2016

The content and goal of this new social and economic order can no longer be the capitalistic pursuit of power and profit; it must lie in the welfare of our people.’ 9Ironically, it was in the aftermath of the two great wars of the twentieth century, in 1918 and 1945, respectively, that the working classes under capitalism made their most effective advances in the capitalist political economy (Piketty, Capital in the Twenty-First Century). 10I have sketched out this dynamic in Buying Time. 11Merkel, ‘Is Capitalism Compatible with Democracy?’, p. 126. 12Mair, Representative versus Responsible Government. 13See ‘Jürgen Habermas im Gespräch: Europa wird direkt ins Herz getroffen’, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 29 May 2014. One interesting irony is that Juncker ascended to the presidency shortly after the publication of Thomas Piketty’s now famous book in which he demands a general wealth tax to correct the long-term and inherent increase in inequality under capitalism (Piketty, Capital in the Twenty-First Century).

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‘SAC Starts to Balk over Insider Trading Inquiry’, New York Times, 17 May 2013, dealbook.nytimes.com, last accessed 30 November 2015. 45A fascinating example is the Koch brothers’ nurturing, over several decades, of James Buchanan’s Center for Study of Public Choice at George Mason University. See Nancy MacLean, Forget Chicago, It’s Coming from Virginia: The 1970s Genesis of Today’s Attack on Democracy, Unpublished Manuscript 2015. 46Thomas Piketty, Capital in the Twenty-First Century, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press 2014. 47An exception is David A. Stockman, ‘State-Wrecked: The Corruption of Capitalism in America’, New York Times, 31 March 2013, who may be considered particularly knowledgeable on the subject. 48‘Vernunft durch Strafen in Milliardenhöhe’, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 29 June 2015, faz.net, last accessed 2 December 2015.

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One interesting irony is that Juncker ascended to the presidency shortly after the publication of Thomas Piketty’s now famous book in which he demands a general wealth tax to correct the long-term and inherent increase in inequality under capitalism (Piketty, Capital in the Twenty-First Century). On the farce of last year’s ‘European election’ see Susan Watkins, ‘The Political State of the Union’. 14Merkel, ‘Is Capitalism Compatible with Democracy?’, p. 126. 15Mair, Ruling the Void. 16The project to give the European Union a constitution began in 2001 with a resolution to this effect by the then member states of the EU. Two years later a Convention appointed by the national governments went to work, and in 2004 the member states signed the document it had produced. What was billed as a ‘European Constitution’ was essentially a compilation of the existing treaties and consisted of a book of 160,000 words.

Inequality and the 1%
by Danny Dorling
Published 6 Oct 2014

Measuring Capital for the 21st Century’, Washington, DC, World Bank, 2006, at web.worldbank.org. 50. J. B. Stewart, ‘Calculated Deal in a Rate-Rigging Inquiry’, New York Times, 13 July 2012. 51. E. Logutenkova, ‘UBS, Barclays Dodge $4.3 Billion EU Fines for Rate Rigging’, Bloomberg News, 4 December 2013, at bloomberg.com. 52. T. Piketty, Capital in the Twenty-First Century (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press), pp. 515–17. 53. Ipsos MORI, ‘General Concern About the Economy Continues to Fall as Concern Shifts to Poverty/Inequality and the Personal Economy’, Economist/Ipsos MORI, 29 November 2013, at ipsos-mori.com. 54. P. Diamond, ‘Labour’s Economic Path to Power’, Policy Network, 2 December 2013, at policy-network.net. 55.

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A financial chasm is opening up between them and the best-off of the rest – the best-off of the 99 per cent. It is because this chasm is now so large that those at the bottom of the 1 per cent more often look up to see how small they are in comparison to the giants above them. Above them they see what Thomas Piketty has termed ‘meritocratic extremism’, people who try to justify huge incomes in terms of what is required to match the wealth of those who inherit the most.26 They are out of touch with the dwarfs of the 99 per cent. But they need to look down, because if they don’t they too will soon be in trouble.

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In 2012 Barclays ‘secured a non-prosecution agreement and agreed to pay a penalty of more than $450 million, a comparatively paltry sum for a bank that had more than £32 billion ($50 billion) in revenue in 2011’.50 But in 2013 Barclays was forced to begin to reveal more of its activities in order to avoid paying part of a $4.3 billion EU antitrust penalty.51 The 1 per cent is finding it progressively harder to hide its money and its corruption. Many people argue that concerted political action, including much more effective banking regulation, is needed to address the problem of increasing inequality. A global tax on capital was seriously proposed in 2014 by Thomas Piketty, one of the world’s leading economists, and a best-selling author in the US and UK that year.52 But successful social movements in the past, rather like the victors in wars, wrote their own history, and may have overstated the importance of overt politics. Campaigners want to say why they mattered; academics want to try to influence policy, and so look for evidence of their personal impact.

The Capitalist Manifesto
by Johan Norberg
Published 14 Jun 2023

It changes very fast depending on the temporary stock prices of the companies the super-rich founded, so I’ll continue to use Gates as an example for a while. 9. Thomas Piketty, Capital in the Twenty-First Century, Belknap Press, 2014, p.444ff. 10. Ibid., p.31. 11. Ibid., pp.435–9. 12. Robert Arnott, William Bernstein & Lillian Wu, ‘The myth of dynastic wealth: The rich get poorer’, Cato Journal, vol.35, no.3, 2015. 13. William McBride, ‘Thomas Piketty’s false depiction of wealth in America’, Tax Foundation Special Report no.223, July 2014. Chris Edwards & Ryan Bourne, ‘Exploring Wealth Inequality’, Policy Analysis, no.881, Cato Institute, 5 November 2019. 14.

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The 1 per cent But how many of the super-rich are like Gates and Kamprad? Aren’t they more often people who sit on large inheritances and passive incomes? The French economist Thomas Piketty has shown that income from interest and gains on capital grow faster than growth (r > g) and that inherited properties just grow and grow until a small elite has almost everything. In the acclaimed Capital in the Twenty-First Century, Piketty therefore advocates what he himself calls ‘confiscatory taxes’ to squeeze the rich. He has no illusion that these taxes would generate large revenues. The important thing is that they end the big incomes.

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INDEX NB Page numbers in italics indicate illustrations Afghanistan, 160–61, 256 Africa, 30–35, 70, 267, 282 colonisation, 31 independence, 31–4 Sub-Saharan Africa, 30–31 AIM (AOL Instant Messenger), 170 Albania, 50 Algeria, 251 Alphabet, 179 AltaVista, 169, 174 Amazon, 169–72, 178–9 Amazon Prime, 179 Andersson, Magdalena, 8 Angola, 239 Annan, Kofi, 3 Ant Group, 227 AOL (America Online), 169–71, 174 Apple, 107–8, 159, 163, 169–73, 179 Apple TV, 179 Arab Spring, 215 Aristophanes, 73 Aristotle, 70 ARPA, 183–6 ARPANET, 184–5 Asia, 267, 282 Asp, Anette, 287 Attac, 2–3, 6 Australia, 11, 258, 267, 282, 285 Ayittey, George, 31 Bangladesh, 235 Bank for International Settlements (BIS), 144 Bankman-Fried, Sam, 153 Bao Tong, 212 Baran, Paul, 184, 186–7 Bastiat, Frédéric, 114 Beijing, China, 209 Belgium, 285 Berggren, Niclas, 62 Bergh, Andreas, 56, 103 Bezos, Jeff, 127 Biden, Joe, 76, 217 big companies, 141, 146–50, 176–7, 292 BioNTech, 177 biotechnology, 195 Björk, Nina, 263, 265, 272, 274–5, 278 BlackBerry, 174 Blair, Tony, 170 Blockbuster, 151 Blue Origin, 202 Bolivia, 47 Bolt, Beranek and Newman, 184 Bono, 4, 170 Botswana, 34–5 Boudreaux, Donald, 125 Boulevard of Broken Dreams (Lerner), 190 Brazil, 11, 29, 239, 258 Brexit, 116–18 Bullshit Jobs: A Theory (Graeber), 86, 98–9 business regulation, 139–41 Callaghan, James, 10 Canada, 102, 267, 283 Capital in the Twenty-First Century (Piketty), 128 capital income, 130–31 Carbon Engineering, 255 Cardoso, Fernando Henrique, 29 Carlson, Tucker, 146 cars, 158 Carter, Jimmy, 10 Case Deaton, Anne, 108–11, 136 Castillo, Pedro, 30 Chávez, Hugo, 43, 135 child labour, 20 child mortality, 19–20, 20 Chile, 11, 29–30 China, 5, 7, 11, 19, 24–5, 76, 78–80, 83–4, 104–7, 204–29, 239, 258 agricultural productivity, 206–7, 209 Communist Party, 182, 204–9, 211–12, 215–18, 221–3, 226–8 deindustrialization, 84 economic development, 205–29 environmental issues, 251–3, 257 exports, 209–10 industrial policy, 205, 212–13, 217, 223–4, 296 innovation strategy, 182, 192 innovation, 226–8 poverty, 213, 214 Reform and Opening Up programme, 212 state-owned companies, 208 WTO and, 205, 209, 211 China’s Leaders (Shambaugh), 215 Chirac, Jacques, 191 Chomsky, Noam, 49 Christianity, 264–5 Churchill, Winston, 135 Clark, Daniel, 87 climate change, 5–7, 230–60, 293 carbon border tariffs, 258 carbon tax, 256–7, 259 energy supplies, 233–5, 253–6, 259 greenhouse gas emissions, 231, 233–5, 238, 240–41, 244, 253–9 see also environmental issues Climeworks, 255 Clinton, Hillary, 140 Coase, Ronald, 206 Cohen, Linda, 189 communism, 2, 25–6, 241–3, 290–91 Communist Manifesto, The, 1848, 2 community, 267 Compaq, 174 Concorde, 191 Confucianism, 22, 25 Congo-Brazzaville, 30 Congo, 239 consumer culture, 160–62, 287–8 Cook, Tim, 173 cooperation, 278–9 Coopersmith, Jonathan, 188–9 Corbyn, Jeremy, 43 coronavirus see Covid-19 pandemic Council of Economic Advisers, 147, 152 Covid-19 pandemic, 8, 21, 76–81, 223, 232–3, 270 Cowen, Tyler, 154 Credit Suisse, 132–3 crony capitalism, 139–40, 291 culture wars, 12–13 Czechoslovakia, 26 Dalits, 63–4 dating profiles, 154 ‘deaths of despair’, 7, 108–10, 136, 271, 293 Deaths of Despair (Deaton and Case Deaton), 136 Deaton, Angus, 19, 108–119, 136 DeepMind, 177 degrowth, 232–5, 254–5 ‘deindustrialization’, 83–5 democracies, 26, 37, 46 Deneen, Patrick, 262–5 Deng Xiaoping, 24, 46, 205, 212–13 Denmark, 91, 285 ‘dependency theory’, 27–8 Detroit, Michigan, 87–8 dictatorships, 11, 24, 29, 32, 42–8 Digital Equipment Corporation, 174 disability-adjusted life years (DALY), 237 dishonesty, 153–6 Disney, 178 Dominican Republic, 225 Easterlin, Richard, 279 ‘Easterlin paradox’, 279–80 Easterly, William, 39 Ecclesiazusae (Aristophanes), 73 Economic Freedom of the World index, 35–7 economic freedom, 35–42, 36, 57, 58–62, 58, 77–8 Economist, The, 179, 192 education, 20, 94 Energiewende, 191, 192–3 Engels, Friedrich, 2, 277, 290–91 Enlightenment, 73 entrepreneurship, 123–4, 128–9, 152–4 ‘welfare entrepreneurs’, 197 environmental issues, 236–41, 245–52, 293 agriculture, 239–40 air pollution, 237–8 biodiversity, 238–9, 249–50 deforestation, 239 health and, 236–8, 237 plastics, 247–8 prosperity and, 245–52, 249 transportation, 250–51, 254–5 Environmental Performance Index (EPI), 248, 252 Estonia, 26 Ethiopia, 277 Europe, 22, 239, 267, 282 European Centre for International Political Economy, 79 European Union (EU), 4, 68, 79, 116, 164, 258–9 Everybody Lies (Stephens-Davidowitz), 155 Facebook, 163, 167–75, 179–80 Fallon, Brad, 192 famine, 29 Fanjul, Alfonso and José, 140 fascism, 75 Federal Communications Decency Act (USA), 174 Feldt, Kjell-Olof, 11 feudalism, 73, 75 Financial Fiasco (Norberg), 142 financial markets, 141–3 Financial Times, 8, 267 Finland, 76, 78, 268, 285 Foodora, 102 Forbes’ list, 129–30 forced technology transfers, 211 Foroohar, Rana, 8 Fortune 500 list, 151 Fortune magazine, 169 France, 79–80, 97, 159, 192, 281, 285 Fraser Institute, 35 free markets, 2–4, 6, 23, 58–62, 65–82, 83, 290–97 happiness and, 279–89, 282, 284, 286 human values and, 261–89 Friedman, Thomas, 204 ‘friendshoring’, 79 Friendster, 170 GAFAM (Google, Amazon, Facebook, Apple, Microsoft), 169–70 Gallup World Poll, 267 Gandhi, Indira, 245 Gapminder, 18 Gates, Bill, 124–7, 274 GDP (Gross Domestic Product), 5, 23, 26, 33, 35, 49–56 General Data Protection Regulation (EU GDPR), 164 generosity, 274–7 Georgia, 26, 215 Germany, 26, 84, 97, 101, 192–3, 196, 268 gig economy, 101–3 Gingrich, Newt, 191–2 Gini coefficient, 132 global financial crisis, 2008, 4–5, 142–3 global supply chains, 41–2, 58–61, 76, 81 Global Thermostat, 255 global warming see climate change globalization, 3–8, 17, 19, 80, 103–10, 117 Google, 163, 169–73, 179–80 Gorbachev, Mikhail, 215 Graeber, David, 86, 98–9 Grafström, Jonas, 240 Greece, 26, 254 Green Revolution, 239–40 green technology, 243, 251–5 Greider, Göran, 50, 241 growth, 49–57 degrowth, 232–5, 254–5 government and, 55–6 health and, 52–3 poverty and, 53–4 Guangdong, China, 207–8 Guardian, 3, 169 Halldorf, Joel, 262, 265 happiness, 279–89, 282, 284, 286 Hawkins Family Farm, 140 Hawkins, Zach, 140 Hayden, Brian, 161 Hayek, Friedrich, 66 Helm, Dieter, 193 Henrekson, Magnus, 56 Hertz, Noreena, 261, 262, 265, 268, 272, 274–5, 278 Hillbilly Elegy (Vance), 87 Hinduism, 22, 25 Hong Kong, 23, 205, 207 Horwitz, Steven, 294 housing market, 131, 142–3, 208–9 How China Became Capitalist (Wang and Coase), 206 How Innovation Works (Ridley), 188 Hsieh, Chang-Tai, 148–9 Hu Jintao, 215–16 Hugo, Victor, 25 Hume, David, 284 Hungary, 26, 283 IBM, 151 Iceland, 285 IKEA, 119, 141, 147 illiteracy, 20, 20 ‘import substitution’, 27–8 In Defence of Global Capitalism (Norberg), 3, 17, 33, 38, 42, 146, 151, 156, 169, 204, 214, 230–31 income, 22, 55, 88–96, 95, 134–5, 285, 291 low-income earners, 136–8 minimum wage, 90 wage stagnation, 89, 92–3 see also inequality India, 11, 24–5, 63–4, 70, 234, 239, 251, 258 caste system, 63–4 Indonesia, 239 industrial policy, 182, 188–203 Industrial Revolution, 22 inequality, 7, 27, 42, 54–5, 110, 131–8, 133, 285–7 happiness inequality, 131–2 income, 285–7 life expectancy and, 136–8 infant mortality, 19–20, 235, 291 Infineon, 196 inflation, 8, 10–11, 69 innovation, 65–6, 122–3, 125, 151, 181–203 government policy and, 181–203 innovation shadow, 169, 176 prizes and, 199 research, 199–200 subsidies and grants, 196–7 Instagram, 168, 177 integrity, 164 intellectual property, 41, 210–11 International Disaster Database, 235 International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), 238 internet, 162–8, 183–7 IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change), 231 iPhone, 107–8, 156, 159 Iran, 220 Iraq, 251 Ireland, 285 Italy, 97, 285 Jackson, Jesse, 43 Jacobs, A.

More: The 10,000-Year Rise of the World Economy
by Philip Coggan
Published 6 Feb 2020

Roger Backhouse, Bradley Bateman, Tamotsu Nishizawa and Dieter Plehwe, eds, Liberalism and the Welfare State: Economists and Arguments for the Welfare State 25. Source: https://www.eastonbh.ac.nz/2002/08/new_zealands_postwar_economic_growth_performance_comparison_with_the_oecd/ 26. Scheidel, The Great Leveler, op. cit. 27. Thomas Piketty, Capital in the 21st Century 28. Milanovic, Global Inequality, op. cit. 29. Scheidel, The Great Leveler, op. cit. 30. Source: https://taxfoundation.org/us-federal-individual-income-tax-rates-history-1913–2013-nominal-and-inflation-adjusted-brackets/ 31. Claudia Goldin and Robert Margo, “The great compression: the wage structure in the United States at mid-century”, NBER working paper 3817, https://www.nber.org/papers/w3817.pdf 32.

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On the theory and measurement of financial intermediation”, September 2014, http://pages.stern.nyu.edu/~tphilipp/papers/Finance_Efficiency.pdf Philipsen, Dirk The Little Big Number: How GDP Came to Rule the World and What to Do about It, Princeton University Press, 2015 Piketty, Thomas Capital in the 21st Century, Harvard University Press, 2014 Pilling, David Bending Adversity: Japan and the Art of Survival, Penguin, 2014 —— The Growth Delusion: The Wealth and Well-Being of Nations, Bloomsbury, 2018 Pinker, Steven The Better Angels of Our Nature: A History of Violence and Humanity, Penguin, 2011 —— Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism and Progress, Viking, 2018 Pollard, Sidney Peaceful Conquest: The Industrialization of Europe, 1760–1970, Oxford University Press, 1981 Pomeranz, Kenneth The Great Divergence: China, Europe, and the Making of the Modern World, Princeton University Press, 2000 Portes, Jonathan “How small is small?

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Walter Scheidel’s bleak assessment was that a reduction in inequality normally required one of four shocks: mass mobilisation warfare, revolution, state failure, and lethal pandemics.26 In other words, the cures for inequality are worse than the disease. In its early stages, industrialisation seemed to increase inequality. When the overall economy grew, most of the gains were made by the owners of capital, the factories that churned out textiles, and the mines that dug out coal. Thomas Piketty, the French economist, has argued that the key equation that drives inequality is when the return on capital is higher than the economic growth rate (r>g, in his formulation). Capital in this sense means wealth; if the return from owning land, or equipment, or financial assets is greater than the growth of GDP, then the rich (who own most of the capital) will keep getting richer.27 But the trend did seem to change as industrialisation developed.

Origin Story: A Big History of Everything
by David Christian
Published 21 May 2018

Mark McClish and Patrick Olivelle, eds., The Arthasastra: Selections from the Classic Indian Work on Statecraft (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing, 2012), sections 1.4.13–15, Kindle. 7. Ibid., sections 1.4.1–1.4.4, 1.5.1. 8. Ibid., section 2.36.3. 9. Ibid., section 2.35.4. 10. Thomas Piketty, Capital in the Twenty-First Century, trans. Arthur Goldhammer (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2014), 270, and see page 258, table 7.2. Chapter 10. On the Verge of Today’s World 1. Grace Karskens, The Colony: A History of Early Sydney (New South Wales: Allen and Unwin, 2009), loc. 756–79, Kindle. 2.

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But so huge was the increase in energy and wealth that, for the first time in human history, consumption levels began to rise for a growing global middle class of billions of people, far more people than the entire population of the world at the end of the agrarian era. Thomas Piketty estimates that in modern European countries, 40 percent of the population controls between 45 percent and 25 percent of national wealth. The appearance of this middle class was a new phenomenon in human history. And more and more people are joining the new middle class as the numbers living in extreme poverty fall. Paradoxically, increasing wealth also means increasing inequality, and even as the numbers living above subsistence are rising, the numbers living in extreme poverty remain higher than ever before in human history. Thomas Piketty estimates that in most modern countries, the wealthiest 10 percent of the population controls between 25 percent and 60 percent of national wealth, while the bottom 50 percent controls no more than 15 percent to 30 percent.

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But after all these other outlays, there was little left to raise the living standards of the rest of the population. That is why all the evidence we have suggests that, though people surely enjoyed occasional luxuries, most of the time, most of them lived close to subsistence level throughout the agrarian era. The French economist Thomas Piketty has estimated that in most European countries as late as 1900, 1 percent of the population owned about 50 percent of national wealth, and 10 percent of the population accounted for 90 percent of national wealth. The other 90 percent of the population made do with just 10 percent of national wealth.

The Rise and Fall of the Neoliberal Order: America and the World in the Free Market Era
by Gary Gerstle
Published 14 Oct 2022

Gross, The Making of the National Labor Relations Board: A Study in Economics, Politics and Law, 1933–1937 (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1974); Nelson Lichtenstein and Howell Harris, eds., Industrial Democracy in America: The Ambiguous Promise (Washington, DC: Woodrow Wilson Center Press, 1993). 11.Sidney Fine, Sit-Down: The General Motors Strike of 1936–1937 (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1969); Lichtenstein, The Most Dangerous Man in Detroit; Eric J. Hobsbawm, The Age of Extremes: A History of the World, 1914–1991 (New York: Pantheon Books, 1994), 9. 12.Lichtenstein, The Most Dangerous Man in Detroit, 288; Lichtenstein, State of the Union. 13.Gerstle, Liberty and Coercion, chapters 7 and 8; Thomas Piketty, Capital in the Twenty-First Century (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2014). 14.Paul Krugman, The Conscience of a Liberal (New York: W. W. Norton, 2007), 46–47. 15.The turn toward government as a key facilitator of personal freedom was an instance of what the political philosopher Isaiah Berlin would later the label the shift from “negative liberty” to “positive liberty.”

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But It’s Helped Transform the American Left,” Vox, April 30, 2019, https://www.vox.com/the-highlight/2019/4/23/18284303/occupy-wall-street-bernie-sanders-dsa-socialism, accessed April 29, 2021. 60.Dissent (https://www.dissentmagazine.org) started publishing in 1954, N + 1 (https://nplusonemag.com) in 2004, and Jacobin (https://jacobinmag.com) in 2011. A middle-aged left/liberal magazine, The American Prospect, also revived at this time, staving off bankruptcy in 2012, and then flourished across a second life from 2014 forward: https://prospect.org/. And The Nation, of course, remained the left standard-bearer. Thomas Piketty, Capital in the Twenty-First Century (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2014) (originally published in French in 2013); Naomi Klein, No Logo: No Space, No Choice, No Jobs (New York: Fourth Estate, 2010); David Graeber, Revolutions in Reverse: Essays on Politics, Violence, Art, and Imagination (London: Minor Compositions, 2011); Katharine Q.

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This high rate of taxation, in combination with the wage concessions that employers made to unionized workforces, resulted in a significant redistribution of resources from the rich to the working and middle classes of America. Economic inequality fell in the 1940s to its lowest point in the twentieth century, and it stayed there as long the New Deal order prevailed.13 Paul Krugman, Thomas Piketty, and other economists have labeled this fall in inequality the “great compression.”14 This fall was not a function of impersonal economic forces (which is what the term “great compression” is interpreted by some to mean) but of political struggle that yielded a class compromise between capital and labor.

Rethinking the Economics of Land and Housing
by Josh Ryan-Collins , Toby Lloyd and Laurie Macfarlane
Published 28 Feb 2017

But since the birth of modern, capitalist economies other uses have become predominant: first as the site of industrial production, and later as the site of service provision and domestic housing. Today, it is in the housing market that the economic function of land is most visible, as the value of residential property has overtaken the value of land used for other purposes, as the economist Thomas Piketty (2014) makes clear in his recent book Capital in the Twenty-First Century. For this reason, much of the book focuses on housing as the main economic use of land. Land has several unique features that differentiate it from the other ‘factors of production’ that form the central focus of the economics discipline: capital and labour.

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It has also increased considerably faster than national income in the UK, in particular since the 1990s, as discussed in Chapter 5. Indeed, in advanced economies generally, it is the increase in housing wealth that has been driving the trends that have been observed in the recent work of French economist Thomas Piketty (2014). Piketty’s book Capital in the Twenty-first Century contains data on what he calls the ‘capital to income ratio’ for the UK since the year 1700. In the book Piketty uses the terms capital and wealth interchangeably, as if they were perfectly synonymous, and does not attempt to separate capital from land and natural resources.

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Perugini, Cristiano, Jens Hölscher, and Simon Collie. 2015. ‘Inequality, Credit and Financial Crises’. Cambridge Journal of Economics. doi:10.1093/cje/beu075. Pierson, Christopher. 2013. Just Property: A History in the Latin West. Volume One: Wealth, Virtue, and the Law. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Piketty, Thomas. 2014. Capital in the Twenty-First Century. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Piketty, Thomas, and Gabriel Zucman. 2013. ‘Capital Is Back: Wealth-Income Ratios in Rich Countries, 1700–2010’. http://www.piketty.pse.ens.fr/files/PikettyZucman2013BookRevQJE.pdf Pollock, Frederick, and Frederic William Maitland. 1899. The History of English Law before the Time of Edward I.

The Price of Time: The Real Story of Interest
by Edward Chancellor
Published 15 Aug 2022

‘Main Street,’ wrote PIMCO’s ‘Bond King’ Bill Gross, ‘has failed to keep up with Wall Street and corporate America in the race to see who can benefit more from lower yields.’122 Ray Dalio, the hedge fund manager whose own fortune in 2018 was estimated at nearly $17 billion, noted that ‘Disparity in wealth, especially when accompanied by disparity in values, leads to increasing conflict and … revolutions of one sort or another.’123 Tech billionaire Nick Hanauer, an early investor in Amazon, penned an alarmist article for Politico entitled ‘The Pitchforks are Coming … for Us Plutocrats’. Hanauer warned that the United States was becoming less capitalist and more feudal, ‘and so I have a message for my fellow filthy rich, for all of us who live in our gated bubble worlds: Wake up, people. It won’t last.’124 Piketty’s Error Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century became an overnight publishing sensation when it appeared in English translation in the spring of 2014 – more bought than read, but much discussed.125 Piketty rejected conventional explanations for inequality based on education and technology.126 Instead, he proposed a fundamental law: inequality rises whenever the return on capital (comprising profits, interest, dividends and rents) exceeds the growth rate of an economy.

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Morris Silver, ‘Modern Ancients’, in Commerce and Monetary Systems in the Ancient World: Means of Transmission and Cultural Interaction, eds. R. Rollinger and C. Ulf (Stuttgart, 2004). 49. Leemans, ‘Rate of Interest’; Silver, Economic Structures of Antiquity, p. 105. 50. Thomas Mayer, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 17 September 2016. 51. Thomas Piketty, Capital in the Twenty-First Century (Harvard, 2014), p. 80. 52. David Hume, ‘Of Interest’, Selected Essays (Oxford, 1993), p. 181. See Chapter 9. 53. Homer and Sylla, History of Interest Rates, p. 38. 54. As Hume himself records, citing Dio Cassius (Selected Essays, p. 186). Hume maintains the effect was only temporary and that by the reign of Tiberius interest had returned to 6 per cent. 55.

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Warren Buffett, ‘Letter to Shareholders’, Berkshire Hathaway, February 2016. ‘For 240 years,’ Buffett writes, ‘it’s been a terrible mistake to bet against America, and now is no time to start.’ 9. Lukasz Rachel and Thomas D. Smith, ‘Secular Drivers of the Global Real Interest Rate’, Bank of England, December 2015. 10. Thomas Piketty, Capital in the Twenty-First Century, p. 80. 11. This point is made in ‘Long-Term Interest Rates: A Survey’, Council of Economic Advisers, July 2015. 12. See Charles Goodhart and Manoj Pradhan, The Great Demographic Reversal (Cham, Switzerland, 2020); also, Mikael Juselius et al., ‘Can Demography Affect Inflation and Monetary Policy?’

Free Money for All: A Basic Income Guarantee Solution for the Twenty-First Century
by Mark Walker
Published 29 Nov 2015

And in chapters 6 and 7, we looked at ways to utilize the productivity of capitalism to generate more GNH and GNF. So, we have plenty of motivation to think about the future of capitalism. Seemingly relevant in this connection is Thomas Piketty’s recent and much discussed Capital in the Twenty-first Century. From the title, one might think the book was mostly forward-looking into the prospects of capital and capitalism in the twenty-first century; however, the book is mostly historical. Picketty does a marvelous job tracing the ebb and flow of the accumulation of capital over the past two centuries. He argues on the basis of historical enquiry that income and capital inequalities are the most important economic problems facing us in the twenty-first century.

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US Census Bureau, “Current Population Survey,” US Census Bureau, January 14, 2013, http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/ cpstables/032011/perinc/new01_001.htm. The New York Times, “Effective Income Tax Rates,” 2012, http:// www.nytimes.com/interactive/2012/01/18/us/effective-incometax-rates.html?_r=2&. Thomas Piketty, Capital in the Twenty-First Century (Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2014). Allan Sheahen (1932–2013) was a longtime proponent of BIG. We follow here Sheahen’s last major proposal: Sheahen, Basic Income Guarantee: Your Right to Economic Security. Many of Sheahen’s calculations can be found in Appendix A (153–160).

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Roediger and Philip Sheldon Foner, Our Own Time: A History of American Labor and the Working Day (London: Verso, 1989). 17. Edward P. Lazear and James R. Spletzer, The United States Labor Market: Status Quo or a New Normal? (National Bureau of Economic Research,2 012). 18. Widerquist, Independence, Propertylessness, and Basic Income: A Theory of Freedom as the Power to Say No,1 05. 19. Thomas Piketty, Capital in the Twenty-First Century (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2014), 217. 20. Andrew Hind, “Brrrr! History of the Ice Industry,” History Magazine, 2010, 39–42. 21. Rebecca Weber, “The Travel Agent Is Dying, but It’s Not yet Dead—CNN.com,” CNN, accessed May 18, 2015, http://www. cnn.com/2013/10/03/travel/travel-agent-survival/index.html. 22.

WTF?: What's the Future and Why It's Up to Us
by Tim O'Reilly
Published 9 Oct 2017

Wallace Turbeville, a former Goldman Sachs banker, aptly describes this as “something approaching a zero-sum game between financial wealth-holders and the rest of America.” Zero-sum games don’t end well. “The one percent in America right now is still a bit lower than the one percent in pre-revolutionary France but is getting closer,” says French economist Thomas Piketty, author of Capital in the Twenty-First Century. Lazonick believes his research demonstrates that this trend “is in large part responsible for a national economy characterized by income inequity, employment instability, and diminished innovative capability—or the opposite of what I have called ‘sustainable prosperity.’”

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Louis; https://fred. stlouisfed.org/series/CP, April 2, 2017; Gross Domestic Product (GDP), retrieved from FRED, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis; https://fred.stlouisfed. org/series/GDP, April 2, 2017. 246 “something approaching a zero-sum game”: Rana Foroohar, Makers and Takers (New York: Crown, 2016), 18. 246 “the one percent in pre-revolutionary France”: Rana Foroohar, “Thomas Piketty: Marx 2.0,” Time, May 9, 2014, http://time.com/92087/thomas-piketty-marx-2-0/. Retrieved April 2, 2017, http://piketty. pse.ens.fr/files/capital21c/en/media/Time%20-%20Capital%20in%20the %20Twenty-First%20Century.pdf. 247 “‘sustainable prosperity’”: Lazonick, “Stock Buybacks,” 2. 247 more of the compensation moved to stock: Foroohar, Makers and Takers, 280. 247 options had to be disclosed, but not valued: Hal Varian, “Economic Scene,” New York Times, April 8, 2004, retrieved April 2, 2017, http://people.ischool.berkeley. edu/~hal/people/hal/NYTimes/2004-04-08.html. 248 “profit extracted through harm to others”: Umair Haque, “The Value Every Business Needs to Create Now,” Harvard Business Review, July 31, 2009, https://hbr.org/2009/07/the-value-every-business-needs. 248 disinformation firms used by the tobacco industry: Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway, Merchants of Doubt (New York: Bloomsbury Press, 2011). 249 “left holding the bag”: George Akerlof and Paul Romer, “Looting: The Economic Underworld of Bankruptcy for Profit,” Brookings Papers on Economic Activity 2 (1993), http://pages.stern.nyu. edu/~promer/Looting.pdf. 250 “The customer is the foundation of a business”: Peter F.

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A financial transactions tax calibrated to eliminate all the benefits of front-running and other forms of high-speed market manipulation would be a good place to start, but we could go much further in taxing financial speculation while rewarding productive investment with lower rates. Larry Fink, the CEO of BlackRock, suggests that at a minimum, long-term capital gains treatment should begin at three years rather than one, with a declining rate for each additional year that an asset is held. We could even institute a wealth tax such as that proposed by Thomas Piketty. And if we were to tax carbon rather than labor, rather than starting by substituting a carbon tax for income taxes, it might be better to substitute a carbon tax for Social Security, Medicare, and unemployment taxes. These rule changes might be costly to some capital owners but might well benefit society overall.

Model Thinker: What You Need to Know to Make Data Work for You
by Scott E. Page
Published 27 Nov 2018

It could be that the preferences of compensation committee members rely on model based thinking informed by data. However, those preferences might also be socially constructed or part of an elaborate log roll, in which CEOs vote to raise one another’s pay. Our next model of income inequality comes from Thomas Piketty’s best-selling book Capital in the Twenty-First Century. This is less a model than an observation that the rate of return on capital exceeds the growth rate of capital. When that holds, the portion of income that high-income individuals receive from returns on capital will increase over time. By constructing more elaborate versions of the growth models from Chapter 8, it can be shown that the return to capital should always exceed the rate of growth in the broader economy.

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basketball, 157 Bass model, 136–137 Bayesian multi-armed bandit problems, 321–324 Beatles, 132 Bednar, Jenna, 283 behavioral rules, 284 belief-based learning rule, 316 beliefs, 14 in rational-actor model, 48 benchmarks rational choice and, 50 in rational-actor model, 51 Berkshire Hathaway, 154 Berlin Observatory, 24 Bernoulli bandit problems, 320–321 Bernoulli urn model, 154–155, 163 betweenness network structure and, 118 score, 119 bias immediacy, 52 psychological, 51–53 selection, 89 big coefficient, 89–90 big rocks first, 17 bin packing problem, 17 binary categorization model, 30–31 binary classifications, of data, 92–93 Bitcoin, 241–242 BlackRock, 4 block entropy, 326 blocks, 177 body mass index (BMI), 37–38 Boldrin, Michele, 336–337 bootstrap aggregation, 42 Borges, Jorge Luis, 33 Botswana, 96 Box, George, 6 Boyle’s law, 19 broadcast model, 132–134 data and, 134 defined, 132 r-shaped adoption curve and, 133 (fig.) budget balance, 285, 293 Buffett, Warren, 154 burning money, 304 Burt’s structural holes, 130 Camerer, Colin, 316 Campbell’s law, 57 Capital in the Twenty-First Century (Piketty), 348 capitalists, 348 carbon, 97–98 Carnegie, Andrew, 329 Castro, Fidel, 10 catastrophes, long-tailed distributions and, 76–77 categories data and, 34 models, 326 The Categories (Aristotle), 30 categorization error, decreasing, 35 categorization models, 27 binary, 30–31 defining, 30–31 causation, correlation and, 86–87 Cavic, Milroad, 88 central limit theorem defining, 62 logic and, 62 centrality, 130 CEO political capture, 347 chain store paradox, 247 chair trading, 187 China, 9 economic dominance of, 105 Churchill, Frank, 8 Clark, Gregory, 352 cleaner fish, 259 clique friends, 125, 126 clustering bootstraps cooperation, 265 clustering coefficient, 119 network structure and, 118 coalitions, 108 Cobb-Douglas model, 99–100, 344 defining, 100 cod, 278 cognitive closure, many-model thinking and, 56–58 Cold War, 313 Collatz conjecture, 188 collective action problems defining, 271 solved, 280–281 unsolved, 280–281 Collins, Jim, 162 commodities, 239 common network structures, 121–122 communicable models, 14 communication, 15 in REDCAPE, 20–21 communities, 120 compatibility, incentive, 285–286, 288, 293 competition.

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“Zipf’s Word Frequency Law in Natural Language: A Critical Review and Future Directions.” Psychonomic Bulletin & Review 21, no. 5: 1112–1130. Pierson, Paul. 2004. Politics in Time: History, Institutions, and Social Analysis. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Piketty, Thomas. 2014. Capital in the 21st Century. Trans. Arthur Goldhammer. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press. Pollack, John. 2014. Shortcut: How Analogies Reveal Connections, Spark Innovation, and Sell Our Greatest Ideas. New York: Gotham. Poole, Keith T., and Howard Rosenthal. 1984. “A Spatial Model for Legislative Roll Call Analysis.” American Journal of Political Science 29, no. 2: 357–384.

The Second Curve: Thoughts on Reinventing Society
by Charles Handy
Published 12 Mar 2015

The rest complain that the benefits of a growing economy are not being shared with them; that their living standards are falling, with some in real poverty; and, in many cases, that their basic needs are not being met. This, they say, is unjust and unfair in what is supposed to be a democracy. Who is right? Everyone, depending on your point of view and your definition of justice. The French economist Thomas Piketty has demonstrated, in his book Capital in the 21st Century, that when the rate of return on capital is greater than the growth rate of the economy as a whole, wealth inequality rises inexorably. Money makes money. In years gone by most wealth came from inheritance. The characters in the novels of Balzac and Jane Austen, Piketty points out, are endlessly concerned with the problems of inheritance: who will get it, how to keep it, who to pass it on to.

Rewriting the Rules of the European Economy: An Agenda for Growth and Shared Prosperity
by Joseph E. Stiglitz
Published 28 Jan 2020

For a review of the evidence on the link between inequality and growth in Europe, see Catherine Mathieu and Henri Sterdyniak, “Growth and Inequality in the European Union,” OFCE le Blog, Sept. 12, 2017, https://www.ofce.sciences-po.fr/blog/growth-and-inequality-in-the-european-union/; and Jonathan Ostry, Andrew Berg, and Charalambos Tsangarides, Redistribution, Inequality, and Growth (IMF Staff Discussion Note, SDN/14/02, International Monetary Fund, Feb. 2014), https://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/sdn/2014/sdn1402.pdf; for a discussion of the link between inequality and political stability, see Joseph E. Stiglitz, The Price of Inequality: How Today’s Divided Society Endangers Our Future (New York: W. W. Norton, 2012); Joseph E. Stiglitz, The Great Divide: Unequal Societies and What We Can Do about Them (New York: W. W. Norton, 2016); Thomas Piketty, Capital in the Twenty-First Century (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2014). 2. Brian Blackstone, Matthew Karnitschnig, and Robert Thomson, “Europe’s Banker Talks Tough,” Wall Street Journal, Feb. 24, 2012, https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052970203960804577241221244896782. 3. Report by the Commission on the Measurement of Economic Performance and Social Progress, chaired by Joseph E.

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For a detailed discussion of the reform needs and options for European tax systems from a gender perspective, see Åsa Gunnarsson, Ulrike Spangenberg, and Margit Schratzenstaller, Gender Equality and Taxation in the European Union, Study for the FEMM Committee (Brussels: Policy Department for Citizens’ Rights and Constitutional Affairs, Apr. 2017), http://www.europarl.europa.eu/RegData/etudes/STUD/2017/583138/IPOL_STU(2017)583138_EN.pdf. 6. Thomas Piketty, Emmanuel Saez, and Stefanie Stantcheva, “Optimal Taxation of Top Labor Incomes: A Tale of Three Elasticities,” American Economic Journal: Economic Policy 6, no. 1 (2014): 230–71; and Thomas Piketty, Emmanuel Saez, and Stefanie Stantcheva, “Taxing the 1%: Why the Top Tax Rate Could Be Over 80%,” VoxEU, Dec. 2011, https://voxeu.org/article/taxing-1-why-top-tax-rate-could-be-over-80; Danny Yagan, Tax Progressivity and Top Incomes: Evidence from Tax Reforms (CEPR Discussion Paper no. 11936, Washington, DC: Center for Economic and Policy Research, 2015). 7.

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See Bert Brys, Sarah Perret, Alastair Thomas, and Pierce O’Reilly, Tax Design for Inclusive Economic Growth (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development Taxation Working Papers no. 26, Paris: OECD Publishing, July 2016), https://doi.org/10.1787/5jlv74ggk0g7-en; Facundo Alvaredo, Lucas Chancel, Thomas Piketty, Emmanuel Saez, and Gabriel Zucman, World Inequality Report 2018 (Paris: Paris School of Economics, 2017). 3. Brian Sloan, Günther Ebling, Martin Becker, Luis Peragon Lorenzo, and Antonella Caiumi, eds., Taxation Trends in the European Union (Luxembourg: Publications Office of the European Union, 2018), https://ec.europa.eu/taxation_customs/sites/taxation/files/taxation_trends_report_2018.pdf. 4.

Success and Luck: Good Fortune and the Myth of Meritocracy
by Robert H. Frank
Published 31 Mar 2016

What’s also clear is that the economic forces that have been causing the spread and intensification of winner-take-all markets have by no means run their course. We can expect continued growth in the intensity of competition on the buyers’ side for the best talent, and on the sellers’ side for the top positions. In his widely discussed 2013 book, Capital in the Twenty-First Century, Thomas Piketty suggested yet another reason for rising inequality, which is the historical tendency for the rate of return on invested capital to exceed the overall growth rate for the economy.10 When that happens, he argues, wealth continues to concentrate in the hands of those who own the most capital.

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Quarterly Journal of Economics 123.1 (2008): 49–100. 8. Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, book 1, chap. 10. 9. The Conference Board, “Departing CEO Age and Tenure,” June 13, 2014, https://www.conference-board.org/retrievefile.cfm?filename=TCB-CW-019.pdf&type=subsite. 10. Thomas Piketty, Capital in the Twenty-First Century, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2013. CHAPTER 4: WHY THE BIGGEST WINNERS ARE ALMOST ALWAYS LUCKY 1. High School Baseball Web, “Inside the Numbers,” http://www.hsbaseballweb.com/inside_the_numbers.htm. 2. See Wikipedia, List of World Records in Athletics, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_world_records_in_athletics#Men and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Athletics_record_progressions. 3.

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B., 73 Alou brothers, 33 American Dream, the, 4, 145 American Economic Association, 25 American Economic Review, 28, 126, 133, 171 American Enterprise Institute, 127, 171 American Society of Civil Engineers, 87 Anderson, Chris, 47 antlers in bull elk, 116–18, 118 Apotheker, Léo, 53 Apple, 44, 49, 132 Arab Spring, 107 Archilla, Gustavo, 106 artificial intelligence, 70 attention scarcity, 48–49 attribution theory, 77 austerity policies, 134 availability heuristic, 79, 80 baby boomer retirements, 97, 127, 167 Baker Library, 36 Bartlett, Bruce, 90 Bartlett, Monica, 101 Baumeister, Roy, 75 Beatty, Warren, 23 behavioral economics, 69, 70, 96 Bernanke, Ben, 133–35 best seller, xiii, 45 Betamax, 44, 45 birth order effects, 32 birth-date effects: in hockey, 38; in the workplace, 38 Blackstone, 103 Blockbusters, 48 Bloomberg Business, 132 Bonaparte, Napoleon, 7 Boudreaux, Donald, 122 Breaking Bad, 24, 31, 68 British accent, 4 Broderick, Matthew, 24, 68 Brooklyn Dodgers, 142 Brooks, David, 83, 84 Buffett, Warren, 12, 39 Bush, George H. W., 90 Bush, George W., 90 Caan, James, 23 Cabrera, Miguel, 63 Calvino, Italo, 128 Campanella, Roy, 142 Canada, 20, 88, 106 Capital in the Twenty-First Century, 55 Carroll, Robert, 127 Casablanca, 87 Cayuga Lake, 6 CEO pay, 49–51 character assessment, 129–31 Clinton, Bill, 126 Clotfelter, Charles, 72 Congressional Budget Office, 90 conservatives, xi, 17, 83, 171 context and quality assessment, 122, 123; a formal model of, 123 Cook, Philip, 9, 41, 42, 72 Cook, Tim, 133 Coppola, Francis Ford, 23 Corleone, Michael, 23 Corleone, Vito, 23 Cornell University, 4, 25–29, 59, 67, 125, 143 CP/M (computer operating system), 35 Cranston, Bryan, 24, 68 Cusack, John, 24, 68 da Vinci, Leonardo, 22 Dalai Lama, 29 Darwin, Charles, 73, 115, 116, 121 Darwin Economy, The, 117 Davidai, Shai, 81 Delaplane, VA, 60 dentists, 51 Department of Motor Vehicles, 17–19 depressive realism, 73 DeSteno, David, 98–101 Detroit Tigers, 63 DeWall, Nathan, 103 Dickens, Charles, 102 Dickens, Mamie, 102 Digdon, Nancy, 102 Digital Research, 34, 35 divine intervention, 2 Domenici, Pete, 126 Econometrica, 28 economic pie, 16 Educational Longitudinal Survey, 144, 145 Edwards, Mike, 2 Elberse, Anita, 48 Electric Light Orchestra, 2 Emmons, Robert, 102 environment, xvi, 8, 13, 115, 119, 123, 143, 144 envy, 112, 122, 132 estate taxation, 166, 167 expenditure cascades, 112, 113, 121, 165, 169 expertise, 77 Federal Reserve Board of Governors, 134 Ferrari, 15, 16, 91, 119 52 Metro, 30 Fitzgerald, F.

Everybody Lies: Big Data, New Data, and What the Internet Can Tell Us About Who We Really Are
by Seth Stephens-Davidowitz
Published 8 May 2017

By his measure, more than 90 percent of readers finished Donna Tartt’s novel The Goldfinch. In contrast, only about 7 percent made it through Nobel Prize economist Daniel Kahneman’s magnum opus, Thinking, Fast and Slow. Fewer than 3 percent, this rough methodology estimated, made it to the end of economist Thomas Piketty’s much discussed and praised Capital in the 21st Century. In other words, people tend not to finish treatises by economists. One of the points of this book is we have to follow the Big Data wherever it leads and act accordingly. I may hope that most readers are going to hang on my every word and try to detect patterns linking the final pages to what happened earlier.

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See Jews anxiety data about, 18 and truth about sex, 123 AOL, and truth about sex, 117–18 AOL News, 143 art, real life as imitating, 190–97 Ashenfelter, Orley, 72–74 Asher, Sam, 202 Asians, and truth about hate and prejudice, 129 asking the right questions, 21–22 assassinations, 227–28 Atlantic magazine, 150–51, 152, 202 Australia, pregnancy in, 189 auto-complete, 110–11, 116 Avatar (movie), 221–22 Bakshy, Eytan, 144 Baltimore Ravens-New England Patriots games, 221, 222–24 baseball and influence of childhood experiences, 165–69, 165–66n, 171, 206 and overemphasis on measurability, 254–55 predicting a player’s future in, 197–200, 200n, 203 and science, 273 scouting for, 254–55 zooming in on, 165–69, 165–66n, 171, 197–200, 200n, 203 basketball pedigrees and, 67 predicting success in, 33–41, 67 and socioeconomic background, 34–41 Beane, Billy, 255 Beethoven, Ludwig von, zooming in on, 190–91 behavioral science, and digital revolution, 276, 279 Belushi, John, 185 Benson, Clark, 217 Berger, Jonah, 91–92 Bezos, Jeff, 203 bias implicit, 134 language as key to understanding, 74–76 omitted-variable, 208 subconscious, 132 See also hate; prejudice; race/racism Big Data and amount of information, 15, 21, 59, 171 and asking the right questions, 21–22 and causality experiments, 54, 240 definition of, 14, 15 and dimensionality, 246–52 and examples of searches, 15–16 and expansion of research methodology, 275–76 and finishing books, 283–84 future of, 279 Google searches as dominant source of, 60 honesty of, 53–54 importance/value of, 17–18, 29–33, 59, 240, 265, 283 limitations of, 20, 245, 254–55, 256 powers of, 15, 17, 22, 53–54, 59, 109, 171, 211, 257 and predicting what people will do in future, 198–200 as revolutionary, 17, 18–22, 30, 62, 76, 256, 274 as right data, 62 skeptics of, 17 and small data, 255–56 subsets in, 54 understanding of, 27–28 See also specific topic Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, 255 Billings (Montana) Gazette, and words as data, 95 Bing (search engine), and Columbia University-Microsoft pancreatic cancer study, 28, 30 Black, Don, 137 Black Lives Matter, 12 Blink (Gladwell), 29–30 Bloodstock, Incardo, 64 bodies, as data, 62–74 Boehner, John, 160 Booking.com, 265 books conclusions to, 271–72, 279, 280–84 digitalizing, 77, 79 number of people who finish, 283–84 borrowing money, 257–61 Bosh, Chris, 37 Boston Globe, and A/B testing, 214–17 Boston Marathon (2013), 19 Boston Red Sox, 197–200 brain, Minsky study of, 273 Brazil, pregnancy in, 190 breasts, and truth about sex, 125, 126 Brin, Sergey, 60, 61, 62, 103 Britain, pregnancy in, 189 Bronx Science High School (New York City), 232, 237 Buffett, Warren, 239 Bullock, Sandra, 185 Bundy, Ted, 181 Bush, George W., 67 business and comparison shopping, 265 reviews of, 265 See also corporations butt, and truth about sex, 125–26 Calhoun, Jim, 39 Cambridge University, and Microsoft study about IQ of Facebook users, 261 cancer, predicting pancreatic, 28–29, 30 Capital in the 21st Century (Piketty), 283 casinos, and price discrimination, 263–65 causality A/B testing and, 209–21 and advertising, 221–25 and Big Data experiments, 54, 240 college and, 237–39 correlation distinguished from, 221–25 and ethics, 226 and monetary windfalls, 229 natural experiments and, 226–28 and power of Big Data, 54, 211 and randomized controlled experiments, 208–9 reverse, 208 and Stuyvesant High School study, 231–37, 240 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 57 Chabris, Christopher, 250 Chance, Zoë, 252–53 Chaplin, Charlie, 19 charitable giving, 106, 109 Chen, M.

Everything for Everyone: The Radical Tradition That Is Shaping the Next Economy
by Nathan Schneider
Published 10 Sep 2018

The rest of the value gets siphoned upward to the few and wealthy. More than pleasing customers, more than creating jobs, business keeps getting better at serving the single-minded goal of maximizing shareholder value—the rewards for those who already have excess to invest. Economist Thomas Piketty’s best-selling book Capital in the Twenty-First Century argued that the returns to investors are careening the world into a new feudalism; his most celebrated critic, twenty-six-year-old MIT graduate student Matthew Rognlie, differed only in stressing that the major share of the phenomenon was in real estate.4 An uptick in the minimum wage isn’t going to fix this.

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Black Lives Matter, 15, 165, 190, 199, 205–206 black power, 194–195, 199 blockchain, 107, 109, 111–114, 153, 157 Bluestone Farm, 33 Boggs, Grace Lee, 74–75, 92, 225 Boggs, Jimmy, 74, 78 Book of Acts, 21–22 Bookchin, Murray, 207 Botsman, Rachel, 91 Boulder Community Housing Association, 98, 100 Boulder Neighborhood Alliance, 98 Bradford, Mark, 81 Brain, Marshall, 222–223 Britain, co-op legislation in, 7, 50 British Cooperative Wholesale Society, 42–43 Bronec, Jasen, 173 Brown, Michael, 191 Brown-Davis, Della, 177, 179 “Building Global Community” (Zuckerberg), 219 Buni, Abdi, 85–86, 89 Buterin, Vitalik, 111–112, 114, 130 #BuyTwitter, 165–167 Byck, Maria Juliana, 28 Caesar, Julius, 21 Calafou, 124 Calvinists, 38 capital credits, 180 Capital in the Twenty-First Century (Piketty), 77 capitalism, 14–15, 75, 199, 203 co-op businesses compared to, 14–15 as feudal lord, 46–47 feudalism and, 212 Capra, Robert, 35 Carmichael, Stokely, 199 Carter, Jimmy, 171 Cartier-Bresson, Henri, 35 Catalan Integral Cooperative (CIC), 117, 121–127, 131 Aurea Social assembly of, 127–128, 128 (photo) Economic Commission of, 124–125 projects and budget of, 123 Catalan Supply Center, 122 (photo), 123 Catholicism, 24, 59–65, 232 Chaplin, Charlie, 35 Charter of the Forest, 38 Chartism, 48 Chavez, Chris, 32–34 Chesterton, G.

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Here Concept from Peter Turchin, “The Strange Disappearance of Cooperation in America,” Cliodynamica (blog) (June 21, 2013), peterturchin.com/cliodynamica/strange-disappearance. Data from Robert D. Putnam, Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community (Simon & Schuster, 2000), 54, and Facundo Alvaredo, Anthony B. Atkinson, Thomas Piketty, and Emmanuel Saez, “The Top 1 Percent in International and Historical Perspective,” Journal of Economic Perspectives 27, no. 3 (Summer 2013): 3–20. Notes Introduction: Equitable Pioneers 1. LeRoy Croissant, Ancestors and Descendants of Fred Henry Croissant (1791–2001), private family history (2001); the cassette tapes were made as part of Croissant’s research for the book, recorded January 14 and 15, 1989. 2.

The Economics of Inequality
by Thomas Piketty and Arthur Goldhammer
Published 7 Jan 2015

The large historical variations in top income shares also receive insufficient treatment in the present book, because the corresponding research became fully available only recently. Readers interested in a detailed account of that more recent research and the lessons that can be drawn from it are advised to consult the World Top Incomes Database (available online) and my book Capital in the Twenty-First Century (Belknap Press, 2014). Introduction The question of inequality and redistribution is central to political conflict. Caricaturing only slightly, two positions have traditionally been opposed. The right-wing free-market position is that, in the long run, market forces, individual initiative, and productivity growth are the sole determinants of the distribution of income and standard of living, in particular of the least well-off members of society; hence government efforts to redistribute wealth should be limited and should rely on instruments that interfere as little as possible with the virtuous mechanisms of the market—instruments such as Milton Friedman’s negative income tax (1962).

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THE ECONOMICS OF INEQUALITY Thomas Piketty Translated by Arthur Goldhammer The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS LONDON, ENGLAND 2015 Copyright © 2015 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College All rights reserved First published as L’économie des inégalités copyright © Éditions La Découverte, Paris, France, 1997, 2008, 2014 Jacket design by Graciela Galup 978-0-674-50480-6 (hardcover) 978-0-674-91558-9 (EPUB) 978-0-674-91557-2 (MOBI) 978-0-674-91556-5 (PDF) The Library of Congress has cataloged the printed edition as follows: Piketty, Thomas, 1971– [L’économie des inégalités.

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THE ECONOMICS OF INEQUALITY Thomas Piketty Translated by Arthur Goldhammer The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS LONDON, ENGLAND 2015 Copyright © 2015 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College All rights reserved First published as L’économie des inégalités copyright © Éditions La Découverte, Paris, France, 1997, 2008, 2014 Jacket design by Graciela Galup 978-0-674-50480-6 (hardcover) 978-0-674-91558-9 (EPUB) 978-0-674-91557-2 (MOBI) 978-0-674-91556-5 (PDF) The Library of Congress has cataloged the printed edition as follows: Piketty, Thomas, 1971– [L’économie des inégalités. English] The economics of inequality / Thomas Piketty ; translated by Arthur Goldhammer. pages cm Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Income distribution. 2. Equality—Economic aspects. I. Title. HB523.P54713 2015 339.2'2—dc23 2015008813 Book design by Dean Bornstein Contents Note to the Reader Introduction 1. The Measurement of Inequality and Its Evolution 2. Capital-Labor Inequality 3. Inequality of Labor Income 4. Instruments of Redistribution References Contents in Detail Index Note to the Reader This book was written and first published in 1997.

Bootstrapped: Liberating Ourselves From the American Dream
by Alissa Quart
Published 14 Mar 2023

A Universal Desire for More Equal Pay,” Perspectives on Psychological Science 9, no. 6 (2014), https://www.hbs.edu/ris/Publication%2520Files/kiatpongsan%2520norton%25202014_f02b004a-c2de-4358-9811-ea273d372af7.pdf. Thomas Piketty estimated that roughly 60 percent: This wealth comes in the form of savings, houses, and investment, that “people with inherited wealth need save only a portion of their income from capital to see that capital grow more quickly than the economy as a whole.” Thomas Piketty, Capital in the Twenty-First Century (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2014). At the same time, Americans think their odds of success: Sweden, the home of copious social welfare, nonetheless has pessimistic citizens.

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The group United for a Fair Economy found in 2012 that over 60 percent of the Forbes 400 list of the richest Americans were already well-off when they began their careers. They might have had an upper-class upbringing and then the gift of start-up capital from a wealthy family member. Around the same time, French economist Thomas Piketty estimated that roughly 60 percent of America’s private wealth was inherited rather than the result of the much-ballyhooed hard work. At the same time, Americans think their odds of success, and of rising from the bottom to the top, are much higher than they are, and they have greater expectations based on more slender reeds than those relied on by their European counterparts.

The Missing Billionaires: A Guide to Better Financial Decisions
by Victor Haghani and James White
Published 27 Aug 2023

From the 1950s through the 1980s, before the growth of index funds, the median number of stocks held in individual brokerage accounts was just two.3 The mechanism of overly concentrated investment portfolios leading to dramatic wealth inequality provides an alternative to the explanation proposed by Thomas Piketty in Capital in the 21st Century. Picketty assumes that equity returns are high and constant, and so once a household gets rich enough to have significant investable wealth, they're going to get richer and richer.4 Instead, pervasive suboptimal financial decision‐making predicts the frequently observed downward mobility of the undiversified wealthy and gives us a simple and concise answer to the puzzle of the “missing billionaires.”

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Kelly criterion. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kelly_criterion. Wikipedia contributors. (2022). Wealth Inequality in the United States. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wealth_inequality_in_the_United_States. Wood, G. and Hughes, S. (2015). The central contradiction of capitalism? A collection of essays on capital in the twenty‐first century. Policy Exchange. Yale Investment Office. (2019). 2019: The Yale endowment. Ziemba, W. (2015). Response to Paul A. Samuelson letters and papers on the Kelly capital growth investment strategy. Journal of Portfolio Management, 42(1), 153–167. Zuckerman, G. (2013). The frackers. New York: Portfolio Publishing.

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Dynamic strategies for asset allocation. Financial Analysts Journal, 44(1), 16–27. Phillips, D. (1995). A deal with the devil. Morningstar Research. Picerno, J. (2010). Dynamic asset allocation: Modern portfolio theory updated for the smart investor. Bloomberg Press. Piketty, T. (2014). Capital in the 21st century. Belknap Press. Poundstone, W. (1989) Fortune's formula: The untold story of the scientific betting system that beat the casinos and Wall Street. New York: Hill and Wang. Powdthavee, N. and Riyanto, Y. (2012). Why do people pay for useless advice? Implications of gambler's and hot‐hand fallacies in false‐expert setting.

Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World
by Anand Giridharadas
Published 27 Aug 2018

A Jesuit priest and political science professor named Matthew Carnes, with whom Cohen would soon work on a philanthropic project, told the newspaper that longtime critics of inequality on campus felt “vindicated” by the pope. And in the summer before Cohen’s senior year, Black Lives Matter was born, drawing many of her classmates into one of the more trenchant critiques of inequality in modern American history. As Cohen’s graduation neared, a little-known French economist named Thomas Piketty published the surprise bestseller Capital in the Twenty-First Century—a two-and-a-half-pound, 704-page assault on inequality. Piketty and some colleagues would later publish a paper containing a startling fact about 2014, the year of Cohen’s graduation and debut as a self-supporting earner. The study showed that a college graduate like Cohen, on the safe assumption that she ended up in the top 10 percent of earners, would be making more than twice as much before taxes as a similarly situated person in 1980.

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I am no less grateful to all those other subjects whom I did not know but who answered my emails and calls anyway, and took me up on sharing their stories and beliefs about making change. In a small handful of cases I have changed names to protect privacy. I am indebted to two professors. As I read Thomas Piketty’s masterpiece, Capital in the Twenty-First Century, I came upon a line that brought the purpose of my own book into focus. “Whether such extreme inequality is or is not sustainable,” Piketty writes, “depends not only on the effectiveness of the repressive apparatus but also, and perhaps primarily, on the effectiveness of the apparatus of justification.”

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On trust in government, see “Public Trust in Government Remains Near Historic Lows as Partisan Attitudes Shift” (Pew Research Center, May 3, 2017). On the uneven spread of the “fruits of change,” see “Distributional National Accounts: Methods and Estimates for the United States,” by Thomas Piketty, Emmanuel Saez, and Gabriel Zucman (National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper No. 22945, December 2016). On the changing realities of social mobility and the “opportunity to get ahead,” see “The Fading American Dream: Trends in Absolute Mobility Since 1940,” by Raj Chetty et al. (National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper No. 22910, December 2016).

Why Women Have Better Sex Under Socialism: And Other Arguments for Economic Independence
by Kristen R. Ghodsee
Published 20 Nov 2018

Katz, “The Value of Postsecondary Credentials in the Labor Market: An Experimental Study,” American Economic Review 106, no. 3 (2016): 778–806; Mehrsa Baradaran, “Postal Banking Worked—Let’s Bring It Back,” Nation, Jan. 7, 2016, www.thenation.com/article/postal-banking-worked-lets-bring-it-back. 15. Thomas Piketty, Capital in the Twenty-First Century (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2014); Oxfam International, “Just 8 Men Own Same Wealth as Half the World,” Jan. 16, 2017, www.oxfam.org/en/pressroom/pressreleases/2017-01-16/just-8-men-own-same-wealth-half-world. See also David Harvey, Seventeen Contradictions and the End of Capitalism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014); Sif Sigmarsdottir, “Once More, Iceland Has Shown It Is the Best Place in the World to Be Female,” Guardian (London), Jan. 5, 2018, www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/jan/05/iceland-female-women-equal-pay-gender-equality. 16.

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Moraga, Cherríe, and Gloria E. Anzaldúa. This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color. 4th ed. Albany: SUNY Press, 2015. Penn, Shauna, and Jill Massino. Gender Politics and Everyday Life in State Socialist Eastern and Central Europe. New York: Palgrave McMillian, 2009. Piketty, Thomas. Capital in the Twenty-First Century. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2014. Porter, Cathy. Alexandra Kollontai: A Biography. Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2014. Ruthchild, Rochelle. Equality and Revolution: Women’s Rights in the Russian Empire, 1905–1917. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2010. Sanders, Bernie.

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Critics will also claim that expanded public sector employment hurts growth and cripples the private sector, but private sector job expansion has not been able to reverse wage stagnation, the rise of the gig economy, or the incredible growth in inequality between the rich and the poor, as revealed by Thomas Piketty. Economists and legislators will have to debate the details, but given that as of 2017, just eight men own the same amount of wealth as the 3.6 billion people who make up the poorest half of humanity, redistribution is going to come in one form or another. Current levels of inequality are unsustainable in the long term.

Slouching Towards Utopia: An Economic History of the Twentieth Century
by J. Bradford Delong
Published 6 Apr 2020

Bradford DeLong, “Private Accounts: Add-on, Not Carve-Out,” Grasping Reality, May 3, 2005, https://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2005/05/private_account.html. 25. Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez, “Income Inequality in the United States, 1913–1998,” Quarterly Journal of Economics 118, no. 1 (February 2003): 1–39, https://eml.berkeley.edu/~saez/pikettyqje.pdf. 26. Takashi Negishi, “Welfare Economics and Existence of an Equilibrium for a Competitive Economy,” Metroeconomica 12 (June 1960): 92–97. 27. Jeremiah 7:18. 28. “Globalization over Five Centuries, World,” Our World in Data, https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/globalization-over-5-centuries?country=~OWID_WRL. 29. Thomas Piketty, Capital in the Twenty-First Century, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2014. 30.

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Donald Sassoon, One Hundred Years of Socialism: The West European Left in the Twentieth Century, New York: New Press, 1996, xxxiii. Note that Sassoon does not especially like this transformation of the revolutionary idea into a celebration of the wonders of technology. 11. Thomas Piketty, Capital in the Twenty-First Century, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2014, 24; Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner, The Gilded Age: A Novel of Today, Boone, IA: Library of America, 2002 [1873]. 12. On the lives of America’s industrial working class around 1900, see Margaret Frances Byington, Homestead: The Households of a Mill Town, New York: Charities Publication Committee, 1910. 13.

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A successful middle-class American in the age of neoliberalism would meet Bain CEO and future Massachusetts governor and US senator (R-UT) Mitt Romney and know that he had seven houses, some of them mansions, scattered around the country and, well, I do not know what models of cars he has driven, but I have been told that the house in La Jolla, California, near the beach, has a car elevator. Even when people have more material wealth at their disposal in absolute terms than their parents did, a proportional gulf that large that is growing that rapidly can make them feel small. French economist Thomas Piketty popularized an understanding of the striking differences between how the economy had functioned in the global north before World War I and how it functioned after World War II.29 In the First Gilded Age, before World War I, wealth was predominantly inherited, the rich dominated politics, and economic (as well as race and gender) inequality were extreme.

The Classical School
by Callum Williams
Published 19 May 2020

To put that into perspective, back then the total annual value of all wages, salaries and employee benefits paid each year was worth perhaps 60% of GDP. So for every £1 earned in the labour market per year, 33p was received in inheritance. Society, therefore, was built around the idea that you needed to marry into the right family, thus assuring yourself a decent inheritance. Just read a Jane Austen novel (or Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century). Death duties in the mid-19th century were insignificant; it would have been too controversial to implement tough ones. Economists such as Condorcet, meanwhile, offered arguments against inheritance tax based on the idea of natural rights. But Mill hated the idea that people could simply sit there, wait for a loved one to die, and then cash in.

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Donald Winch puts it another way: “A secular upward trend in the price of wage or subsistence goods… became the main proposition dividing Smith’s world from that of Malthus, Ricardo, and all those who followed in their footsteps.” Now, does Ricardo’s theory hold in the real world? Clearly not. Look at data for Britain. Grain prices have not gone up and up over time–actually, food has got a lot cheaper since Ricardo wrote his tracts. Owners of land have not got richer and richer. In fact the opposite has happened. As Thomas Piketty’s calculations show, the value of agricultural land, relative to overall wealth, has plummeted as capitalist economies have advanced. The declining value of agricultural land, relative to the overall economy, is in part because during the 19th century, Britain flung open its ports to foreign trade.

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So just as for workers, the bare minimum profit rate is also the maximum profit rate. But what about landowners? According to Riley, “Mill reaffirms Ricardo’s conclusion that… economic growth tends to enrich the owners of resources without improving the lot of workers or capitalists.” Land is fixed but economic growth is not. So as Thomas Piketty puts it, “[t]he law of supply and demand then implies that the price of land will rise continuously, as will the rents paid to landlords.” With more people about, food prices will rise. That is great news for owners of land. Mill’s own words provide the best summary of the argument: “The economical progress of a society constituted of landlords, capitalists, and labourers, tends to the progressive enrichment of the landlord class; while the cost of the labourer’s subsistence tends on the whole to increase, and profits to fall [to the bare minimum level, in both cases].”

Think Like an Engineer: Use Systematic Thinking to Solve Everyday Challenges & Unlock the Inherent Values in Them
by Mushtak Al-Atabi
Published 26 Aug 2014

This course is teaching us that all emotions are ok and that encouraged me to share my feelings.” he went on saying. Paul reported this on the course website right after the engagement and he generously invited everyone on the course to attend the wedding in Tanzania! Paul’s Engagement 14.3 Mission Zero: A Vision for Higher Education Thomas Piketty in his book ‘Capital in the 21st Century’ explored the increasingly unequal global distribution of wealth and the destabilising effects of this trend. The worrying thing is as the demand for higher education increases and the cost of delivering it rises steeply, there is a real danger of aggravating the unequal access to higher education, further worsening the unequal distribution of wealth and jeopardising the opportunity of large socio-economic population groups to escape the grips of poverty.

Big Capital: Who Is London For?
by Anna Minton
Published 31 May 2017

This has little to do with the process that Glass or even Lees describe, which saw capital invested in gentrifying parts of the city at a much slower rate, over generations rather than a few years: as such, it is crucial that the impact of global capital and foreign investment is scrutinized for its local effects. The title of this book is a nod to Thomas Piketty’s landmark study, Capital in the Twenty-First Century, which investigates the consequences for inequality when the rate of return on rent is greater than the rate of economic growth. I hope to expose the lie that the housing crisis is a market question of supply and demand. Governments of all stripes have argued that we simply need to loosen planning restrictions and build more homes for sale.

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In Barcelona and Berlin the city government has banned renting out whole properties through Airbnb, and at the time of writing the company was embroiled in a battle in New York over the same issue. But while regulation is being introduced, it is a notoriously hard business to regulate and raises contentious issues in a city such as Barcelona where it has become an important source of income for people on modest salaries. The success of the model fits perfectly into Thomas Piketty’s thesis that income from rent now far exceeds economic growth, let alone wages. As such, it is likely to remain a key feature of the contemporary property market. The bedroom tax presents a mirror image of Airbnb. In a society where the ideal of public housing has collapsed, a financial penalty is imposed on people in social housing with a spare room, while those who are lucky enough to own a house with one find themselves with an additional source of revenue.

The Road to Ruin: The Global Elites' Secret Plan for the Next Financial Crisis
by James Rickards
Published 15 Nov 2016

Here’s what the G7 leaders: “G7 Ise-Shima Leaders’ Declaration / G7 Ise-Shima Summit, 26–27 May 2016,” G7 Ise-Shima Summit, May 27, 2016, accessed August 7, 2016, www.mofa.go.jp/files/000160266.pdf, 6–7. In particular, Piketty advanced the thesis: French economist Thomas Piketty advanced the thesis that high tax rates have been associated with strong economic growth and equitable income distribution, while low tax rates have been associated with weaker growth and extremes of income inequality. See Thomas Piketty, Capital in the Twenty-First Century (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2014). Henry Kissinger offers a brilliant overview: For an in-depth history and analysis of the Westphalian state system, other historical forms of world order, and implications for policy today, see Henry Kissinger, World Order (New York: Penguin Press, 2014).

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The Great Divergence: America’s Growing Inequality Crisis and What We Can Do About It. New York: Bloomsbury Press, 2012. Palley, Thomas I. From Financial Crisis to Stagnation: The Destruction of Shared Prosperity and the Role of Economics, 1st edition. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012. Piketty, Thomas. Capital in the Twenty-First Century. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2014. Popper, Karl R. The Open Society and Its Enemies: Volume 1, The Spell of Plato. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press: 1971. ———. The Open Society and Its Enemies: Volume 2, The High Tide of Prophecy: Hegel, Marx, and the Aftermath. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1971.

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The IMF, OECD, and G20 have all endorsed these efforts and have added their own calls for international information collection and information sharing. The G20 final communiqué from the November 2014 meeting in Brisbane, Australia, included technical papers describing an implementation program for data collection. Prominent economists including Nobelist Joseph Stiglitz and Thomas Piketty have joined the chorus calling for global taxation. In particular, Piketty advanced the thesis that high tax rates are not an impediment to growth. His thesis is riddled with flaws, but attracted a following among global elites nonetheless. Piketty recognizes that high tax rates will not achieve his redistribution goals if collections are thwarted by tax avoidance.

Sickening: How Big Pharma Broke American Health Care and How We Can Repair It
by John Abramson
Published 15 Dec 2022

$480,000 per year: Joseph Mysak Jr., “To Get into the 1%, You Need Adjusted Gross Income of $480,930,” Bloomberg.com, February 22, 2018, https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-02-22/to-get-into-the-1-you-need-adjusted-gross-income-of-480-930. “What primarily characterizes”: Thomas Piketty, Capital in the Twenty-First Century, trans. Arthur Goldhammer (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2017), 232. maintains the inequality: Piketty, Capital and Ideology, 2. in every state in the country: Sara R. Collins, David C. Radley, and Jesse C. Baumgartner, “Trends in Employer Health Care Coverage, 2008–2018: Higher Costs for Workers and Their Families,” Commonwealth Fund, November 21, 2019, https://www.commonwealthfund.org/publications/2019/nov/trends-employer-health-care-coverage-2008-2018.

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In kitchen table terms, from 1980 to 2015, the amount of income going to households earning less than $55,775 shrank so drastically that it is as if each below-median household is now donating $20,800 ($8,000 per person in an average household of 2.6 people) to the 1 percent earning at least $480,000 per year.* It doesn’t take much imagination to appreciate the impact of this transfer on the financial burden experienced by the less wealthy half of Americans. The French economist Thomas Piketty wrote in 2017: “What primarily characterizes the United States at the moment is a record level of inequality of income from labor (probably higher than in any other society at any time in the past, anywhere in the world)” (italics mine). Piketty subsequently used the phrase “inequality regime” to highlight the overall context of economic, political, and social power — like that which now exists in the United States as a result of changes that have taken place since 1980 — that maintains the inequality in our society.

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without college degrees: Christian Weller, “African-Americans’ Wealth a Fraction of That of Whites Due to Systematic Inequality,” Forbes, February 14, 2019, https://www.forbes.com/sites/christianweller/2019/02/14/african-americans-wealth-a-fraction-that-of-whites-due-to-systematic-inequality/#1a8414084554. least equal distributions: “Income Inequality,” OECD, oecd-ilibrary.org, doi: 10.1787/459aa7f1-en. highest poverty rates: “Poverty Rate,” OECD, data.oecd.org, https://data.oecd.org/inequality/poverty-rate.htm. fifty years earlier: Thomas Piketty, Capital and Ideology, trans. Arthur Goldhammer (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2019), 530. ten other wealthy countries: Robin Osborn et al., “In New Survey of 11 Countries, U.S. Adults Still Struggle with Access to and Affordability of Health Care,” Commonwealth Fund, November 16, 2016, https://www.commonwealthfund.org/publications/journal-article/2016/nov/new-survey-11-countries-us-adults-still-struggle-access-and?

Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right
by Jane Mayer
Published 19 Jan 2016

Liberal critics: See Chrystia Freeland, Plutocrats: The Rise of the New Global Super-rich and the Fall of Everyone Else (Penguin, 2012), 3. “We are on the road”: Paul Krugman, speaking in an interview with Bill Moyers about Thomas Piketty’s book Capital in the Twenty-First Century. “What the 1% Don’t Want Us to Know,” BillMoyers.com, April 18, 2014. “Wealth begets power”: Joseph E. Stiglitz, “Of the 1%, by the 1%, for the 1%,” Vanity Fair, May 2011. Thomas Piketty: Thomas Piketty, Capital in the Twenty-First Century, trans. Arthur Goldhammer (Belknap Press/Harvard University Press, 2014). “disconnect themselves”: Mike Lofgren, “Revolt of the Rich,” American Conservative, Aug. 27, 2012.

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In the new millennium, however, this consensus was beginning to fray. A growing number of academics studying the nexus of politics and wealth regarded the accelerating inequality in America as a threat not only to the economy but to democracy. Thomas Piketty, an economist at the Paris School of Economics, warned in his zeitgeist-shifting book, Capital in the Twenty-First Century, that without aggressive government intervention economic inequality in the United States and elsewhere was likely to rise inexorably, to the point where the small portion of the population that currently held a growing slice of the world’s wealth would in the foreseeable future own not just a quarter, or a third, but perhaps half of the globe’s wealth, or more.

It's Better Than It Looks: Reasons for Optimism in an Age of Fear
by Gregg Easterbrook
Published 20 Feb 2018

Stephen Rose, a labor economist at the Urban Institute: Stephen Rose, “The Growing Size and Incomes of the Upper Middle Class” (Washington, DC: Urban Institute, 2016). The most-talked-about serious book… bore the subhead: Christopher Lasch, The Culture of Narcissism (New York: W. W. Norton, 1979). “the simplest and most powerful measure” of inequality: Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez, “Inequality in the Long Run,” Science, May 23, 2014. Piketty’s 2013 tome Capital in the Twenty-First Century was received: Thomas Piketty, Capital in the Twenty-First Century (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2014). for the typical middle-class family, the value of federal benefits exceeds: “Distribution of Household Income and Federal Taxes, 2013” (Washington, DC: Congressional Budget Office).

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That it is also the simplest does not make it correct; height is the simplest measure of a basketball player, but choosing up a team based solely on height would not be wise. No one in the United States or Europe runs a family on pretax income alone. Tax rates, government benefits, consumer prices, and household size must be taken into account too. Piketty’s 2013 tome Capital in the Twenty-First Century was received by many editorialists and academics as having proven that rising inequality in pretax income means the Western economy is in an emergency situation. The book travels 704 pages without assessing how taxes, government benefits, and consumer prices impact the average people Piketty seeks to champion.

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THE PEW RESEARCH CENTER METRIC for gauging the extent of the middle class took into account pretax income only. Citing income numbers alone is the approach employed by Senators Sanders of Vermont and Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, who are the left wing’s most notable declinists, trafficking in anger and negativity. Income-only is the approach employed by Thomas Piketty of the Paris School of Economics and Emmanuel Saez of the University of California at Berkeley, who were favorite economists of the Obama White House. Piketty and Saez produced voluminous charts and graphs showing that because returns on capital exceed increases in wage income, the system is structured such that those at the top, who own the most equity (primarily as stock shares), will make out better than average people.

The Job: The Future of Work in the Modern Era
by Ellen Ruppel Shell
Published 22 Oct 2018

Most of this change is due not to any educational deficits; on the contrary, the younger you are, the more likely you are to have a college degree. Rather, the bulk of this change is due to an unequal distribution of economic growth. In his magisterial history of economic inequality, Capital in the Twenty-First Century, economist Thomas Piketty concludes that among a number of possible factors underlying income disparity, “the educational factor does not seem to be the right one to focus on.” Of the many ways we Americans manifest our boundless optimism, a commitment to universal education ranks near the top.

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Katz, The Race Between Education and Technology (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2009); also my own interview with Dr. Goldin. “being squeezed out of white collar work” Paul Douglas, “What Ever Happened to the White-Collar Job Market,” System: The Magazine of Business 49 (December 1926): 719. inequality declined Thomas Piketty and Arthur Goldhammer, Capital in the Twenty-First Century (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2014). an “educational slowdown” Goldin and Katz, Race, 7. the nation’s “poorly educated” workforce See, for example, David C. Berliner and Bruce J. Biddle, The Manufactured Crisis: Myths, Fraud, and the Attack on America’s Public Schools (New York: Perseus, 1995), 133.

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The authors write, “The evidence indicates that…[the] net effect [of educational systems] is not to reduce the relationship between parental SES [socioeconomic status] and child achievement, but to maintain or strengthen patterns of differences in outcomes already evident at younger ages.” “the educational factor” Thomas Piketty and Arthur Goldhammer, Capital in the Twenty-First Century, 315. CHAPTER 8 “there is little to be gained from increasing potential supply” Lawrence Summers, “The Jobs Crisis,” Reuters, June 13, 2011, https://www.reuters.com/​article/​column-usjobs-summers/​rpt-column-the-jobs-crisis-lawrence-summers-idUSN1­2279957201­10613.

Reinventing Capitalism in the Age of Big Data
by Viktor Mayer-Schönberger and Thomas Ramge
Published 27 Feb 2018

If the link to labor share is real, this will prompt a further reduction in the share of income accruing to workers, while it enriches investors and banks. Concerns about the shrinking role of labor, and the shift in income distribution, have already caused alarm in many corners, from economists such as Thomas Piketty, whose 2014 book, Capital in the Twenty-First Century, a stinging critique of capitalism, became a global best seller, to populist movements (such as those led by Marine Le Pen and Donald Trump) that promise to eradicate the plight of the displaced worker. And two sets of relatively conventional ideas, one distributive and the other participatory, are being advanced by policy makers and debated in many nations as a response to this troubling trend.

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temporary gigs with limited or no benefits: Ian Hathaway and Mark Muro, “Tracking the Gig Economy: New Numbers,” Brookings Institution, October 13, 2016, https://www.brookings.edu/research/tracking-the-gig-economy-new-numbers; the gig economy is not limited to advanced economies; see, e.g., Mark Graham, Isis Hjorth, and Vili Lehdonvirta, “Digital Labour and Development: Impacts of Global Digital Labour Platforms and the Gig Economy on Worker Livelihoods,” Transfer: European Review of Labour and Research, March 16, 2017, http://journals.sagepub.com/eprint/3FMTvCNPJ4SkhW9tgpWP/full. shrinking role of labor: Thomas Piketty, Capital in the Twenty-First Century (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2014). not necessarily to tax the economy more: See Ryan Abbott and Bret N. Bogenschneider, “Should Robots Pay Taxes? Tax Policy in the Age of Automation,” forthcoming in Harvard Law and Policy Review (March 13, 2017), https://ssrn.com/abstract=2932483.

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See Daimler; Ford Motor Company; General Motors; Tesla Autopilot, 78 Autor, David, 195 Avant, 151 Bacon, Francis, 223 Baidu, 30, 151 Bank La Roche, 136 banks, 11, 12, 137, 138–140, 146–156 capital share of, 185, 186 central, 134–135, 149 choice expansion in, 215–216 cost cutting in, 146–148 crisis facing, 134–136 government loans to, 134 investment planning by, 150, 154–155 Italian merchant families in, 91 lending by, 150–151 payment businesses competing with, 146–147 poor insight of, 154 regulations affecting, 139–140 reinvention of from within, 146, 149–156 traditional role of, 138–139 Barclays, 215 Bardi family, 91 Barkai, Simcha, 194, 195 barter economy, 45 Bastani, Aaron, 221 Bauer, Florian, 55 Bear Stearns, 155 Beer, Staffors, 175–176 Bethlehem Steel, 95 Betterment, 151, 153 Bezos, Jeff, 68, 88, 89, 96, 106, 107, 130 Big Data, 77, 213, 219, 222 See also data-rich markets Bitcoin, 48, 147 BlaBlaCar, 3, 9, 65 blockchain, 147, 148 BMW, 120 book value, 172 bookkeeping, 92–93 bounded rationality, 104 Brezhnev, Leonid, 221 Bridgewater Associates, 114–115 Brookings Institution, 186 Brown, John Seely, 31 Brynjolfsson, Erik, 184, 220 Buick Motor Company, 98 cacao beans (as currency), 48 Canada, 191–192 capital, 15, 133–156 abundance of, 142–143, 194 banks’ shift from, 134–136, 138–140, 146–156 future role of, 11–12, 141 problems caused by decline of, 141–144 signaling with, 141–143 steady value of predicted, 144 See also money; price capital gains tax, 187 Capital in the Twenty-First Century (Piketty), 186 capital share, 185–186, 193–195, 197, 198 Carnegie Mellon University (CMU), 60 Case, Bob, 133–134 castells, 17–20 cell phones. See mobile phones central banks, 134–135, 149 centralization, 13, 90, 95, 100 cognitive limitations and, 103 of communicative coordination, 28–30 matching and, 74 Champagne fairs, 160 Charles Schwab, 146 Charlotte, Queen, 94 checklists, 100–101 Chichén Itzá, 21 Chile, 175–179 Chilean Production Development Corporation, 175 China, 147, 196 communicative coordination in, 30–32 fintechs in, 151, 152 firms in, 28 labor market of, 184 choice, 6, 207–223 in banking and financial sector, 215–216 in education sector, 214 in energy markets, 213 in health care sector, 213–214 historical constraints on, 13–14 human error and, 14–15 questions about, 219–220 relinquishing some, 85 in retail sector, 207–212 about time management, 221–222 Chongqing Province (China), 31–32, 33 Cisco, 7 Claudico (machine learning system), 60 Coconut, 147 cognitive bias and constraints, 5, 62 automation and, 79, 80, 81 firms and, 102–104 markets and, 169–170 persistence of, 14–15 Colson, Eric, 209 command-and-control management, 29–30, 88, 120 Commerzbank, 136 communicative coordination, 10, 17–33 castell example, 17–20 effectiveness as measure of, 24–25 firms and, 26, 28–33, 90, 102 importance of, 20–23 markets and, 26–28, 30–33 price hampering of, 63 societal institutions and, 23–24 competition, 165–167, 202–203 comprehensive cost accounting, 94–95 concentrated markets, 161–169, 171, 217 Condorcet, Marquis de, 50 confirmation bias, 103 Confused.com, 52 conglomerates, 30 Consumer Reports, 51 Contix, 155 coordination.

Cogs and Monsters: What Economics Is, and What It Should Be
by Diane Coyle
Published 11 Oct 2021

Petty, William, 1672, Essays in Political Arithmetick. Philippon, Thomas, 2019, The Great Reversal: How America Gave Up on Free Markets, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Pigou, A. C., 1908, Economic Science in Relation to Practice: An Inaugural Lecture Given at Cambridge 30th October, 1908, London: Macmillan. Piketty, T., 2014, Capital in the 21st Century, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Pinker, S., 2007, The Stuff of Thought: Language as a Window into Human Nature, London: Penguin. Pollock, R., 2009, ‘Changing the Numbers: UK Directory Enquiries Deregulation and the Failure of Choice’, http://rufuspollock.org/2009/02/10/changing-the-numbers-uk-directory-enquiries-deregulation-and-the-failure-of-choice/, accessed 5 April 2012.

…

Political shifts of this kind never have a single cause, but economic disadvantage was certainly involved: studies of different votes have mapped the correlation between populist vote shares and places ‘left behind’ (the term in vogue) by economically-thriving big urban centres. The chickens dating back to deindustrialisation in the 1980s were coming home to roost. Although the big increases in income and wealth inequality had occurred during the 1980s, policy attention focused on this far more after the headline-grabbing Occupy movements, the success of Thomas Piketty’s Capital (2014), and the increased awareness of the social costs of being left behind, so authoritatively documented by Anne Case and Angus Deaton in Deaths of Despair (2020). For many people, life had not been getting better, whatever the macroeconomic statistics said. Inequality is a political as well as an economic phenomenon.

What's Wrong With Economics: A Primer for the Perplexed
by Robert Skidelsky
Published 3 Mar 2020

The Wealth and Poverty of Nations: Why Some Are So Rich and Others So Poor, New York: W.W. Norton. Marshall, Alfred (1890). Principles of Economics, London: Macmillan. Parker, William Nelson (1986). Economic History and the Modern Economist, Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Piketty, Thomas (2014). Capital in the 21st Century, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Saul, John Ralston (2004). ‘The Collapse of Globalism’, Harper’s Magazine, March. Schlesinger, Arthur M. (1986). The Cycles of American History, London: Penguin. Schumpeter, Joseph (1983 [1934]). The Theory of Economic Development: An Inquiry into Profits, Capital, Credit, Interest, and the Business Cycle, New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers.

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So Maddison’s are estimates based on such statistics as were available then, compiled for different purposes, and subject to a wide margin of error. They are useful for swatting away ludicrous assertions, but not for making precise comparisons of welfare between, say, ancient Athens and modern Ethiopia. The same is true of Thomas Piketty’s statistics on economic inequality, and indeed all statistical time-series.3 Time-series analysis is also a core component of econometrics – the attempt to measure statistically the relationship between two or more economic variables over time in order to estimate their future relationship, or to test and validate those in the past.

Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right
by Arlie Russell Hochschild
Published 5 Sep 2016

And those combining the incomes of both spouses—whatever the education of either—enjoyed incomes that were that high or higher. 150more profits to top executives and stockholders, and less to workers Robert Reich, Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few (New York: Knopf, 2015); John Ehrenreich, Third Wave Capitalism: How Money, Power, and the Pursuit of Self-Interest Have Imperiled the American Dream (Ithaca and London: ILR Press, an Imprint of Cornell University Press, forthcoming 2016); Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez, 2007 Average Incomes, U.S. 1980–2012 (in real 2014 dollars). Also see Thomas Piketty, Capital in the Twenty-First Century (Boston: Harvard University Press, 2014). Thomas Piketty and his French-American colleague, Emmanuel Saez, base this distribution on income individuals hold in the absence of government activity—so it’s what people have if they neither pay taxes nor receive government distributions (e.g., Social Security, unemployment insurance, food stamps, Medicaid, or earned income tax credits).

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“Calcasieu, Cameron Areas ‘on Bubble’ with EPA for Air Quality.” American Press (July 11, 2014). http://www.americanpress.com/news/local/Air-quality. Phillips-Fein, Kim. Invisible Hands: The Businessmen’s Crusade Against the New Deal. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2007. Piketty, Thomas. Capital in the Twenty-First Century. Boston: Harvard University Press, 2014. Piketty, Thomas, and Emmanuel Saez. 2007 Average Incomes, U.S. 1980–2012 (in real 2014 dollars). The World Top Incomes Database. http://topincomes.g-mond.parisschoolofeconomics.edu. Porter, Michael, and C. Van der Linde. “Toward a New Conception of the Environment–Competitiveness Relationship.”

The Black Box Society: The Secret Algorithms That Control Money and Information
by Frank Pasquale
Published 17 Nov 2014

Ben Austen, “The YouTube Laugh Factory: A Studio System for Viral Video,” 260 NOTES TO PAGES 86–90 Wired, December 16, 2011, http://www.wired.com /magazine/2011/12/ff_you tube/all /. 159. On the barriers to organization of digital labor, see Scholz, Digital Labor. 160. Lawrence Lessig, Remix: Making Art and Commerce Thrive in the Hybrid Economy (New York: Penguin, 2008), 128. 161. James Galbraith, The Predator State (New York: Free Press, 2008), xix. 162. Thomas Piketty, Capital in the Twenty-First Century (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2014): 571. 163. Turow, The Daily You. 164. Jerry Kang, “Race.Net Neutrality,” Journal on Telecommunications and High Technology Law 6 (2007): 9–10. 165. Ibid. See also Jack Balkin, “Media Access: A Question of Design,” George Washington Law Review 76 (2008): 933. 166.

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For the strange career of neoliberal approaches to antitrust law, see Robert Van Horn and Philip Mirowski, “Reinventing Monopoly,” in The Road from Mount Pèlerin, ed. Philip Mirowski and Dieter Plehwe (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009), 219 ff. 96. C. Wright Mills, The Power Elite. New ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000). First published 1956. 97. Thomas Piketty, Capital in the Twenty-First Century (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2014), 574. 98. Pope Francis, Evangelii Gaudium (Apostolic Exhortation), November 24, 2013, para. 55. Available at http://w2.vatican.va /content /francesco/en /apost _exhortations/documents/papa-francesco_esortazione-ap_20131124 _evangelii -gaudium.html. 

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This allows them to offer data-driven targeting to advertisers, with whose handsome payments they can buy content, apps, and other enticements (the fruits of other people’s ingenuity) that draw a bigger audience still, and so on. The well-realized technological vision that attracts the initial user base deserves recompense. But it does not entitle present corporate leaders to endlessly leverage past success into future dominance. What Thomas Piketty said of unlimited capital accumulation applies as well to untrammeled tech giants: “the past devours the future.”162 The data advantage of the Silicon Valley giants may owe as much to fortuitous timing as to anything inherent in the firms themselves. Social theorist David Grewal has explained the “network power” of English as a lingua franca; it’s not “better” than other languages; it’s not easier to learn, or any more expressive.

New Dark Age: Technology and the End of the Future
by James Bridle
Published 18 Jun 2018

The haves enjoyed a perfect view of the market; the have-nots never saw the market at all. What had once been the world’s most public, most democratic, financial market had become, in spirit, something more like a private viewing of a stolen work of art.15 In his deeply pessimistic work on income equality, Capital in the Twenty-First Century, the French economist Thomas Piketty analysed the increasing disparities in wealth between a minority of very rich people, and everyone else. In the United States, in 2014, the richest 0.01 per cent, comprising just 16,000 families, controlled 11.2 per cent of total wealth – a situation comparable to 1916, the time of greatest inequality on record.

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‘Barclays and Credit Suisse are fined over US “dark pools”’, BBC, February 1, 2016, bbc.com. 9.Martin Arnold, et al., ‘Banks start to drain Barclays dark pool’, Financial Times, June 26, 2014, ft.com. 10.Care Quality Commission, Hillingdon Hospital report, 2015, cqc.org.uk/location/RAS01. 11.Aneurin Bevan, In Place of Fear, London: William Heinemann, 1952. 12.Correspondence with Hillingdon Hospital NHS Trust, 2017, whatdotheyknow.com/request/hillingdon_hospital_structure_us. 13.Chloe Mayer, ‘England’s NHS hospitals and ambulance trusts have £700million deficit’, Sun, May 23, 2017, thesun.co.uk. 14.Michael Lewis, Flash Boys, New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2014. 15.Ibid. 16.‘Forget the 1%’, Economist, November 6, 2014, economist.com. 17.Thomas Piketty, Capital in the Twenty-First Century, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2014. 18.Jordan Golson, ‘Uber is using in-app podcasts to dissuade Seattle drivers from unionizing’, Verge, March 14, 2017, theverge.com. 19.Carla Green and Sam Levin, ‘Homeless, assaulted, broke: drivers left behind as Uber promises change at the top’, Guardian, June 17, 2017, theguardian.com. 20.Ben Kentish, ‘Hard-pressed Amazon workers in Scotland sleeping in tents near warehouse to save money’, Independent, December 10, 2016, independent.co.uk. 21.Kate Knibbs, ‘Uber Is Faking Us Out With “Ghost Cabs” on Its Passenger Map’, Gizmodo, July 28, 2015, gizmodo.com. 22.Kashmir Hill, ‘“God View”: Uber Allegedly Stalked Users For Party-Goers’ Viewing Pleasure’, Forbes, October 3, 2014, forbes.com. 23.Julia Carrie Wong, ‘Greyball: how Uber used secret software to dodge the law’, Guardian, March 4, 2017, theguardian.com. 24.Russell Hotten, ‘Volkswagen: The scandal explained’, BBC, December 10, 2015, bbc.com. 25.Guillaume P.

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Index Locators in bold italic represent images/pictures A AAIB (Air Accidents Investigations Branch), 188–9 ABC Trial, 189 Aberdeen Proving Ground, 28–9 acceleration, 132 AdSense, 218 Advanced Chess, 159–60 Aeroflot, 65 Aero Lease UK, 190–1 AI (artificial intelligence), 139 Air Accidents Investigations Branch (AAIB), 188–9 Airbnb, 127 Air France, 71 air loom, 208, 209, 209 al-Assad, Bashar, 55, 124 Aldrich, Richard, 189–90 algorithms about, 108, 126 reaction speed of, 123 YouTube, 217–8, 229, 232 AlphaGo software, 149, 156–8 Al-Qaeda, 212 Alterman, Boris, 158, 159 ‘Alterman Wall,’ 158 Amash-Conyers Amendment, 178 Amazon, 39, 113–8, 115, 125–7 American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity, 64 American Meteorological Society, 26 ‘A National Infrastructure for the 21st century’ report, 59 Anderson, Chris ‘End of Theory,’ 83–4, 146 anthropocene, 203 antiquisation programme, 234 approximation, conflating with simulation, 34–5 Arimaa, 158–9 Arkin, Alan, 188 ‘the ark,’ 52–3 Army Balloon Factory, 188–9 artificial intelligence (AI), 139 AshleyMadison.com (website), 237–8 Asimov, Isaac Three Laws of Robotics, 157 Assange, Julian ‘Conspiracy as Governance,’ 183 Assistant software, 152 Associated Press, 124 ‘As We May Think’ (Bush), 23–4 Aubrey, Crispin, 189 Aurora (Robinson), 128 AutoAwesome software, 152 Automated Insights, 123–4 automated journalism, 123–4 automated trading programs, 124 automation bias, 40, 42–3, 95 aviation, 35–6 B BABYFUN TV, 225 Ballistic Research Laboratory, 28–9 Bank of England, 123 Banks, Iain M., 149–50 Barclays, 109 basic research/brute force bias, 95 Bel Geddes, Norman, 30–1 Bell, Alexander Graham, 19–20 Benjamin, Walter, 144, 156 The Task of the Translator, 147, 155–6 Berners-Lee, Conway, 78 Berners-Lee, Tim, 78–9, 81 Berry, John, 189 ‘better than the Beatles’ problem, 94 Bevan Aneurin, 111 In Place of Fear, 110 big bang, 106 big data, 84 Bilderberg Group, 241 Binney, William, 176, 180, 181 Birther movement, 206 Bitcoin, 63 ‘Black Chamber,’ 249 blast furnace, 77–8 BND, 174 Borges, Jorge Luis, 79–80 Bounce Patrol, 223 branded content, 220 Brin, Sergey, 139 Broomberg, Adam, 143 Bush, George W., 176 Bush, Vannevar ‘As We May Think,’ 23–4 Bush Differential Analyser, 27 on hypertext, 79 Bush Differential Analyser, 27 Byron “Darkness,” 201–2 C Cadwalladr, Carole, 236 calculating machines, 27 calculation p-hacking, 89–91 raw computing, 82–3 replicability, 88–9 translation algorithms, 84 Cambridge Analytica, 236 Campbell, Duncan, 189 ‘Can We Survive Technology?’ (von Neumann), 28 Capital in the Twenty-First Century (Piketty), 112 carbon dioxide, 75 Catch-22 (Heller), 187–8 ‘cautious regulator’ theory, 94–5 CCTV, 181–2 centaur chess, 159 Chanarin, Oliver, 143 chaotic storage, 115–6 Chargaff, Erwin, 96–7 Charlie Hebdo attacks, 212 chemtrails, 192–5, 206–8, 214 children’s television, 216–7 children’s YouTube, 219, 238 Cirrus homogenitus, 196, 197 Civil Aviation Authority (CAA), 161–2 clear-air turbulence, 68 climate carbon dioxide, 75 global warming, 73, 193, 214 permafrost, 47–9, 56–7 seed banks, 52–6 turbulence, 65–9 climate change patterns disrupted by, 72–3 resilience against, 59 climate crisis, 56 Clinton, Bill, 243 Clinton, Hillary, 207, 232–3 cloning, 86–8 closed-circuit television, 181–2 cloud(s), 6–7, 8, 17, 195–6 ‘The Cloud Begins with Coal-Big Data, Big Networks, Big Infrastructure, and Big Power’ report, 64 ‘The Cloud of Unknowing,’ 9 cloudy thinking, 9 coal deposits, discovery of, 52 coastal installations, 62 Cocks, Clifford, 167 code/spaces, 37–9 code words, 175 cognition about, 135–6 artificial intelligence (AI), 139 facial recognition, 141 image recognition, 139–40 machine translation, 147 ‘predictive policing’ systems, 144–6 collectivism, totalitarianism vs., 139 Commission on Government Secrecy, 169 complex systems about, 2–3 aggregation of, 40 high-frequency trading, 14, 106–7, 108, 122, 124 complicity computational logic, 184–5 Freedom of Information, 161–2, 165, 192 global mass surveillance, 179–80 Glomar response, 165, 186 public key cryptography, 167–8 computation calculating machines, 27 Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer (ENIAC), 27, 27–30, 33 flight trackers, 35–6, 36 IBM Selective Sequence Electronic Calculator (SSEC), 30, 30–2, 31, 146 opaqueness of, 40 computational logic, 184–5 computational thinking about, 4 evolution of, 248 importance of, 44–5 Concorde, 69, 70, 71 conspiracy chemtrails, 192–5, 206–8, 214 conspiracy theories, 195, 198–9, 205 contrails, 196–8, 197, 214 global warming, 73, 193, 214 9/11 terrorist attacks, 203–4, 206 ‘Conspiracy as Governance’ (Assange), 183 contrails, 196–8, 197, 214 Copenhagen Climate Change Conference (COP15), 199 Cowen, Deborah, 132 Credit Suisse, 109 cryptocurrency, 63 Cumulus homogenitus, 195–6 cyborg chess, 159 D Dabiq (online magazine), 212 Dallaire, Roméo, 243 darkness, 11–2 “Darkness” (poem), 201–2 dark pools, 108–9 DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency), 33 Darwin, Charles, 78 data abundance of, 83–4, 131 big, 84 importance of, 245–6 realistic accounting of, 247 thirst for, 246 data dredging, 90–1 Debord, Guy, 103 DEC (Digital Equipment Corporation), 33 Decyben SAS, 110 Deep Blue, 148–9, 157–60 DeepDream, 153, 154–5 DeepFace software, 140 defeat devices, 120 Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), 33 de Solla Price, Derek, 91–2, 93 Diffie-Hellman key exchange, 167 digital culture, 64–5 Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC), 33 digital networks, mapping, 104 digitisation, 108 ‘Discussion of the Possibility of Weather Control’ lecture, 26 diurnal temperature range (DTR), 204 DNA sequencing, 93 D-Notices, 179 domain name system, 79 doomsday vault, 52–3 Dow Jones Industrial Average, 121–2 drones, 161–2 drug discovery/research, 94–5 DTR (diurnal temperature range), 204 Duffy, Carol Ann, 201 Dunne, Carey, 194–5 E Elberling, Bo, 57 electromagnetic networks, 104 Electronic Computer Project, 27 Electronic Frontier Foundation, 177 Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer (ENIAC), 27, 27–30, 33 Elements of Chemistry (Lavoisier), 208–9 Elkins, Caroline, 183–4 Ellis, James, 167 encoded biases, 142 ‘End of Theory’ (Anderson), 83–4, 146 Engelbart, Douglas, 79 ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer), 27, 27–30, 33 Enlightenment, 10 Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), 119–20 EPA (Environmental Protection Agency), 119–20 Epagogix, 130 epidemic type aftershock sequence (ETAS) model, 145–6 Epimetheus, 132–4 Equinix LD4, 104 Eroom’s law, 86, 93–6 ETAS (epidemic type aftershock sequence) model, 145–6 Euronext Data Center, 104, 105, 106 Evangelismos Hospital, 130–1 evolution, theory of, 78 exploitation, 229–30 Eyjafjallajökull, eruption of, 200–1, 202 F Facebook, 39–40, 156–7 facial recognition, 141 Fairchild Semiconductor, 80 Farage, Nigel, 194 Fat Man bomb, 25 Fermi, Enrico, 250 Ferranti Mark I, 78 fiat anima, 19–20 fiat lux, 19–20 Finger Family, 221–2, 224, 227 ‘Five Eyes,’ 174 Flash Boys (Lewis), 111–2 flash crash, 121–2, 130–1 FlightRadar24, 36, 189, 191 flight trackers, 35–6, 36 ‘Fourteen Eyes,’ 174 Fowler, R.H., 45 Frankenstein (Shelley), 201 fraud, 86–8, 91 Freedom of Information, 161–2, 165, 192 Friends’ Ambulance Unit, 20 Fuller, Buckminster, 71 Futurama exhibit, 30–1 ‘Future Uses of High Speed Computing in Meteorology’ lecture, 26 G Gail, William B., 72–3 Galton, Francis, 140 game developers, 130 Gates’s law, 83 GCHQ (Government Communications Headquarters), 167, 174, 176–9, 189 genocide, 243 ghost cars (Uber), 118–9 G-INFO, 190 global mass surveillance, 179–80 Global Positioning System (GPS), 36–7, 42–3 Global Seed Vault, 54 global warming, 73, 193, 214 Glomar response, 165, 186 Godard, Jean-Luc, 143 Google, 84, 139, 230, 242 Google Alerts, 190 Google Brain project, 139, 148, 149, 156 Google Earth, 35–6 Google Home, 128–9 Google Maps, 177 Google Translate, 147–8, 156 Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), 167, 174, 176–9, 189 GPS (Global Positioning System), 36–7, 42–3 Graves, Robert, 159 Gravity’s Rainbow (Pynchon), 128 gray zone, 212–4 Great Nōbi Earthquake, 145 Greenland, 57–8 Green Revolution, 53 Greyball programme, 119, 120 guardianship, 251–2 H Hankins, Thomas, 102 Haraway, Donna, 12 Harvard Mark I machine, 30 Hayek, Friedrich, 156–7 The Road to Serfdom, 139 The Sensory Order: An Inquiry into the Foundations of Theoretical Psychology, 138–9 HealthyFoodHouse.com (website), 231–2 Heller, Joseph Catch-22, 187–8 Hermes, 134 Hersh, Seymour, 164 Hewlett-Packard, 143 hidden technological processes, 120 high-frequency trading, 14, 106–7, 108, 122, 124 high-throughput screening (HTS), 95–6 Hillingdon Hospital, 110–1, 111 Hippo programme, 32 Hofstadter, Douglas, 205–6 Hola Massacre, 170 homogenitus, 195, 196 Horn, Roni, 50, 201 How-Old.net facial recognition programme, 141 ‘How the World Wide Web Just Happened’ lecture, 78 HTS (high-throughput screening), 95–6 Hughes, Howard, 163 Hughes Glomar Explorer, 163–5 human genome project, 93 Human Interference Task Force, 251 human violence, 202 Humby, Clive, 245, 246 Hwang Woo-suk, 86–8 hyperobjects, 73, 75, 76, 194 hypertext, 79 I IBM Selective Sequence Electronic Calculator (SSEC), 30, 30–2, 31, 146 ICAO (International Civil Aviation Organisation), 68 ICARDA (International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas), 53–4, 55 ICT, 60–2 image recognition, 139–40 Infinite Fun Space, 149–50, 156 information networks, 62 information superhighway, 10 Infowars (Jones), 207 In Place of Fear (Bevan), 110 Institute of the Aeronautical Sciences, 26 integrated circuits, 79, 80 Intel, 80 International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas (ICARDA), 53–4, 55 International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO), 68 International Cloud Atlas, 195 Internet Research Agency, 235, 237 Inuit Knowledge and Climate Change, 199 The Invisibles (Morrison), 196–7 Isaksen, Ketil, 54 ISIL, 212–3 J Jameson, Fredric, 205 Jelinek, Frederick, 146–7 Jones, Alex Infowars, 207 Joshi, Manoj, 68–9 journalism, automated, 123–4 just-in-time manufacturing, 117 K K-129, 162–3 Karma Police operation, 175 Kasparov, Garry, 148–9, 157–8 Keeling Curve, 74, 74 Kennedy, John F., 169–70 Kinder Eggs, 215–6 Kiva robots, 114 Klein, Mark, 176–7 Kodak, 143 Krakatoa, eruption of, 202 Kunuk, Zacharias, 199, 200 Kuznets curve, 113 L Large Hadron Collider, 93 Lavoisier, Antoine, 78 Elements of Chemistry, 208–9 Lawson, Robert, 175–6 LD4, 104, 105 Leave Campaign, 194 Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm, 78 Levy, David, 158, 159 Lewis, Michael Flash Boys, 111–2 LifeSphere, 125 literacy in systems, 3–4 Lockheed Ocean Systems, 163 Logan, Walt (pseudonym), 165 Lombroso, Cesare, 140 London Stock Exchange, 110–1 Lovecraft, H.P., 11, 249 ‘low-hanging fruit,’ 93–4 M Macedonia, 233–4 machine learning algorithms, 222 machine thought, 146 machine translation, 147 magnetism, 77 Malaysian Airlines, 66 manganese noodles, 163–4 Manhattan Project, 24–30, 248 Mara, Jane Muthoni, 170 Mark I Perceptron, 136–8, 137 Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, 128–9 Matthews, James Tilly, 208–10, 209 Mauro, Ian, 199 McCarthy, Joe, 205 McGovern, Thomas, 57–8 McKay Brothers, 107, 110 memex, 24 Mercer, Robert, 236 Merkel, Angela, 174 metalanguage, 3, 5 middens, 56 migrated archive, 170–1 Minds, 150 miniaturisation principle, 81 Mirai, 129 mobile phones, 126 The Modern Prometheus (Shelley), 201 monoculture, 55–6 Moore, Gordon, 80, 80, 83 Moore’s law, 80–3, 92–4 Mordvintsev, Alexander, 154 Morgellons, 211, 214 Morrison, Grant The Invisibles, 196–7 Morton, Timothy, 73, 194 Mount Tambora, eruption of, 201 Moynihan, Daniel Patrick, 169 Munch, Edvard The Scream, 202 Mutua, Ndiku, 170 N NarusInsight, 177 NASA Ames Advanced Concepts Flight Simulator, 42 Natanz Nuclear Facility, 129 National Centre for Atmospheric Science, 68–9 National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, 243 National Health Service (NHS), 110 National Mining Association, 64 National Reconnaissance Office, 168, 243 National Security Agency (NSA), 167, 174, 177–8, 183, 242–3, 249–50 National Security Strategy, 59 natural gas, 48 neoliberalism, 138–9 network, 5, 9 networks, 249 Newton, Isaac, 78 NewYorkTimesPolitics.com, 221 New York World’s Fair, 30–1 NHS (National Health Service), 110 9/11 terrorist attacks, 203–4, 206 ‘Nine Eyes,’ 174 1984 (Orwell), 242 NORAD (North American Air Defense Command), 33 North American Air Defense Command (NORAD), 33 ‘The Nor’ project, 104 Not Aviation, 190–1 NSA (National Security Agency), 167, 174, 177–8, 183, 242–3, 249–50 nuclear fusion, 97–8, 100 nuclear warfare, 28 Numerical Prediction (Richardson), 45 Nyingi, Wambugu Wa, 170 Nzili, Paulo Muoka, 170 O Obama, Barack, 180, 206, 231 Official Secrets Act, 189 Omori, Fusakichi, 145 Omori’s Law, 145 Operation Castle, 97 Operation Legacy, 171–2 Optic Nerve programme, 174 Optometrist Algorithm, 99–101, 160 O’Reilly, James, 185–6 Orwell, George 1984, 242 ‘Outline of Weather Proposal’ (Zworykin), 25–6 P Paglen, Trevor, 144 ‘paranoid style,’ 205–6 Patriot Act, 178 Penrose, Roger, 20 Perceptron, 136–8, 137 permafrost, 47–9, 56–7 p-hacking, 89–91 Phillippi, Harriet Ann, 165 photophone, 19–20 Pichai, Sundar, 139 Piketty, Thomas Capital in the Twenty-First Century, 112 Pincher, Chapman, 175–6 Pitt, William, 208 Plague-Cloud, 195, 202 Poitras, Laura, 175 Polaroid, 143 ‘predictive policing’ systems, 144–6 PredPol software, 144, 146 Priestley, Joseph, 78, 208, 209 prion diseases, 50, 50–1 PRISM operation, 173 product spam, 125–6 Project Echelon, 190 Prometheus, 132–4, 198 psychogeography, 103 public key cryptography, 167–8 pure language, 156 Putin, Vladimir, 235 Pynchon, Thomas Gravity’s Rainbow, 128 Q Qajaa, 56, 57 quality control failure of, 92–3 in science, 91 Quidsi, 113–4 R racial profiling, 143–4 racism, 143–4 ‘radiation cats,’ 251 raw computing, 82–3 Reagan, Ronald, 36–7 Reed, Harry, 29 refractive index of the atmosphere, 62 Regin malware, 175 replicability, 88–9 Reproducibility Project, 89 resistance, modes of, 120 Reuter, Paul, 107 Review Group on Intelligence and Communications Technologies, 181 Richardson, Lewis Fry, 20–1, 29, 68 Numerical Prediction, 45 Weather Prediction by Numerical Process, 21–3 Richardson number, 68 The Road to Serfdom (Hayek), 139 Robinson, Kim Stanley Aurora, 128 robots, workers vs., 116 ‘Rogeting,’ 88 Romney, Mitt, 206–7 Rosenblatt, Frank, 137 Roy, Arundhati, 250 Royal Aircraft Establishment, 188–9 Ruskin, John, 17–20, 195, 202 Rwanda, 243, 244, 245 S Sabetta, 48 SABRE (Semi-Automated Business Research Environment), 35, 38 SAGE (Semi-Automatic Ground Environment), 33, 34, 35 Samsung, 127 Scheele, Carl Wilhelm, 78 Schmidt, Eric, 241–5 The Scream (Munch), 202 Sedol, Lee, 149, 157–8 seed banks, 52–6 Seed Vault, 55 seismic sensors, 48 self-excitation, 145 ‘semantic analyser,’ 177 Semi-Automated Business Research Environment (SABRE), 35, 38 Semi-Automatic Ground Environment (SAGE), 33, 34, 35 semiconductors, 82 The Sensory Order: An Inquiry into the Foundations of Theoretical Psychology (Hayek), 138–9 Shelley, Mary Frankenstein, 201 The Modern Prometheus, 201 SIGINT Seniors Europe, 174 simulation, conflating approximation with, 34–5 Singapore Exchange, 122–3 smart products, 127–8, 131 Smith, Robert Elliott, 152 smoking gun, 183–4, 186 Snowden, Edward, 173–5, 178 software about, 82–3 AlphaGo, 149, 156–8 Assistant, 152 AutoAwesome, 152 DeepFace, 140 Greyball programme, 119, 120 Hippo programme, 32 How-Old.net facial recognition programme, 141 Optic Nerve programme, 174 PredPol, 144, 146 Translate, 146 Solnit, Rebecca, 11–2 solutionism, 4 space telescopes, 168–9 speed of light, 107 Spread Networks, 107 SSEC (IBM Selective Sequence Electronic Calculator), 30, 30–2, 31, 146 Stapel, Diederik, 87–8 Stapledon, Olaf, 20 steam engines, 77 Stellar Wind, 176 Stewart, Elizabeth ‘Betsy,’ 30–1, 31 Steyerl, Hito, 126 stock exchanges, 108 ‘The Storm-Cloud of the Nineteenth Century’ lecture series, 17–9 Stratus homogenitus, 195–6 studios, 130 Stuxnet, 129–30 surveillance about, 243–4 complicity in, 185 computational excesses of, 180–1 devices for, 104 Svalbard archipelago, 51–2, 54 Svalbard Global Seed Vault, 52–3 Svalbard Treaty (1920), 52 Swiss National Bank, 123 Syed, Omar, 158–9 systemic literacy, 5–6 T Taimyr Peninsula, 47–8 Targeted Individuals, 210–1 The Task of the Translator (Benjamin), 147, 155–6 TCP (Transmission Control Protocol), 79 technology acceleration of, 2 complex, 2–3 opacity of, 119 Teletubbies, 217 television, children’s, 216–7 Tesco Clubcard, 245 thalidomide, 95 Thatcher, Margaret, 177 theory of evolution, 78 thermal power plants, 196 Three Guineas (Woolf), 12 Three Laws of Robotics (Asimov), 157 Tillmans, Wolfgang, 71 tools, 13–4 To Photograph the Details of a Dark Horse in Low Light exhibition, 143 totalitarianism, collectivism vs., 139 Toy Freaks, 225–6 transistors, 79, 80 Translate software, 146 translation algorithms, 84 Transmission Control Protocol (TCP), 79 Tri Alpha Energy, 98–101 Trinity test, 25 trolling, 231 Trump, Donald, 169–70, 194–5, 206, 207, 236 trust, science and, 91 trusted source, 220 Tuktoyaktuk Peninsula, 49 turbulence, 65–9 tyranny of techne, 132 U Uber, 117–9, 127 UberEats app, 120–1 unboxing videos, 216, 219 United Airlines, 66–7 Uniting and Strengthening America by Fulfilling Rights and Ending Eavesdropping, Dragnet-collection and Online Monitoring Act (USA FREEDOM Act), 178 USA FREEDOM Act (2015), 178 US Drug Efficacy Amendment (1962), 95 V van Helden, Albert, 102 Veles, objectification of, 235 Verizon, 173 VHF omnidirectional radio range (VOR) installations, 104 Vigilant Telecom, 110–1 Volkswagen, 119–20 von Neumann, John about, 25 ‘Can We Survive Technology?

The Decadent Society: How We Became the Victims of Our Own Success
by Ross Douthat
Published 25 Feb 2020

The age of stagnation, in this theory, is the fruit of what Brink Lindsey of the Niskanen Institute and Steven Teles of Johns Hopkins University describe as a “captured economy,” in which everything from land-use rules, to exclusionary zoning, to occupational licensing, to ever-expanding intellectual-property protections, to corporate subsidies and tax breaks all converge to create an system that’s basically the worst of socialism and the worst of capitalism conjoined—plutocratic and sclerotic, overregulated and undertaxed, with an upper class enriching itself off rents rather than innovation and a service class that can’t advance beyond its station. The overlap between this more libertarian argument and the left-wing critique of neoliberalism is apparent in one of the urtexts of the post–financial crisis left: French economist Thomas Piketty’s 2013 tome Capital in the Twenty-First Century, which mined centuries’ worth of statistics to argue that capitalism inherently makes the rich richer (because returns on capital will always be higher than simple economic growth) unless some powerful force intervenes. The forces that intervened in the twentieth century were the Great Depression and two world wars, which not only provided the impetus for massive government interventions in the economy but also destroyed outright a great deal of capitalist wealth, leading to a temporary golden age for the Western middle classes.

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A 2017 paper found that companies in younger labor markets are more innovative; a 2018 report found that the aging of society helped explain the growth of monopolies and the declining rate of start-ups. Another paper in the same year found “a clear relationship between an older workforce and lower productivity,” suggesting a demographic explanation for the persistent decline of productivity growth. The empty cradle helps explain the growth of inequality as well. In Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century, his vision of the permanent triumph of the one percent depends heavily on the assumption that slow population growth will inevitably lead to slower growth overall—and, more subtly, on the fact that fewer children means fewer heirs to divide up family wealth. The narrowing of family trees ensures that fortunes will grow ever more concentrated instead of diffusing with each successive generation, as they would in a society where more wealthy people had more than just two kids.

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H., 13, 157 Augustus, emperor of Rome, 200, 201 austerity, 33 Australia, birthrate in, 50 authoritarianism, 12, 49, 86, 162–63, 195, 199, 201, 218 soft, see pink police state sustainable decadence and, 137–54 Trump and, 80, 130 Autor, David, 29 Aztec Empire, 189–90 baby boom, 54–55 baby boomers: creative tension between previous generation and, 109–10 cultural impact of, 108–9 repetition and, 109, 111–12 utopianism of, 109 Back to the Future (film), 89–90 “Back to the Future” Day, 89 Back to the Future Part II (film), 89 Baffler, 37 Baldwin, James, 97 Balkans, civil wars in, 134 Bannon, Steve, 132–33 Barzun, Jacques, 8, 12, 69, 91, 96, 100, 113, 135, 172, 184 Baudrillard, Jean, 135 Bellah, Robert, 97, 101 Belloc, Hilaire, 178 Ben-Abbes, Mohammed (char.), 155, 156, 160 Bentham, Jeremy, 144 Bernanke, Ben, 84 Better Angels of Our Nature, The (Pinker), 165 Between the World and Me (Coates), 97 Bezos, Jeff, 213 bipartisanship, 68, 76–77, 82, 171 birthrates, 202 in Africa, 197, 198, 207 of American Jews, 222 in Israel, 50, 54, 217 birthrates, decline in, 27, 46, 47–65, 166–67, 180, 236 contributing factors in, 50–56 in dystopian fiction of Atwood and James, 47–50 economic consequences of, 56–58 innovation and, 57–58 in Islamic world, 161 mass immigration as solution to economic problems of, 62–65 psychological consequences of, 61–62 recessions and, 51 replacement rate and, 50, 53–54, 58, 63 shrinking families and, 58–62 welfare states and, 51, 52 Black Death, 190 Black Panther (film), 209–10 Blade Runner: 2049 (film), 94 Bloom, Allan, 97 Bloom, Harold, 224 Bloomberg, Michael, 143 Bloomberg BusinessWeek, 43 Bork, Robert, 78 brain drain, 171 Brave New World (Huxley), 127–28, 151, 184–85 Brazil, economic growth in, 166–67 Brexit, 63, 64, 85, 114, 172, 193 Great Recession and, 193 immigration and, 196 Brookings Institution, 71 Brown, Peter, 223 Brown, Scott, 67 Buckley, William F., 97 Buddhism, 225 Bundy, Ted, 119, 120 Bush, George H. W., 71 Bush, George W., 71, 80 Byzantium, 201 Caldwell, Christopher, 84 Canada, birthrate in, 50 cancer, 211 Capital in the Twenty-First Century (Piketty), 30–31, 57–58 capitalism, 32, 181, 218 neo-Marxist critique of, 219–21 Piketty’s theory of, 30–31 rentier class and, 26, 30–31, 46 captured economies, 30 Carr, Nicholas, 107 Carter, Jimmy, 24 Carter presidency, 25–26 catastrophe, 189–203 climate change scenario for, 195–97, 200 economic scenario for, 191–95, 200 mass migration scenario for, 197–99, 200 unforeseen, 189–91, 202 Catholics, Catholicism, 103, 156, 183, 227 decline in church attendance by, 100 lapsed, 218 liberal, 110 traditionalist, 206–7, 208 Vendée massacre of, 206 Cavafy, C.

An Extraordinary Time: The End of the Postwar Boom and the Return of the Ordinary Economy
by Marc Levinson
Published 31 Jul 2016

Griffiths and Toshiaki Tachibanaki, eds., From Austerity to Affluence: The Transformation of the Socio-Economic Structure of Western Europe and Japan (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2000), 68–72; Takenori Inoki, “From Rapid Growth to the End of Full Employment in Japan,” in Griffiths and Tachibanaki, eds., From Austerity to Affluence, 87. 5. Thomas Piketty, Capital in the Twenty-First Century (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2014). 6. Carmen DeNavas-Walt, Bernadette D. Proctor, and Jessica C. Smith, Income, Poverty, and Health Insurance Coverage in the United States: 2012, US Census Bureau, Current Population Reports, P60–245 (September 2013), Table A-4; Atkinson and Morelli, “Chartbook of Economic Inequality.”

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In some cases, national union leaders even bargained with the heads of business organizations and government officials to set the share of national income that would be paid out in workers’ wages and the share that would be paid out in profits, evening out the distribution of income by limiting the amount that could go to corporate shareholders or the owners of small businesses.4 But as the economist Thomas Piketty has shown, one of the most significant causes of greater equality in the postwar world had less to do with economic policy than with tragedy. World War II destroyed massive amounts of capital: apartments, shops, office blocks, and factories were blown to bits, along with production machinery and household furnishings.

…

In Japan, the Gini coefficient, a measure that would equal 0 if each household had an equal share of the nation’s income and 1 if all income belonged to a single household, fell from around 0.3 before the war to 0.04 in 1953, indicating a very high degree of equality. See T. Mizoguchi, “Long-run Fluctuations in Income Distribution in Japan,” Economic Review 37 (1986): 152–158, cited in Toshiaki Tachibanaki, Confronting Income Inequality in Japan (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2005), 59. 4. Facundo Alvaredo, Anthony B. Atkinson, Thomas Piketty, and Emmanuel Saez, “The Top 1% in International and Historical Perspective,” Journal of Economic Perspectives 27 (2013): 7; Richard T. Griffiths, “Economic Growth and Overfull Employment in Western Europe,” in Richard T. Griffiths and Toshiaki Tachibanaki, eds., From Austerity to Affluence: The Transformation of the Socio-Economic Structure of Western Europe and Japan (New York: St.

The Third Pillar: How Markets and the State Leave the Community Behind
by Raghuram Rajan
Published 26 Feb 2019

“Table 326.10,” Digest of Education Statistics, National Center for Education Statistics, accessed August 7, 2018, https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d16/tables/dt16_326.10.asp. 31. See Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez, “Income Inequality in the United States, 1913–1998,” Quarterly Journal of Economics 118, no. 1 (2003): 1–41; Anthony Atkinson, Thomas Piketty, and Emmanuel Saez, “Top Incomes in the Long Run of History,” Journal of Economic Literature 49, no. 1 (2011): 3–71; Thomas Piketty, Capital in the Twenty-First Century (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2014). 32. Piketty, Capital. 33. Tobias Buck, “German Inheritance Wave Stokes Fears over Inequality,” Financial Times, May 2, 2018. https://www.ft.com/content/894689c2-4933-11e8-8ee8-cae73aab7ccb; “Taxing inheritances is falling out of favour,” The Economist, November 23, 2017, https://www.economist.com/briefing/2017/11/23/taxing-inheritances-is-falling-out-of-favour?

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With higher-than-warranted demand for job candidates with degrees and lower-than-desirable demand for candidates with high school diplomas, it is less surprising that the wage premium in the United States is higher than elsewhere despite the high average years of education. THE ONE PERCENT AND THE WINNER-TAKE-MOST EFFECTS OF TECHNOLOGY While incomes for those with a bachelor’s degree, especially in technology and engineering, have grown relative to the rest, incomes at the very top have truly exploded in a number of countries. As economists Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez have documented in various studies, in the United States, the top 1 percent of earners took only 8 percent of total income in 1970, but this grew to 18 percent by 2010.31 In the United Kingdom, starting from similar shares in 1970, the top 1 percent earned about 15 percent of total income by 2010.

Doing Good Better: How Effective Altruism Can Help You Make a Difference
by William MacAskill
Published 27 Jul 2015

References to the 1 percent versus the 99 percent—i.e., the rest of the population—quickly became shorthand for the income gap in America. Inequality in America is getting starker over time: while typical household income grew by less than 40 percent between 1979 and 2007, the income of the richest 1 percent grew by 275 percent in that same time period. The French economist Thomas Piketty, who gained international fame for his 2014 book Capital in the Twenty-First Century, has suggested that the level of income inequality in the United States is “probably higher than in any other society at any time in the past, anywhere in the world.” This can lead those of us who aren’t in that 1 percent to feel powerless, but this focus neglects just how much power almost any member of an affluent country has.

…

In an effort to avoid technical vocabulary whenever possible, throughout this book I use “typical” to refer to “median,” and “average” to refer to “mean.” while typical household income: Congressional Budget Office, Trends in the Distribution of Household Income Between 1979 and 2007, October 2011, http://www.cbo.gov/sites/default/files/10-25-HouseholdIncome_0.pdf. “probably higher than in any other society”: Thomas Piketty, Capital in the Twenty-First Century (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2014), 265. Consider this graph of global income distribution: The data on world income distribution is drawn from several sources. The figures for between the richest 1 percent and the richest 21 percent are based on microdata from national household surveys carried out in 2008, kindly provided by Branko Milanovic.

Stolen: How to Save the World From Financialisation
by Grace Blakeley
Published 9 Sep 2019

Socialising finance will steadily erode the distinction between owners and workers and, before long, will allow us to transcend capitalism altogether. If history has a sense of humour, then the death of capitalism will begin where it was born — in the United Kingdom. Capital In 2013, 146 years after Marx published his work of the same name, Thomas Piketty published Capital in the Twenty-First Century.1 It was an instant hit, though few made it past the introduction. In Capital, Piketty argued that the central problem of our time was the tendency for the returns to wealth to outstrip economic growth. Because wealth is highly unequally distributed in capitalist systems, this tendency leads to increasing inequality.

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An IPCC Special Report on the impacts of global warming of 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels and related global greenhouse gas emission pathways, in the context of strengthening the global response to the threat of climate change sustainable development, and efforts to eradicate poverty”. Chapter Seven The Way Forward 1 This account draws on: Piketty (2013); Hudson, P. and Tribe, K. (2017) The Contradictions of Capital in the Twenty-First Century, London: Agenda; Harvey, D. (2014) “Afterthoughts on Piketty’s Capital”, http://davidharvey.org/2014/05/afterthoughts-pikettys-capital/; Mandel (1976; 1981); Harvey (2018). 2 This account draws on: Marx (1894); Mandel (1981) 3 See, e.g., Autor, D. and Dord, D. (2012) “The Growth of Low Skill Service Jobs and the Polarisation of the US Labour Market”, MIT Department of Economics. 4 This account draws on: Mazzucato, M. (2011) The Entrepreneurial State: Debunking Public vs Private Sector Myths, London: Anthem; Mazzucato, M. (2015) “The Market Creating State”, RSA Journal, vol. 2. 5 Srnicek N. and Williams A. (2016) Inventing the Future: Postcapitalism and a World Without Work, London: Verso. 6 Eagleton, O. (2017) “Criminalising Anti-Austerity in Ireland”, Jacobin, 21 April. 7 This account draws on: Baker, A. (2013) “The New Political Economy of the Macroprudential Ideational Shift”, New Political Economy, vol. 18. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/13563467.2012.662952; Galati, G. and Moessner, R. (2011) “Macroprudential Policy — A Literature Review”, BIS Working Paper 337; Blanchard, O., Rajan, R., Rogoff and Summers (2016); Bank of England (2009) “The Role of Macroprudential Policy: A Discussion Paper” http://www.bankofengland.co.uk/publications/other/financialstability/roleofmacroprudentialpolicy091121.pdf; Kregel, J. (2014) “Minsky and Dynamic Macroprudential Regulation”, Levy Economics Institute Public Policy Brief No. 131. 8 This account draws on: Blakeley (2018a) 9 Haldane, A. (2012) “The Dog and the Frisbee”, speech given at the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City’s 36th economic policy symposium, 31 August. 10 IPPR (2018) 11 See, e.g., Stirling, A. (2018) “Just About Managing Demand: Reforming the UK’s Macroeconomic Policy Framework”, IPPR. 12 See, e.g., Roberts, C. and Lawrence, M. (2018) “Our Common Wealth: A Citizens’ Wealth Fund for the UK”, IPPR. 13 See, e.g., Murphy, R. (2017) Dirty Secrets: How Tax Havens Destroy the Economy, London: Verso ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Writing a book is hard.

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Since the 1970s, capital has become much more powerful than labour in Anglo-America.25 In the post-war period, strong labour unions and state commitments to maintaining full employment meant that workers could demand wage increases that were in line with productivity. As a result of the increase in the power of labour relative to that of capital, labour got its way. But this was an historically unusual situation — as Thomas Piketty points out, the “golden age” of capitalism was the exception, not the rule. After the 1970s, rising capital mobility, financial deregulation, and changing models of corporate governance have increased the power of shareholders — particularly big investors — in the management of corporations. Workers have been disempowered through simultaneous anti-union legislation and the reversal of the Keynesian economic policy which provided for full employment.

The Only Game in Town: Central Banks, Instability, and Avoiding the Next Collapse
by Mohamed A. El-Erian
Published 26 Jan 2016

Federal Reserve Board of Governors, “Changes in US Family Finances from 2010 to 2013: Evidence from the Survey of Consumer Finances,” Federal Reserve Bulletin 100, no. 4 (September 2014), http://www.federalreserve.gov/pubs/bulletin/2014/pdf/scf14.pdf. 6. Rakesh Kochhar and Richard Fry, “Wealth Inequality Has Widened Along Racial, Ethnic Lines Since the End of the Great Recession,” Pew Research Center, December 12, 2014, http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/12/12/racial-wealth-gaps-great-recession/. 7. Thomas Piketty, Capital in the Twenty-First Century (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2014). 8. Mohamed A. El-Erian, “The Inequality Trifecta,” Project Syndicate, October 17, 2014, http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/imf-world-bank-annual-meetings-and-inequality-by-mohamed-a--el-erian-2014-10. 9.

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As noted earlier, the expansion of their balance sheets has tended to support the wealthy since the latter hold a disproportionately large share of the financial assets being targeted for support by central bank action. Given all this, it should come as no surprise that there is now quite a bit of general interest in the matter. Recall how in 2014 a big economic tome (almost seven hundred pages, including research analysis and historical insights) on inequality by French economist Thomas Piketty shot up to the top of bestseller lists, triggering lots of discussions, panels, and interviews in the process.7 At the 2014 IMF–World Bank Annual Meeting in Washington, D.C., inequality was the most common topic in seminars organized by the official sector, industry groups, and think tanks. There is also a growing realization that the effects of inequality may well have evolved beyond questions of fairness, and beyond the threats it poses to social, geopolitical, and political well-being: Inequality also creates adverse economic feedback loops that make it much harder for the advanced countries to emerge from their generalized economic malaise.

Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World
by Cal Newport
Published 5 Jan 2016

The Metric Black Hole “A ‘free and frictionless’ method of communication” and other details of Tom Cochran’s e-mail experiment: Cochran, Tom. “Email Is Not Free.” Harvard Business Review, April 8, 2013. http://blogs.hbr.org/2013/04/email-is-not-free/. “it is objectively difficult to measure individual”: from page 509 of Piketty, Thomas. Capital in the Twenty-First Century. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2014. “undoubtedly true”: Manzi, Jim. “Piketty’s Can Opener.” National Review, July 7, 2014. http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/382084/pikettys-can-opener-jim-manzi. This careful and critical review of Piketty’s book by Jim Manzi is where I originally came across the Piketty citation.

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Even though we abstractly accept that distraction has costs and depth has value, these impacts, as Tom Cochran discovered, are difficult to measure. This isn’t a trait unique to habits related to distraction and depth: Generally speaking, as knowledge work makes more complex demands of the labor force, it becomes harder to measure the value of an individual’s efforts. The French economist Thomas Piketty made this point explicit in his study of the extreme growth of executive salaries. The enabling assumption driving his argument is that “it is objectively difficult to measure individual contributions to a firm’s output.” In the absence of such measures, irrational outcomes, such as executive salaries way out of proportion to the executive’s marginal productivity, can occur.

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Of course, just because it’s hard to measure metrics related to deep work doesn’t automatically lead to the conclusion that businesses will dismiss it. We have many examples of behaviors for which it’s hard to measure their bottom-line impact but that nevertheless flourish in our business culture; think, for example, of the three trends that opened this chapter, or the outsize executive salaries that puzzled Thomas Piketty. But without clear metrics to support it, any business behavior is vulnerable to unstable whim and shifting forces, and in this volatile scrum deep work has fared particularly poorly. The reality of this metric black hole is the backdrop for the arguments that follow in this chapter. In these upcoming sections, I’ll describe various mind-sets and biases that have pushed business away from deep work and toward more distracting alternatives.

Abolish Silicon Valley: How to Liberate Technology From Capitalism
by Wendy Liu
Published 22 Mar 2020

See Anand Giridharadas’ book Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World (Allen Lane, 2018) for a critique of this sort of philanthropy. 10 Verso, 2011. 11 For coverage of this incident, see “Why GitHub’s CEO Ditched Its Divisive ‘Meritocracy’ Rug” by Lauren Orsini for ReadWrite, published January 24, 2014, at https://readwrite.com/2014/01/24/github-meritocracy-rug/. 12 For a different but related take on this topic, see this interview with French economist Thomas Piketty for the International Inequalities Institute in July 2015, about his book Capital in the Twenty-First Century (you could also read the book, but it’s a lot longer): https://medium.com/@LSEInequalities/an-interview-with-thomas-piketty-a972015438e0. 13 For coverage of this incident, see, for example, “Why Nancy Pelosi’s Comments About Capitalism Disappointed Progressives” by Daniel Marans for Huffington Post, published February 1, 2017, at https://www.huffpost.com/entry/nancy-pelosi-town-hall-capitalism_n_58925a53e4b070cf8b807e28. 14 For example, Coca-Cola spent $4 billion on advertising in 2015, according to the FAQs page of their website, https://www.coca-colacompany.com/contact-us/faqs [URL inactive].

Grave New World: The End of Globalization, the Return of History
by Stephen D. King
Published 22 May 2017

Subdued labour incomes – thanks to a mixture of weak demand, technological change and competition from cheaper labour elsewhere in the world – meant that gains in sales revenues alone led to higher corporate profits; higher profits, in turn, fed through to further stock market gains, even in the absence of a recovery in investment. For both the owners and managers of companies, this appeared to be a case of ‘heads I win, tails you lose’, triggering much gnashing of teeth and, not surprisingly, a renewed interest in the causes of, and the cures for, rising income inequality. Not for nothing did Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century become a New York Times bestseller. Piketty made the strong claim that the rate of return on capital was – in the absence of wars and revolutions – always likely to be higher than the rate of economic growth: the implication was simply that the already well-off – basically those with no shortage of capital – would steadily get richer, a conclusion that appeared very much to be playing out before our eyes.

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The Economic Effects of the Trans-Pacific Partnership: New estimates, Peterson Institute for International Economics Working Paper 16-2, Washington, DC, January 2016 Pettis, M. The Great Rebalancing: Trade, conflict and the perilous road ahead for the world economy, Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ, 2013 Piketty, T. Capital in the Twenty-First Century, trans. A. Goldhammer, Belknap Press, Cambridge, MA, 2014 Pinker, S. and A. Mack. ‘The world is not falling apart’, Slate, 2014, available at: http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/foreigners/2014/12/the_world_is_not_falling_apart_the_trend_lines_reveal_an_increasingly_peaceful.html Rachman, G.

The Billionaire Raj: A Journey Through India's New Gilded Age
by James Crabtree
Published 2 Jul 2018

Then there were other trends, for instance a growing gap between richer parts of India, such as Kerala in the south, and poorer areas like the heartland state of Bihar.47 Tens of millions more people could have been lifted from poverty, according to the Asian Development Bank, had these various kinds of inequality not increased so sharply.48 Most striking of all was a 2017 paper published by Thomas Piketty, whose opus Capital in the Twenty-First Century first raised worries about an era of renewed inequality across the industrialized world. Along with coauthor Lucas Chancel, Piketty compiled data from tax records to show that the share of national income taken by India’s top one percent was at its highest level since records began to be collected under the British Raj in 1922.

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To be counted among its richest one percent required assets of just $32,892, according to research from investment bank Credit Suisse in 2016.19 But that same one percent now owns more than half of national wealth, one of the highest rates in the world. The International Monetary Fund suggests that India, alongside China, now ranks as Asia’s most unequal major economy. Thomas Piketty, the French economist famous for his work on global inequality, has shown the share of Indian national income taken by the top one percent of income earners to be at its highest level since tax records began in 1922.20 On these measures, India should now rightly be viewed alongside South Africa and Brazil as one of the world’s least equal countries.

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A fierce battle was under way between them, Sinha said, and one whose outcome would define the kind of country India would become. An Unequal Fortune The rise of India’s billionaires mirrored changes that had swept through the world economy over recent decades, bringing with them new anxieties about inequality. Data compiled by Thomas Piketty showed the share of national wealth held by the richest Americans hitting levels not seen since the 1930s.31 A similar story was true in many advanced European economies. Yet while hedge fund magnates and Silicon Valley entrepreneurs came to represent the excesses of Western capitalism, it was in countries like India, with its newly powerful Bollygarch class, that the super-rich were expanding quickest of all.

Seven Crashes: The Economic Crises That Shaped Globalization
by Harold James
Published 15 Jan 2023

Karl Marx, Grundrisse: Foundations of the Critique of Political Economy, trans. Martin Nicolaus (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1973), 748. 20. Quoted in John Bryan Davis, D. Wade Hands, and Uskali Mäki, eds., The Handbook of Economic Methodology (London: Edward Elgar, 1998), 495. 21. Thomas Piketty, Capital in the Twenty-First Century, trans. Arthur Goldhammer (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2018), 10. 22. See Matthew Rognlie, “A Note on Piketty and Diminishing Returns to Capital,” 2014, available at http://gesd.free.fr/rognlie14.pdf. 23. Piketty, Capital, 26. 24. Ibid., 234. 25. John Maynard Keynes, The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money (London: Macmillan, 1936), 317. 26.

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Or average returns on capital that have already been sunk into investments? Analyzing the long-term trends of average return has led to an influential formulation about the rate of return on capital, pointing to higher and higher levels of accumulation (“producing infinite accumulation”): that became the subject of a famous analysis by Thomas Piketty.21 Piketty’s average rate is consistently higher than marginal rates, especially in eras of decline or stagnation: perhaps because in fact it is largely concerned with returns on land or real estate that might properly be thought of as the rents for scarce locations: the middle of Paris or New York or Silicon Valley or Shanghai.22 The phenomenon was the major driver of inequality in the nineteenth century, and again at the end of the twentieth century: Piketty sees the rise of inequality proceeding at an even faster rate in the twenty-first century.23 His version of r > g may simply be a reflection of a globalization that pushes up land values, especially in globally connected centers (and indeed, his measures of inequality fall during the deglobalization phase of the mid-twentieth century).

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It is perhaps too easy to transpose modern beliefs and especially techniques into the searching for connection and correspondence in the mid-nineteenth century. A contemporary academic, armed with STATA or perhaps even just Excel, would perhaps have been able to uncover more patterns and associations in the data, and on the basis of this analysis derive general conclusions about broad economic trends. Thomas Piketty, who boldly titled his major (and wildly successful) work Capital, is in this sense the true heir to Marx. Piketty uncovered in his long-term assessment of r (rate of return on capital) and g (growth rates) exactly the long-term “law of motion,” the philosopher’s stone that Marx had been searching for: the observation that the return on capital consistently over long time periods outpaced the growth of the economy, and thus generated increased inequality.

The Age of Stagnation: Why Perpetual Growth Is Unattainable and the Global Economy Is in Peril
by Satyajit Das
Published 9 Feb 2016

The most novel involved the offer of 1,000 free live chickens to prospective customers. After a desperate scramble by locals, only chicken feathers and a few lost shoes were left. It was an apt postscript to the latest installment in the rise and fall of emerging markets. In 2014, Thomas Piketty, a French economics professor, had an unexpected bestseller with the English translation of Capital in the Twenty-First Century. Self-consciously evoking Karl Marx, the 700-page book analyzed income and wealth distribution. Like Casablanca's Captain Renault, who was shocked to find that gambling was going on under his nose, the world appeared surprised that inequality was increasing and that capitalism concentrates wealth over time.

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Alan Weisman, The World without Us, Picador, 2007. Daniel Yergin, The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money & Power, Touchstone Books, 1991. ——, The Quest: Energy, Security, and the Remaking of the Modern World, Penguin, 2011. Inequality and Trust Geoffrey Hosking, Trust: A History, Oxford University Press, 2014. Thomas Piketty, Capital in the Twenty-First Century, Belknap Press, 2014. Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett, The Spirit Level: Why Greater Equality Makes Societies Stronger, Bloomsbury Press, 2011. Satyajit Das is a globally respected former banker and consultant with over thirty-five years’ experience in financial markets.

How to Speak Money: What the Money People Say--And What It Really Means
by John Lanchester
Published 5 Oct 2014

A number of very good recent books look at the effect of these policies in terms of their impact at the top end of the income distribution, and the consequences of that inequality for everyone else: Chrystia Freedland’s Plutocrats, Robert Frank’s Richistan, Jaron Lanier’s Who Owns the Future?, and George Packer’s The Unwinding. Spring 2014 saw the publication of Thomas Piketty’s masterpiece Capital in the Twenty-First Century, an important, powerful, and densly argued study of the shift in the balance of power between capital and labor. There is a notable gap in the market here: there are attacks on the existing neoliberal order, but there doesn’t seem to be a powerful popular counternarrative.

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With such low effective tax rates—and, importantly, the low tax rate of 20 percent on income from capital gains—it’s not a huge surprise that the share of income going to the top 1 percent has doubled since 1979, and that the share going to the top 0.1 percent has almost tripled, according to the economists Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez. Recall that the wealthiest 1 percent of Americans own about 40 percent of the nation’s wealth, and the picture becomes even more disturbing.64 prop trading In proprietary trading, banks bet their own money for their own benefit, as opposed to making such trading only on behalf of their clients.

A Hacker's Mind: How the Powerful Bend Society's Rules, and How to Bend Them Back
by Bruce Schneier
Published 7 Feb 2023

CONCLUDING THOUGHTS 249But there’s a loophole: Josh Zumbrun (25 Apr 2022), “The $67 billion tariff dodge that’s undermining U.S. trade policy,” Wall Street Journal, https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-67-billion-tariff-dodge-thats-undermining-u-s-trade-policy-di-minimis-rule-customs-tourists-11650897161. 250inequality produces surplus resources: Thomas Piketty (2017), Capital in the Twenty-First Century, Harvard University Press. 251the fundamental problem with humanity: Tristan Harris (5 Dec 2019), “Our brains are no match for our technology,” New York Times, https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/05/opinion/digital-technology-brain.html. Index Page numbers listed correspond to the print edition of this book.

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When those with means or technical ability realized that they could profitably hack systems, they quickly developed the resources and expertise to do so. They learned to exploit vulnerabilities. They learned to move up and down the hacking hierarchy to achieve their goals. They learned how to get their hacks normalized, declared legal, and adopted into the system. This is being made even worse by income inequality. The economist Thomas Piketty explains that inequality produces surplus resources for the winners, and that that surplus can be mobilized to create even more inequality. Much of that mobilization is hacking. Now we have more people with more knowledge of hacking and more resources to hack with than ever before, and with that knowledge and resources comes power.

Uncomfortably Off: Why the Top 10% of Earners Should Care About Inequality
by Marcos González Hernando and Gerry Mitchell
Published 23 May 2023

Phillips, B. (2020) How to fight inequality (and why that fight needs you). Cambridge: Polity. Phipps, C. (2021) Why we should still be concerned about gender inequality in the UK. 15 November. https://blogs.lse. ac.uk/socialbusinesshub/2021/11/15/why-we-should-still-beconcerned-about-gender-inequality-in-the-uk Piketty, T. (2014) Capital in the twenty-first century. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press. Piketty, T. (2018) Brahmin left vs Merchant right: Rising inequality and the changing structure of political conflict (Evidence from France, Britain and the US, 1948–2017). WID. World Working Paper Series, n.2018/7. http://piketty.pse.ens.fr/ files/Piketty2018.pdf Piketty, T. (2020) Capital and ideology.

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The evidence collected – which includes 110 interviews in those four countries – is the basis for this book.8 The report asked to what extent this group was sociologically distinct from the rest of society and whether its attitudes to welfare and redistribution were any different. We focused mostly on income (what people earn) rather than wealth (what they own). Some suggested it would perhaps be better to concentrate on the latter: it is even more unequally distributed than income and, as Thomas Piketty has shown, returns from owning (for instance, property or stocks) are increasing in importance relative to returns from working.9 Nevertheless, also following Piketty, we thought looking at those at the top of the income distribution would be particularly interesting as they may see their work pay less and less and increasingly rely on what they own instead.

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If, as these tendencies suggest, economic and social insecurity near the top is not an exaggeration, then we should all worry. 37 2 On the ubiquity and invisibility of the upper-middle class In this chapter, we explore where the top 10% tend to think they sit in the income distribution, why they are often inaccurate in this estimation, and the connection between that inaccuracy and how they understand richness, privilege and worth. We argue that high-income earners could roughly be divided into two groups which, following Thomas Piketty’s formulation, we call Brahmins and Merchants. We also claim that high-income earners’ lack of knowledge of their own place in society is both cause and consequence of their disconnect from the rest. We asked interviewees about their views on the rich, on those less well-off than themselves, and where they position themselves along the spectrum.

The Technology Trap: Capital, Labor, and Power in the Age of Automation
by Carl Benedikt Frey
Published 17 Jun 2019

Fisher, 1919, “Economists in Public Service: Annual Address of the President,” American Economic Review 9 (1): 10 and 16. 66. T. Piketty, 2014, Capital in the Twenty-First Century (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press). 67. W. Scheidel, 2018, The Great Leveler: Violence and the History of Inequality from the Stone Age to the Twenty-First Century (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press). 68. On financial occupations, see Lindert and Williamson, 2016, Unequal Gains, figure 8-3. 69. Piketty, 2014, Capital in the Twenty-First Century, 506–7. 70. C. Goldin and R. A. Margo, 1992, “The Great Compression: The Wage Structure in the United States at Mid-Century,” Quarterly Journal of Economics 107 (1): 1–34. 71.

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,” Journal of Income Distribution 9 (1): 11–25. 5. H. A. Taine, 1958, Notes on England, 1860–70, trans. E. Hyams (London: Strahan), 181. See also Cannadine, 1977, “The Landowner as Millionaire.” 6. See P. H. Lindert, 1986, “Unequal English Wealth since 1670,” Journal of Political Economy 94 (6): 1127–62. 7. T. Piketty, 2014, Capital in the Twenty-First Century (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press), figure 3.1. 8. See, for example, C. Boix, and F. Rosenbluth, 2014, “Bones of Contention: The Political Economy of Height Inequality,” American Political Science Review 108 (1): 1–22. 9. J. Diamond, 1987, “The Worst Mistake in the History of the Human Race,” Discover, May 1, 64–66. 10.

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S. 2015. Mass Flourishing: How Grassroots Innovation Created Jobs, Challenge, and Change. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Phyllis, D., and W. A. Cole. 1962. British Economic Growth, 1688–1959: Trends and Structure. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Piketty, T. 2014. Capital in the Twenty-First Century. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Piketty, T. 2018. “Brahmin Left vs. Merchant Right: Rising Inequality and the Changing Structure of Political Conflict.” Working paper, Paris School of Economics. Piketty, T., and E. Saez. 2003. “Income Inequality in the United States, 1913–1998.”

Can Democracy Work?: A Short History of a Radical Idea, From Ancient Athens to Our World
by James Miller
Published 17 Sep 2018

In part, this failure has occurred because Condorcet’s constitution presupposes a shared commitment to forging a society of equals, and the trend toward ever greater levels of social and economic inequality in many advanced industrial countries today, as documented by the French economist Thomas Piketty in Capital in the Twenty-First Century, if left unchallenged, effectively nullifies such hopes. But the original revolutionary democratic project was also perverted when, in the hands of fanatics like Babeuf, Rigault, and Lenin, its partisans resorted to brute force and tried to level every single political opponent and institutional obstacle in its path.

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If we abandon a virtue like truthfulness: In treating truthfulness as a virtue, I follow Bernard Williams, Truth and Truthfulness (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002). “I am convinced that we will never build a democratic state”: Havel, “Politics, Morals and Civility,” 18. “I feel that the dormant goodwill in people”: Ibid., 8–9. In part, this failure has occurred because Condorcet’s constitution: Thomas Piketty, Capital in the Twenty-First Century, trans. Arthur Goldhammer (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2014). “Censorship, the terror, and concentration camps”: Havel, “What I Believe,” in Summer Meditations, 62–63. Through online platforms like Facebook: See Dipayan Ghosh and Ben Scott, Digital Deceit: The Technologies Behind Precision Propaganda on the Internet, January 23, 2018, https://www.newamerica.org/public-interest-technology/policy-papers/digitaldeceit; Tufekci, Twitter and Tear Gas; and Adrian Chen, “The Agency,” The New York Times Magazine, June 2, 2015, www.nytimes.com/2015/06/07/magazine/the-agency.html?

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Anonymous (hacker collective) Antigone (Sophocles) Antipater antiwar movement antiwar protesters, Huntington reviled by Apprentice, The (TV show) Arab Spring Arendt, Hannah aristocracy, in ancient Athens Aristotle; Athenian political institutions described by; democracy criticized by; on elections vs. lotteries arms race Athenian democracy; Aeropagus in; Aristotle’s criticism of; Aristotle’s description of; Assembly (Ekklesia) in; civic tribes in; Cleisthenes and, see Cleisthenes; as community of self-governing citizens; concept of human rights as lacking in; conformity emphasized in; Council of 500 in; criteria for citizenship in; decline of; election of generals in; election of treasurers in; festivals in; in fourth century; jury system in; lotteries as defining feature of; Mytilene revolt and; nativism and; ostracism in; Pericles and, see Pericles; Plato’s criticism of; presupposed norms of; slavery and; Thucydides’ criticism of; as tyranny of the majority Athens, ancient: as aggressive regional power; aristocracy in; City Dionysia in; compulsory military service in; hegemony of; infantry of; military reforms in; naval powers of; plague in; population of; slaves in; Solon’s reforms and; Thirty Tyrants regime in; tyrants in; women in Atlantic Charter Attwood, Thomas Augustus, emperor of Rome Azoulay, Vincent Babeuf, Gracchus Babeuf’s Conspiracy for Equality (Buonarroti) Bakunin, Mikhail bandwagon effect Barber, Benjamin Barère, Bertrand Bartels, Larry Bastille; fall of Beaumont, Gustave de, at Albany Fourth of July celebration Berlin Wall, fall of Bernays, Edward; on public opinion Bernstein, Eduard Birmingham, England, Chartist Convention in Birmingham Political Union Bismarck, Otto von Black Lives Matter Blanqui, Auguste Blight, David Bodin, Jean Bolsheviks; soviet executive committees takeover by Bonaparte III, emperor of France Boston, Mass., French Revolution celebration in bounded rationality bourgeoisie Bowen, Sayles Jenks Brecht, Bertolt Brexit Brissot, Jacques-Pierre Brown, John Brunswick Manifesto Brussels Bryce, James Brzezinski, Zbigniew Buonarroti, Philippe Burckhardt, Jacob bureaucracies, power of Bush, George H. W. Bush, George W. California Democratic Council (CDC) Capital in the Twenty-First Century (Piketty) capitalism; democracy and; Marx’s predicted self-destruction of Carbonari Carlyle, Thomas Carter, Jimmy Cartledge, Paul Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) Chaerephon Chamberlain, Joseph Charles II, king of England Charmides Chartists; arrests and imprisonment of; Convention of; 1839 conventions of; electoral reforms demanded by; strikes and uprisings by; universal male suffrage as core principle of Cherokee nation Chicago, Ill., 1968 Democratic convention in Chickasaw nation Choctaw nation Chomsky, Noam Chronique de Paris Churchill, Winston Cimon City Dionysia civil disobedience civil liberties, Wilson’s suppression of civil rights movement Civil War, U.S.

Who Owns This Sentence?: A History of Copyrights and Wrongs
by David Bellos and Alexandre Montagu
Published 23 Jan 2024

Karl Marx, who was working in the British Library during a period of intense discussion of copyright and patent laws, does not mention intellectual property in his deconstruction of the reign of capital. That is probably why there is no major left-wing critique of copyright, and it may explain why Thomas Piketty also omits discussion of intellectual property in his surprise bestseller, Capital in the Twenty-First Century, which appeared as recently as 2013. The irony is that Piketty has done very well out of the issue he does not discuss. The copyright in a book that has sold more than two million copies worldwide has generated substantial royalty income; as the great majority of the copies sold were translations of the work, Piketty’s windfall derives not only from copyright itself, but from an extension of its scope that was first made in just a handful of countries in 1886, in the United States in 1891, in the U.K. in 1911, and in Russia, China, Albania and many other nations in the 1990s.

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The copyright in a book that has sold more than two million copies worldwide has generated substantial royalty income; as the great majority of the copies sold were translations of the work, Piketty’s windfall derives not only from copyright itself, but from an extension of its scope that was first made in just a handful of countries in 1886, in the United States in 1891, in the U.K. in 1911, and in Russia, China, Albania and many other nations in the 1990s. So only in the twenty-first century could Capital in the Twenty-First Century have produced the capital that its fortunate author now has at his disposal. Piketty’s case is admittedly exceptional. The vast majority of writers, composers, artists and programmers accumulate little capital and some of them get no income at all from their creative work. Copyright’s effects not only mirror but also contribute to the phenomenon that Piketty seeks to analyse in his book: the yawning and ever-growing gap between the wealth of the few and the poverty of the many.

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Taylor (1769) 93, 94, 96 Milton, John (1606–74) 51, 68, 97 Minitel 267 Misérables, Les (Hugo) 133, 147, 161, 162 and Cérésa 237, 263 and fair use 262 and Jean Valjean’s deathbed speech 280 Mitchell, Margaret (1900–49): Gone with the Wind 238, 252, 261–2 Molière (1622–73) 130 Monaco 152, 164 monarchy 19, 39, 42, 43, 44, 58 monopolies 16, 33, 39–40, 71 and books 40–1 and France 85 and libraries 174 and printing guilds 51 and theatre 130–1 and Venice 34, 35 Monopolies Act (1624) 167 Monroe, Marilyn (1926–62) 227–8 Montenegro 164 moral rights 91, 225–6, 233–9 Morse, Samuel (1791–1872) 204–5 Mosley, Max 230, 232 Mosley, Oswald (1896–1980) 230 Motion Picture Association of America (M.P.A.A.) 183, 266, 273–5, 276–7 Mouchot, Augustin (1825–1912) 149 M.O.V.A. 333–4 Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus (1756–91) 13, 241 Mudie’s Circulating Library 174 Murano 35 museums 302–3 music 13, 104–5, 235–6, 241–7 and A.I. 20, 334 and Berne Convention 164–5 and public domain 125 and short phrases 279–81 and Spotify 332 and technology 266–7, 270–1 and transformative use 312–13 see also Recording Industry Association of America (R.I.A.A) Myanmar 164 Napoleon I, Emperor (1769–1821) 124 Napoleon III, Emperor (1808–73) 147 nature 81 Netherlands 164, 171, 173, 189, 194 Netscape Communications Corporation 320 “new manufactures” 77–80, 331 New York 149, 151 New York Times 13, 80, 135–6 news 207–11 Newton, Isaac (1642–1726) 81, 88 Nicaragua 192 Nichols, Anne: Abie’s Irish Rose 220 Niépce, Joseph Nicéphore (1765–1833) 169 Norway 152, 164, 189 Notice and Take-Down 269, 270, 271 novels 106–7 open source 320 Oracle 18 Orbison, Roy (1936–88): “Pretty Woman” 312–13 Organization for Transformative Works 263 originality 26, 58–9, 108–9, 139, 154, 330–1 and creative writing 311 and works 58–9, 60, 140–142, 143 orphan works 182–3, 282–4, 340 Ovid (43 BCE–18 CE) 29 ownership 42, 43, 45–6 and books 55–6 and corporations 198–9, 200–11 and facts 202–8 and ideas 58–9 and land 53–5 and printing 48–9, 51–2 Packard, David 80 painting see art Palau 164 Palestine 164 Pamela in High Life (anon) 106–7 Pan-American Convention 194 Panama 192 Pancoucke, Charles (1736–98) 115 Papua New Guinea 164 Paraguay 192 Paris 37, 50, 151 Parker, George (1860–1936) 297, 299 Parliament 101–3, 109 parody 260, 261, 312–13 Pasternak, Boris (1890–1960): Doctor Zhivago 195 Pasteur, Louis (1822–95) 77 patents 17, 18, 19, 32–4, 35–6, 50 and abolition movement 171–3, 175–6 and China 294 and England 167–8 and facts 204–5 and France 168–9 and jurisdictions 166–7 and monopolies 39–40 and “new manufactures” 76–80 and Soviet Union 169–70 and term limits 325 and U.S.A. 170–1 see also privileges Pathé 134 patronage 43–4, 58, 77 Patterson, Lyman 72 penalties 43, 44–5, 83 penicillin 77, 78 Perdue, Lewis 216 Perec, Georges (1936–82) 80, 181 Life A User’s Manual 310 Perfect 10 313–14 performance rights 16 permission fees 299–304, 305–8 Personal (film) 134 personality 221–3 Peru 192 Pfizer 79 pharmaceuticals 79, 340 Phonographic Performance Limited (P.P.L.) 245 photocopying 278 photography 152–3, 155–6, 160, 169, 218, 332 and right of publicity 223–4, 226, 227–8, 229, 230–2 and transformative use 313–17 pianolas 242, 243 Picasso, Pablo (1881–1973) 17, 253 Pichot, Amédée (1795–1877) 161–2 Piedmont-Sardinia, Kingdom 147 Piketty, Thomas 337 Capital in the Twenty-First Century 21–2 piracy 84, 137–8 and Belgium 144–6 and China 291–3, 294, 295 and engravings 100–1, 106 and music 244, 245, 246 and Pamela 106–7 and Scotland 92–8 and Soviet Union 190–2 and technology 265–6, 269 and U.S.A. 138–43, 186–90 plagiarism 25, 26–9, 30–1, 212–19 plaster casts 109 Plato (c.427–c.347 BCE) 23, 24–5, 88 “Playas Gon Play” (song) 279–80 playwrights 25, 129, 130–3, 191 Pliny the Elder (23–79 CE) 26, 29 Plon 237 P.M.A.

Undoing the Demos: Neoliberalism's Stealth Revolution
by Wendy Brown
Published 6 Feb 2015

“Remarks by the President in the State of the Union Address,” February notes 225 12, 2013, White House Office of the Press Secretary, available at http://www. whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2013/02/12/remarks-president-state-unionaddress, p. 1. 13. Ibid., pp. 1–9. The one exception to this was gun control, which may also explain why Obama gave up on it so quickly in 2013. 14. Ibid., p. 2. 15. Ibid., p. 4. 16. Ibid., p. 5. 17. Ibid., p. 6. 18. Ibid., p. 6. 19. Ibid., p. 7. 20. Ibid., p. 8. 21. Ibid., pp. 8–9. 22. See Thomas Piketty, Capital in the Twenty-First Century (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2014) and “Dynamics of Inequality,” an interview with Piketty, New Left Review 85 (January–February 2014). Many are arguing with Piketty’s policy prescriptions, few with his fundamental claim that capital accumulation without growth is at the bottom of intensifying inequality. 23.

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While they rarely use the term “neoliberalism,” this is the emphasis of the valuable critiques of Western state policy offered by economists Robert Reich, Paul Krugman, and Joseph Stiglitz and of development policy offered by Amartya Sen, James Ferguson, and Branko Milanvic, among others.24 Growing inequality is also among the effects that Thomas Piketty establishes as fundamental to the recent past and near future of post-Keynesian capitalism. The second criticism of neoliberal state economic policy and deregulation pertains to the crass or unethical commercialization of things and activities considered inappropriate for marketization. The claim is that marketization contributes to human exploitation or degradation (for example, Third World baby surrogates for wealthy First World couples), because it limits or stratifies access to what ought to be broadly accessible and shared (education, wilderness, infrastructure), or because it enables something intrinsically horrific or severely denigrating to the planet (organ trafficking, pollution rights, clearcutting, fracking).

The Age of Surveillance Capitalism
by Shoshana Zuboff
Published 15 Jan 2019

See, for example, Nicolas Berggruen and Nathan Gardels, Intelligent Governance for the 21st Century: A Middle Way Between West and East (Cambridge: Polity, 2013). 66. Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism (New York: Schocken, 2004), 615. 67. Theodor Adorno, “Education after Auschwitz,” in Critical Models: Interventions and Catchwords (New York: Columbia University Press, 1966). 68. Thomas Piketty, Capital in the Twenty-First Century (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2014), 571. 69. Piketty, Capital in the Twenty-First Century, 573. For a wise and elegant defense of democracy, see also Wendy Brown, Undoing the Demos: Neoliberalism’s Stealth Revolution (New York: Zone, 2015). 70. Roger W. Garrison, “Hayek and Friedman,” in Elgar Companion to Hayekian Economics, ed.

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Two years after the North London riots, research in the UK showed that by 2013, poverty fueled by lack of education and unemployment already excluded nearly a third of the population from routine social participation.46 Another UK report concluded, “Workers on low and middle incomes are experiencing the biggest decline in their living standards since reliable records began in the mid-19th Century.”47 By 2015, austerity measures had eliminated 19 percent, or 18 billion pounds, from the budgets of local authorities, had forced an 8 percent cut in child protection spending, and had caused 150,000 pensioners to no longer enjoy access to vital services.48 Buy 2014 nearly half of the US population lived in functional poverty, with the highest wage in the bottom half of earners at about $34,000.49 A 2012 US Department of Agriculture survey showed that close to 49 million people lived in “food-insecure” households.50 In Capital in the Twenty-First Century, the French economist Thomas Piketty integrated years of income data to derive a general law of accumulation: the rate of return on capital tends to exceed the rate of economic growth. This tendency, summarized as r > g, is a dynamic that produces ever-more-extreme income divergence and with it a range of antidemocratic social consequences long predicted as harbingers of an eventual crisis of capitalism.

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In addition to Lewis et al., “Reading the Riots,” see also Kawalerowicz and Biggs, “Anarchy in the UK”; James Treadwell et al., “Shopocalypse Now: Consumer Culture and the English Riots of 2011,” British Journal of Criminology 53, no. 1 (2013): 1–17, https://doi.org/10.1093/bjc/azs054; Tom Slater, “From ‘Criminality’ to Marginality: Rioting Against a Broken State,” Human Geography 4, no. 3 (2011): 106–15. 42. Thomas Piketty, Capital in the Twenty-First Century (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2014). Piketty integrated years of income data to conclude that income inequality in the US and the UK has reached levels not seen since the nineteenth century. The top decile of US wage earners steadily increased its share of national income from 35 percent in the 1980s to over 46 percent in 2010.

Platform Capitalism
by Nick Srnicek
Published 22 Dec 2016

The Atlantic, 21 September. http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/09/corporate-surveillance-activists/406201 (accessed 22 May 2016). Perez, Carlota. 2009. ‘The Double Bubble at the Turn of the Century: Technological Roots and Structural Implications’. Cambridge Journal of Economics, 33 (4): 779–805. Piketty, Thomas. 2014. Capital in the Twenty-First Century, translated by Arthur Goldhammer. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Polivka, Anne. 1996. ‘Contingent and Alternative Work Arrangements, Defined’. Monthly Labor Review, 119 (10): 3–9. Pollack, Lisa. 2016. ‘What Is the Price for Your Personal Digital Dataset?’ Financial Times, 10 May. http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/1d5bd1d0-15f6-11e6-9d98–00386a18e39d.html (accessed 30 June 2016).

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It is the latter dynamic, in particular, that will play a key role in the changes that lie at heart of this book. But before we can understand the digital economy we must look back to an earlier period. The End of the Postwar Exception It is increasingly obvious to many that we live in a time still coming to terms with the breakdown of the postwar settlement. Thomas Piketty argues that the reduction in inequality after the Second World War was an exception to the general rule of capitalism; Robert Gordon sees high productivity growth in the middle of the twentieth century as an exception to the historical norm; and numerous thinkers on the left have long argued that the postwar period was an unsustainably good period for capitalism.4 That exceptional moment – broadly defined at the international level by embedded liberalism, at the national level by social democratic consensus, and at the economic level by Fordism – has been falling apart since the 1970s.

European Spring: Why Our Economies and Politics Are in a Mess - and How to Put Them Right
by Philippe Legrain
Published 22 Apr 2014

713 http://www.economist.com/blogs/freeexchange/2012/06/innovation 714 Thomas Paine, Agrarian Justice, 1797 715 http://www.progress.org/banneker/chur.html 716 John Stuart Mill, Principles of Political Economy, 1848, quoted in Richard Reeves, John Stuart Mill: Victorian Firebrand, Atlantic: 2007 717 Friedrich Hayek, Individualism and Economic Order, University of Chicago: 1948. http://library.mises.org/books/Friedrich%20A%20Hayek/Individualism%20and%20Economic%20Order.pdf 718 http://www.worldbank.org/en/region/eca/publication/golden-growth 719 http://www.bankofengland.co.uk/publications/Documents/speeches/2010/speech442.pdf 720 http://www.lrb.co.uk/v34/n04/andrew-haldane/the-doom-loop 721 Facundo Alvaredo, Tony Atkinson, Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez, “The World Top Incomes Database” http://topincomes.parisschoolofeconomics.eu/#Database: 722 Ibid. Table 4 723 Thomas Piketty, Capital in the Twenty-First Century, Harvard: 2014 724 David Sainsbury, Progressive Capitalism: How To Achieve Economic Growth, Liberty and Social Justice, Biteback: 2013 725 "Ground-rents are a still more proper subject of taxation than the rent of houses.

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The top 0.01 per cent took home 0.75 per cent, nearly five times the 0.17 per cent they got in 1980. Looking at the Gini coefficient, a measure of a society’s overall income inequality, Britain and Italy are the most unequal societies in western Europe, while Denmark is the most equal, with Sweden just behind.722 The distribution of wealth is generally much more unequal. And as Thomas Piketty of the Paris School of Economics has pointed out, as growth slows and with it the creation of new wealth, old (inherited) fortunes weigh more heavily than before.723 A decent society should want to encourage effort and enterprise – by everyone, not just those who end up billionaires – without rewarding undeserved or unearned income.

Bourgeois Dignity: Why Economics Can't Explain the Modern World
by Deirdre N. McCloskey
Published 15 Nov 2011

Their chart 2 exhibits weekly income distributions in 1886 prices at 1886, 1906, 1938, and 1960, showing the disappearance of the inflation-adjusted classic line of misery for British workers, “’round about a pound a week.”8 Yet the left works overtime, out of the best of motives, to rescue its ethically irrelevant focus on Gini coefficients and the relative poverty line. A recent example of the leftish labor is the book by a French economist I have mentioned, Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century (translated 2014), which was greeted with squeals of delight by the American and British left, and rapidly rose to number one on the New York Times best-seller list. Piketty claims that relative poverty is what matters, whether or not the poorest improve. “Just as we’ve been saying!”

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Righteous, if inexpensive, indignation inspired by survivor’s guilt about alleged “victims” of something called “capitalism,” and envious anger at the silly consumption by the rich, does not invariably yield betterment for the poor. Remarks such as “there are still poor people” or “some people have more power than others,” though claiming the ethical high-ground for the speaker, are neither deep nor clever. Repeating them, or nodding wisely at their repetition, or buying Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century to display on your coffee table, does not make you a good person. You are a good person if you actually help the poor. Open a business. Invest in a grocery store in an urban food desert. Invent a new battery. Vote for better schools. Adopt a Pakistani orphan. Volunteer to feed people at Grace Church on Saturday mornings.

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“The Securities Exchange Commission: From Where, Where To?” In McCloskey, ed. 1993, pp. 136–141. Phillipson, Nicholas. 2010. Adam Smith: An Enlightened Life. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Piaget, Jean. 1932 (1965). The Moral Judgment of the Child. Trans. Marjorie Gabain. New York: Free Press. Piketty, Thomas. 2014. Capital in the Twenty-First Century. Trans. A. Goldhammer. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Pink, Daniel H. 2012. To Sell Is Human: The Surprising Truth about Moving Others. New York: Riverhead Books/Penguin. Pipes, Richard. 1999 (2000). Property and Freedom. New York: Knopf. Pirenne, Henri. 1925. Ville du Moyen Age (Medieval Cities: Their Origins and the Revival of Trade).

Four Futures: Life After Capitalism
by Peter Frase
Published 10 Mar 2015

The growing inequality of wealth and income in the world has become an increasing focus of attention from activists, politicians, and pundits. Occupy Wall Street struck a chord with the slogan “we are the 99 percent,” drawing attention to the fact that almost all the gains from economic growth in recent decades have accrued to 1 percent or less of the population. Economist Thomas Piketty scored an improbable best seller with Capital in the Twenty-First Century, a massive treatise about the history of wealth and the prospect of an increasingly unequal world.22 The two crises I’ve described are fundamentally about inequality as well. They are about the distribution of scarcity and abundance, about who will pay the costs of ecological damage and who will enjoy the benefits of a highly productive, automated economy.

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Lbo-News.com, 2015. 17Jeremy Rifkin, The End of Work: The Decline of the Global Labor Force and the Dawn of the Post-Market Era, New York: Putnam, 1995; Stanley Aronowitz and William DiFazio, The Jobless Future: Sci-Tech and the Dogma of Work, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1994. 18Norbert Wiener, Cybernetics: Or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1948, p. 28. 19Paul Krugman, “Sympathy for the Luddites,” New York Times, June 14, 2013. 20Ford, Rise of the Robots; Derek Thompson, “A World Without Work,” Atlantic, July/August 2015; Farhad Manjoo, “Will Robots Steal Your Job?,” Slate.com, September 26, 2011; Drum, “Welcome Robot Overlords.” 21Mike Konczal, “The Hard Work of Taking Apart Post-Work Fantasy,” NextNewDeal.net, 2015. 22Thomas Piketty, Capital in the Twenty-First Century, trans. Arthur Goldhammer, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2014. 23Thom Andersen, Los Angeles Plays Itself, Thom Andersen Productions, 2003. 24Ray Kurzweil, The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology, New York: Penguin, 2005. 25Rosa Luxemburg, The Junius Pamphlet: The Crisis in the German Social Democracy, Marxists.org, 1915. 26Robert Costanza, “Will It Be Star Trek, Ecotopia, Big Government, or Mad Max?

The Health Gap: The Challenge of an Unequal World
by Michael Marmot
Published 9 Sep 2015

Single, poor, his prospects for life expectancy are not good.) Large inequalities of wealth and income and a preponderance of inherited wealth characterised nineteenth-century Britain and France. These insights and the concern that we may be heading that way again are the message of Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century. For a 685-page economics book, published by a university press, to become a best-seller – it sold out within days, and was likely to have sold 200,000 copies within three months – and for its author, a serious French economics professor, to become a superstar, Capital must be tapping in to something important.

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What the figures on income and wealth show is that there are oceans of money sloshing about. It is not easy to maintain the fiction that we do not have enough money to do good things. The problem is that, within countries, the concentration of wealth is becoming more extreme. That was the message of Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century. At the same time as wealth concentration is increasing, all across Europe and the US we are being lectured to on the dire importance of austerity. Public services have to be cut back because . . . because . . . we cannot afford them? John Maynard Keynes, immediately after the Second World War, wrote: ‘The day is not far off when the economic problem will take the back seat where it belongs, and the arena of the heart and the head will be occupied or reoccupied, by our real problems – the problems of life and of human relations, of creation and behaviour and religion.’8 In country after country, too much of our public conversation is about how we can grow national income, too little about how we can improve society.

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Health Equity Studies. 2008; 12. 13Woolf SH, Aron L, editors. U.S. Health in International Perspective: Shorter Lives, Poorer Health. National Research Council; Institute of Medicine. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press, 2013. 14Stiglitz J. The Price of Inequality. New York: Penguin, 2013. 15Piketty T. Capital in the Twenty-First Century. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2014. 16Vardi N. The 25 Highest-Earning Hedge Fund Managers and Traders. Forbes. 2014. 17Ostry JD, Berg A, Tsangarides CG. IMF Staff Discussion Note: Redistribution, Inequality, and Growth. International Monetary Fund, 2014. 18Sen A. Inequality Reexamined.

SUPERHUBS: How the Financial Elite and Their Networks Rule Our World
by Sandra Navidi
Published 24 Jan 2017

Robin Greenwood and David Scharfstein, “The Growth of Modern Finance,” Journal of Economic Perspectives 27(2) (Spring 2013): 3-28. 7. Oxfam International, “Richest 1% Will Own More Than All the Rest by 2016,” press release, January 19, 2015, https://www.oxfamorg/en/pressroom/pressreleases/2015-01-19/richest-1-will-own-more-all-rest-2016. 8. For reference, see also: Thomas Piketty, Capital in the Twenty-First Century (Boston: Harvard University Press, 2014), 1, 237, Kindle edition. 9. Donella H. Meadows, Thinking in Systems: A Primer (Chelsea, VT: Chelsea Green Publishing), 3, Kindle edition. 10. Joseph E. Stiglitz, The Price of Inequality: How Today’s Divided Society Endangers Our Future (New York: W.

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Therefore, having top academic credentials, policy experience, and access to high-caliber networks provide thought leaders with distinct competitive advantages that propel them into the league of superhubs. Most thought leaders in finance are economists. A select few have become academic celebrities, such as Thomas Piketty, Nassim Taleb, and Paul Krugman, because they have touched the Zeitgeist. They are their own brands, with rock star status and almost cultlike followings. Inundated with media requests, exclusive invitations, and offers to join prestigious boards, their work surpasses the insular world of academia and becomes the center of public attention.

The Uninhabitable Earth: Life After Warming
by David Wallace-Wells
Published 19 Feb 2019

Progressive scientists will apply gene therapy to climate change, as they have already begun to do with the woolly mammoth—which they hope, once brought back to life, might restore the grasslands of the Eurasian steppe and prevent methane release from permafrost—and will probably do soon with the mosquito, hoping to eradicate mosquito-borne disease. Perhaps a rogue billionaire will try to single-handedly cool the earth with geoengineering, flying a few private planes around the equator to disperse sulfur and citing the model of Bill Gates and his mosquito nets. “apparatus of justification”: Thomas Piketty, Capital in the Twenty-First Century (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2014). SoulCycle, Goop, Moon Juice: The founder of hipster foodie magazine Modern Farmer is, in 2018, rumored to be launching a “Goop for climate change.” the pesticide Roundup: Alexis Temkin, “Breakfast with a Dose of Roundup?”

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But when critics of Al Gore compare his electricity use to that of the average Ugandan, they are not ultimately highlighting conspicuous and hypocritical personal consumption, however they mean to disparage him. Instead, they are calling attention to the structure of a political and economic order that not only permits the disparity but feeds and profits from it—this is what Thomas Piketty calls the “apparatus of justification.” And it justifies quite a lot. If the world’s most conspicuous emitters, the top 10 percent, reduced their emissions to only the E.U. average, total global emissions would fall by 35 percent. We won’t get there through the dietary choices of individuals, but through policy changes.

How the Other Half Banks: Exclusion, Exploitation, and the Threat to Democracy
by Mehrsa Baradaran
Published 5 Oct 2015

The social contract forged during the Great Depression stabilized U.S. banking for several decades. For fifty years, the banking sector experienced measured growth and success while the rest of the economy generally thrived. This growth and stability coincided with exceptional international economic growth. As Thomas Piketty explains in Capital in the Twenty-First Century, the time between the Great Depression and the 1970s marked a unique period in world history of relative equalities of wealth and remarkable economic growth.89 Surely, sustained economic growth contributed to a stable and successful banking system. And so did the federal deposit insurance fund, which succeeded in finally ending the confidence-destroying runs that had historically wreaked havoc on banks.

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For a comprehensive discussion of “redlining,” see Charles Lewis Nier, III, “The Shadow of Credit: The Historical Origins of Racial Predatory Lending and its Impact upon African American Wealth Accumulation,” University of Pennsylvania Journal of Law and Social Change (2008). 89. Thomas Piketty, Capital in the Twenty-First Century (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press: 2014), 80. 90. Martin Luther King Jr., “I Have a Dream,” accessed March 19, 2015, www.thekingcenter.org/archive/document/i-have-dream-1. 91. Richard Scott Carnell, Jonathan R. Macey, and Geoffrey P. Miller, The Law of Banking and Financial Institutions, 350 (New York: Aspen Publishers, 2009). 92.

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Before the civil-rights-era laws forbidding discrimination in banking were passed, many blacks were left out of the mainstream banking institutions. Many blacks had to form their own institutions—black-owned banks. The story of black banking is too rich to be summarized in this text but will be the topic of the author’s future research and study. 36. Regulation Q, 12 CFR §217. 37. Thomas Picketty, Capital in the Twenty-First Century (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2014). 38. Connecticut Department of Banking, “ABCs of Banking,” accessed March 17, 2015, www.ct.gov/dob/cwp/view.asp?a=2235&q=297892. 39. “The relaxation of restrictions on intrastate branching and interstate banking that took place in the 1980s and early 1990s facilitated both mergers and consolidations.

Democracy and Prosperity: Reinventing Capitalism Through a Turbulent Century
by Torben Iversen and David Soskice
Published 5 Feb 2019

American Political Science Review 93 (September): 609–24. ———. 2003. Democracy and Redistribution. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Bonnet, Odran, Pierre-Henri Bono, Guillaume Chapelle, and Etienne Wasmer. 2014. “Does Housing Capital Contribute to Inequality? A Comment on Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century.” Sciences Po Economics Discussion Paper, 7: 1–12. Borjas, George J. 2013. “Immigration and the American Worker: Review of the Academic Literature.” Center for Immigration Studies, Washington, DC. https://sites.hks.harvard.edu/fs/gborjas/publications/popular/CIS2013.pdf. Bork, Robert. 1978.

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Yet Piketty’s own data show that after taking account of destruction of capital and capital taxation, in fact r < g for the entire period from 1913 to 2012—that is, basically during the period of democracy (see figures 10.10 and 10.11). The dire prediction for the future relies on the key assumption “that fiscal competition will gradually lead to total disappearance of taxes on capital in the twenty-first century” (2014, 355), coupled with a sharp drop in growth rates.11 A look at actual capital taxation rates instead reveals remarkable stability. While top statutory capital tax rates have come down in most countries since the 1980s, Swank and Steinmo (2002) show that such cuts were accompanied by a broadening of the tax base that left effective tax rates virtually unchanged from 1981 to 1995.

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Like Gordon, he believes that the capacity of technology to produce high rates of GDP growth is low. Specifically, he argues that “global growth is likely to be [only] around 1.5 percent a year between 2050 and 2100” (355). At the same time, he believes that capital is becoming more mobile and that “fiscal competition will gradually lead to total disappearance of taxes on capital in the twenty-first century.” Combined with a relatively constant rate of return on capital of about four percent, the result is r > g and a massive rise in inequality. There may be work for all, but the fruits of this labor will be increasingly captured by the rich. How does our framework cast light on these debates?

The Euro and the Battle of Ideas
by Markus K. Brunnermeier , Harold James and Jean-Pierre Landau
Published 3 Aug 2016

Jean-Jacques Laffont and Jean Tirole, A Theory of Incentives in Regulation and Procurement (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1993). In Germany, Hans-Werner Sinn also made a significant contribution to the analysis of the provision of public goods and built this position up as the basis for a critique of many of the Euro rescue mechanisms. 45. Thomas Piketty, Capital in the Twenty-first Century (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2014), 32. 46. Obituary: Raymond Barre, Independent, August 26, 2007, http://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/raymond-barre-5334901.html. 47. Jacques Sapir, Les Économistes contre la démocratie: Pouvoir, mondialisation et démocratie (Paris: Albin Michel, 2000). 48.

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Jean Tirole and Jean-Jacques Laffont in particular have been instrumental in developing a new approach to the provision of incentives by regulators, in which the dangers of creating moral hazard play a key role.44 The visions of the past influence the way that economics is seen. Most French economists complain—as did the recent best-selling author Thomas Piketty of Capital, a dramatic manifesto on how capitalism does not provide a self-sustaining and politically acceptable model of growth—that “economists are not highly respected in the academic and intellectual world or by political and financial elites.”45 In fact, a popular and intellectual culture exists that sees economists as narrow-minded and soulless technocrats who force a dehumanized concept of rationality on their fellow citizens.

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A powerful statement of the world of French thought—which was presented as a revolution against traditional Anglo-Saxon economics—was the report of a commission called by Sarkozy and cochaired by Jean-Paul Fitoussi (along with two distinguished but left-leaning non-French Nobel Prize winners, Joseph Stiglitz and Amartya Sen), in which the central role of government in the economy was emphasized and a plea made for a more extensive assessment of the role of “well-being.”50 Even economists like to participate in the backlash against modern economics. Distinguished (and numerate) figures such as Edmond Malinvaud and Thomas Piketty complain about the overmathematization of economics. The same sort of public mobilization of economists for a political cause that took place in Germany against rescue packages occurred in France against the German doctrines and against austerity politics. In September 2010, over 700 French economists signed a widely publicized manifesto for “an alternative economic and social strategy” for Europe, attacking the “false economic platitudes” of “neoliberal dogma.”51 The manifesto was drawn up by four economists, three of whom worked at governmental research institutes, and the fourth was an adviser to the antiglobalization organization Attac.

Doughnut Economics: Seven Ways to Think Like a 21st-Century Economist
by Kate Raworth
Published 22 Mar 2017

Krueger, A. (2002) ‘Economic scene: when it comes to income inequality, more than just market forces are at work’, New York Times, 4 April 2002, available at: http://www.nytimes.com/2002/04/04/business/economic-scene-when-it-comes-income-inequality-more-than-just-market-forces-are.html?_r=0 11. Piketty, T. (2014) Capital in the Twenty-First Century. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. 12. Ostry, J. D. et al. (2014) Redistribution, inequality and growth. IMF Staff discussion note, February 2014, p. 5. https://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/sdn/2014/sdn1402.pdf 13. Quinn, J. and Hall, J. (2009) ‘Goldman Sachs vice-chairman says “learn to tolerate inequality” ’, Daily Telegraph 21 October 2009. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/recession/6392127/Goldman-Sachs-vice-chairman-says-Learn-to-tolerate-inequality.html 14.

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Pearce, J. et al. (2012) ‘A new model for enabling innovation in appropriate technology for sustainable development’, Sustainability: Science, Practice and Policy, 8: 2, pp. 42–53. Persky, J. (1992) ‘Retrospectives: Pareto’s law’, Journal of Economic Perspectives 6: 2, pp. 181–192. Piketty, T. (2014) Capital in the Twenty-First Century. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Pizzigati, S. (2004) Greed and Good. New York: Apex Press. Polanyi, K. (2001) The Great Transformation. Boston: Beacon Press. Pop-Eleches, C. et al. (2011) ‘Mobile phone technologies improve adherence to antiretroviral treatment in resource-limited settings: a randomized controlled trial of text message reminders’, AIDS 25: 6, pp. 825–834.

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What’s more, starting in the early 1980s, many high-income countries that believed they had successfully made it over the curve’s hump saw their income distribution begin to widen again, resulting in the infamous rise of the one percent accompanied by flat or falling wages for the majority. It was, however, the economist Thomas Piketty’s 2014 long view of the dynamics of distribution under capitalism that made the underlying story plain to see. By asking not just who earns what but also who owns what, he distinguished between two kinds of households: those that own capital – such as land, housing, and financial assets which generate rent, dividends and interest – and those households that own only their labour, which generates only wages.

Tenants: The People on the Frontline of Britain's Housing Emergency
by Vicky Spratt
Published 18 May 2022

In the years that followed Thatcher, landlords also received tax breaks: alongside mortgage interest relief there was even a wear-and-tear allowance to repair any damage to their properties. Some of that relief has since been clawed back in an attempt to even things out. This has stalled the growth of the private rented sector, but the impact on British society and our economy is deep set. We have witnessed what the French economist Thomas Piketty describes in his 2013 book Capital in the Twenty-First Century as the return of rentier capitalism. This is a system in which one class monopolises access to any kind of property and resources and gains significant amounts of profit from that without properly contributing to society. It’s a lot like feudalism. In Britain, it has given birth to a new wealth-based class system in which the ownership of housing is a key decider of someone’s freedom: their social status, their spending power and their social mobility.

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‘year zero’: See Gavriel Hollander, ‘Thirty years on: how the Housing Act changed everything’, Inside Housing, 24 January 2019, www.insidehousing.co.uk/insight/insight/thirty-years-on-how-the-housing-act-changed-everything-59821 banks tend to give mortgages more readily: This is evidenced in the fact that in the boom years of 1996–2006 first-time buyers were entering the market in large numbers, putting homeownership close to an all-time high. But when the financial crisis hit, lending to them was cut in half and landlords were seen as a less risky bet by lenders. 20.3 per cent of households: www.statista.com/statistics/286444/england-number-of-private-rented-households the return of rentier capitalism: Thomas Piketty, Capital in the Twenty-First Century, tr. Arthur Goldhammer (2013; Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2014) is an important work though, of course, not everyone agrees with its contents. A key claim made by Piketty is that income inequality has increased sharply since the late 1970s, with a particularly dramatic rise in the share of total income going to the very highest earners in the US and Europe.

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Antrim 1 banking regulations 1 Banksy 1, 2 Barbour, Mary 1 Barr, Robert 1 Bates, Justin 1 Bath, Somerset 1 BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation) 1, 2 Beadle, Ben 1 ‘beds in sheds’ 1 Belgium 1 bell hooks 1, 2 ‘belonging’, see location/place benefit cap 1, 2 Benefits Street (TV documentary series) 1 Berlin, Germany 1 Berry, Siân 1 Best, Richard 1 Bevan, Aneurin ‘Nye’ 1, 2, 3 Beveridge, William 1, 2, 3, 4 Beveridge Report (1942) 1 Bexhill, East Sussex 1 ‘Big Bang’ (financial markets) 1 biomarkers, 1 Blackpool 1 Blackstone (corporate landlord) 1 Blair, Tony 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 Bolsover, Derbyshire 1 Boughton, John 1 Bourdieu, Pierre 1 Bourne, Nick, Baron Bourne of Aberystwyth 1 Bradford, West Yorkshire 1, 2, 3, 4 Bradford Council 1 Brake, Tom 1 Brazil 1 Brexit 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 Brighton, Sussex 1, 2, 3 Brighton and Hove, 1 Bristol 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 Bristol Cable 1 Bristol Community Land Trust 1 British Future (think tank) 1 British Social Attitudes Survey (BSAS) 1, 2, 3 Brixton, London 1 Brokenshire, James 1, 2 Bromley, south London 1, 2 Brown, Gordon 1, 2, 3 Bryant, John 1 Buck, Karen 1, 2, 3, 4 Buckinghamshire County Council 1 ‘build-to-rent’ sector 1 Building Research Establishment Trust 1, 2 C C-reactive protein (CRP) 1 Callaghan, James 1 Cambridge House centre 1, 2 Camelot Guardian Management Ltd 1, 2, 3, 4 Cameron, David 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 Canterbury, Kent 1 capital gains tax (CGT) 1 Capital in the Twenty-First Century (Piketty) 1 capitalism 1, 2, 3, 4 rentier capitalism 1 Care Quality Commission (CQC) 1, 2 Cathy Come Home (TV drama) 1 Central Heating Evaluation programme (Scotland) 1 Centre For Towns think tank 1 Centre Point, London 1 Ceredigion, Wales 1 Chadwick, Duncan and Edwin 1 Chartered Institute of Building 1 Chartered Institute of Environmental Health (CIEH) 1 Chartered Institute of Housing (CIH) 1, 2 Chartist movement 1 Chatham, Kent 1 Cheshire West and Chester, 1 children 1, 2 childcare 1 health 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 homelessness 1, 2 housing displacement and 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 poverty 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 Churchill, Winston 1 City A.M. 1 cladding crisis 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 Clair, Amy 1 class, see social class Clegg, Nick 1 climate change 1, 2 Cloward, Richard 1 Coggeshall, Essex 1, 2 Colchester, Essex 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 Colchester Renters campaign group 1, 2, 3 Cold Weather Fund 1 Colombia 1 Combined Homelessness and Information Network (CHAIN) 1 Communist Manifesto, The (Marx & Engels) 1 Communist Party 1 community land trusts 1 Comte, Auguste 1 Condition of the Working Class in England, The (Engels) 1 Conservative Party 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14 Constitution of Liberty (Hayek), 1 Copenhagen, Denmark 1 Corby, Northamptonshire 1 Corbyn, Jeremy 1, 2, 3 Cornwall 1, 2 coronavirus pandemic 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 eviction ban 1 homelessness and 1, 2, 3 impact on housing 1, 2, 3, 4 overcrowding and 1, 2 poor housing and 1, 2 private renters and 1 corporate landlords 1 Costa Rica 1 council housing, see social housing Covid-19, see coronavirus Cowan, Dave 1 Craw, Dan Wilson 1 Crisis (homeless charity) 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 Croydon 1, 2, 3 Cutler, Horace 1 D Daily Mail 1, 2 Daily Telegraph 1 David Plaister Ltd 1 Dawson, Gloria 1 Dawson’s Heights estate, East Dulwich 1 Decent Homes Standard 1, 2, 3 Delingpole, James 1 Denmark 1, 2 Denton, Greater Manchester 1 Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (DLUHC) 1 Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) 1 Department of Social Security (DSS) 1 Derry, Northern Ireland 1 Desmond, Matthew 1 Dickens, Charles 1 disability 1, 2, 3 Discus Housing First, Amsterdam 1 Dismaland (Banksy) 1 DnR Vinyl, 1 domestic abuse 1, 2 Dorling, Danny 1 Dorrington Court, Croydon 1, 2, 3 Douglas-Home, Alec 1 Duffy, Bobby 1 Duncan, William 1 E East Ayrshire, Scotland 1 Economic Journal 1 Eden, Anthony 1, 2 education 1, 2, 3 Education Act (1870) 1 Einstein, Albert 1 Elephant and Castle, London 1, 2, 3 Elsworth, Linda 1, 2 emergency B&Bs 1, 2 ‘emerging adulthood’, 1 energy efficient homes 1 energy price caps 1 Engels, Friedrich 1, 2 English Housing Survey 1, 2, 3 2017/18: 1 2018/19: 1 2019/20: 1 2020/21: 1 Equality Act (2010) 1 Escape to the Country (TV series) 1 estate agents 1, 2 Evening Standard 1 ‘Everyone In’ scheme 1, 2 Evicted (Desmond) 1 evictions 1, 2, 3, 4 children and 1, 2, 3 guardianship and 1 illegal evictions 1 legal aid 1 mental health and 1, 2, 3, 4 physical health and 1 Section 1, 2 Section 1 2, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11 ‘Eviction’s Fallout: Housing, Hardship, and Health’ (Desmond) 1 ‘excluded occupiers’ 1 F Farage, Nigel 1 Ferreri, Mara 1 Field, Hazell 1, 2 Financial Times 1 Finland 1, 2, 3 Flat Justice 1 free market forces 1, 2 Friedman, Sam 1 ‘friendlords’ 1 Frome, Somerset 1 Fullilove, Mindy 1, 2, 3, 4 G Gabor, Daniela 1 Gallik, Tomas 1 Gandhi, Mohandas 1 garden cities 1, 2 Garden City Association 1 gardening 1 gender housing gap 1 Generation Rent (lobby group) 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 Generation Rent (term) 1, 2, 3 generations 1 Baby Boomers 1, 2 Generation X 1 Generation Z 1 intergenerational inequality 1 millennials 1, 2, 3 Generations: Does When You’re Born Shape Who You Are?

Adam Smith: Father of Economics
by Jesse Norman
Published 30 Jun 2018

And all the more so, the argument goes, in an increasingly globalized world: a world in which capital is liquid, companies are multinational and effectively able to choose where they pay tax, labour is offshored to low-cost jurisdictions with few rights or union protections, while the rich are mobile and can relocate as and where they see fit. This in turn supports an emergent global value system which exalts material success and tacitly despises national cultures and local values and institutions. The runaway success of Thomas Piketty’s recent book Capital in the Twenty-First Century, with its argument that the past thirty years have been conspicuous for the imbalance between the economic returns accruing to capital and to labour, is just one token of a much deeper and wider sense of malaise. But as with economics, as with financial markets, so some would go further still, and place the ultimate blame for these failures of capitalism on Adam Smith himself.

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Monks, Corpocracy: How CEOs and the Business Roundtable Hijacked the World’s Greatest Wealth Machine—and How to Get It Back, John Wiley 2007 Arguments for falling rates of gain from technology: see Robert J. Gordon, The Rise and Fall of American Growth, Princeton University Press 2016 Absence of critique: debate on the nature of capitalism has been hugely reinvigorated by Thomas Piketty’s book Capitalism in the Twenty-First Century, Allen Lane 2014. In many ways rightly so, for it offers a very important analytical window into data on wealth and incomes, a simple but comprehensive theory of their long-term evolution and an overdue focus on the distributional consequences of the key trends involved.

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Kenneth Laine Ketner, Harvard University Press 1992 Phelps, Edmund, Mass Flourishing: How Grassroots Innovation Created Jobs, Challenge, and Change, Princeton University Press 2013 Phillipson, Nicholas, David Hume: The Philosopher as Historian, rev. edn, Penguin Books 2011 Piketty, Thomas, Capital in the Twenty-First Century, Allen Lane 2014 Pinker, Steven, The Better Angels of our Nature: The Decline of Violence and its Causes, Allen Lane 2011 Pinker, Steven, Enlightenment Now, Allen Lane 2018 Pirie, Madsen, The Neoliberal Mind: The Ideology of the Future, Adam Smith Institute 2017 Pocock, J. G. A., Virtue, Commerce and History: Essays on Political Thought and History, Chiefly in the Eighteenth Century, Cambridge University Press 1985 Polanyi, Karl, The Great Transformation, Farrar & Rinehart 1944 Pujol, Michèle A., Feminism and Anti-Feminism in Early Economic Thought, Edward Elgar 1992 Putnam, Hilary and Vivian Walsh (eds.), The End of Value-Free Economics, Routledge 2011 Raphael, D.

The New Enclosure: The Appropriation of Public Land in Neoliberal Britain
by Brett Christophers
Published 6 Nov 2018

It has long been widely understood that one cannot grasp actually-existing patterns of socioeconomic inequality without factoring in landownership.2 But what is much less obvious, though no less important, is that land rents and land value gains appear to be critical to rapidly growing levels of inequality, in terms of both income and wealth, during the neoliberal era – a trend that is, of course, one of the key issues of the moment in Western societies. The centrality of land to this troubling ongoing development has been a principal theme of emerging critiques of the book that has done so much to put inequality in the intellectual and political spotlight – Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century.3 The first line of critique concerns income inequalities. One of Piketty’s main contributions has been to show that stability in the respective shares of national income accruing to wage earners and capital owners, for so long considered a ‘stylized fact’ of macroeconomics, did not survive beyond the 1950s.

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One of the most striking things about the widespread attempts in Asia and Africa between 1950 and 1980 to create more egalitarian rural societies precisely through land reform – collectivization in China, Vietnam and Ethiopia, for example, and landlord abolition in Egypt and India – is that, in this regard, they failed. See D. Low, The Egalitarian Moment: Asia and Africa, 1950–1980 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996). 3 T. Piketty, Capital in the Twenty-First Century (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2014). 1 G. La Cava, ‘Piketty’s Rising Share of Capital Income and the US Housing Market’, Vox, 8 October 2016, at voxeu.org. Long before Piketty, notably, another Frenchman, the Marxist Henri Lefebvre, called attention to the rising share of income accruing to landowners in twentieth-century capitalism, and the fact that this trend contradicted Marx’s expectation that land would ultimately be subsumed under capital and that rent – as a distinct category of capital income – would be subsumed within profit.

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Index Aberthaw, 335 absorption rate, 172 accounting, 199–203 Adams, John, 27 Adams, Martin, 35–6, 47, 48 Adam Smith Institute (ASI), 123, 137–8, 139 Adonis, Andrew, 160–1, 162, 236 affordable housing, 228, 273, 282–3, 312–4, 319, 337, 338–9, 343, 346–7 Albanwise, 299 allemansrätten, 29 Amos, Gideon, 229–30 Annington Homes, 154, 252, 271, 273–6, 311–2 Anti-Corn Law League, 86 Architects for Social Housing, 325 Arnaboldi, Michela, 180 Arnold, Martin, 1, 2 Arrighi, Giovanni, 17 Arthur, Simon, 152 asset management, 142–3, 180, 184, 206–7 asset rents, 140, 178–80 Astley, Edward, 104 Attlee, Clement, 97 Audit Commission, 180, 202–3, 257–8 austerity policy, 119–20, 147–9, 206, 213, 244, 256, 341–3 Australia, 51 Aviva, 298 Baldry, Tony, 204–5 Ball, Michael, 287–8 Barnes, Yolande, 163 Barnsley, 270 Barratt Developments, 169 Bawden, Anna, 212 Beachy Head, 242 Beevor, Stuart, 295 Bentley, Daniel, 98, 171–2 Benyon, Bill, 203, 203n1 Benyon, Richard, 203n1 Beresford, Paul, 177 Berkeley Group, 123, 169, 218, 236–7 Berkshire, 203 Berwin Leighton Paisner (BLP), 167 Bill Sargent Trust, 277–9 Birmingham, 100 Blackman-Woods, Roberta, 151n2, 189–90 Blair, Tony, 74, 192, 251–2 Block, Fred, 70 Blomley, Nick, 14 BNP Paribas, 298 Boles, Nick, 158–9 Bootle, 165–6 Bowie, Duncan, 158–9 Box, Peter, 170 Boyson, Rhodes, 257 Bracknell, 99 Bradford, 204 Brazil, 5 British Coal, 18 British Gas, 133, 328, 329 British Land Company, 298 British Museum, 199 British Rail, 18, 210, 226, 248 landholdings, 97, 105, 187, 247, 261 British Railways Board (BRB), 229 landholdings, 100 British Transport Commission (BTC), 105 British Virgin Islands (BVI), 195 Broadgate, 314 Broadwater Farm estate, 325 Brookfield Asset Management, 298 Brown, Wendy, 15–6 Brownfield land, 160–2, 165, 197, 199 Broxtowe borough council, 324–5 Buccleuch Estates Ltd., 191 budgets, squeezing, 205–6 Build Now, Pay Later scheme, 236, 265, 282 Cabinet Office, 122, 122n1, 135, 137, 174, 182, 264, 268–9 Cable, Vince, 340 Cahill, Kevin, 25, 31, 74, 84, 90, 116, 173, 189, 247–8, 297 Callcutt, John, 303 Camden, 204, 347 Cameron, David, 137, 159, 192–4, 254, 303, 326, 327, 333 Canada, 5 Canary Wharf, 314, 317–8 Canary Wharf Group Investment Holdings, 298 Canterbury City Council, 266, 271 Capital (Marx), 62, 67–8 capital charging, 178–80, 184–5 capital gains, 48–55, 61–2, 64 Capital in the Twenty-First Century (Piketty), 53–4 capitalism and land, 11–13, 26, 34–5, 38– 72, 75, 83, 113–4, 283 contradictions of, 59–60, 62–3, 283 rentier form of, 305–11 role of the state in, 39–40, 64–5, 71 Cardiff, 265–6 Carlino, Nicholas, 268 Carlisle, John, 221 Catalano, Alejandrina, 52, 112–3, 116–7, 117n2, 297, 328–9, 339, 341 Cayman Islands, 195 Central Bedfordshire Council, 219 central government. see also Whitehall landholdings, 87, 115, 117, 134, 198, 209, 251–4, 259–63 Centre for Environmental Studies, 328–9 Centre for Policy Studies (CPS), 179 Chakrabortty, Aditya, 38, 124 Chamberlain, Joseph, 86 Chamberlain Walker Economics, 302n2, 3 Chartist movement, 86 Chelsea Barracks, 253 Churchill, Winston, 48–9, 60–1 City Hall, 199 City of London, 192, 332 city villages, 236, 313 City Villages, 160, 161, 162–3 civil estate, 134–6, 178, 182, 226–7, 253, 260 Civil Estate Property Benchmarking Service, 184 Civitas, 171 Clark, Gordon, 89, 90, 94 Clifford, Ben, 146, 319 coalition government, UK (2010–15), 122, 168, 228, 326 Cobden, Richard, 86 Cogan, Jacob, 27 collectivization, 53n2 Collings, Jesse, 86 Collinson, Patrick, 308 Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment (CABE), 201–2 commodity, land as a, 33–4, 60, 66–72, 311–2, 324, 327. see also ‘fictitious commodities’ Common Good lands, 260 common land, 9, 10–3, 30, 80–3, 116–7, 139, 323, 344 Commons Act (1876), 81, 82 Commons Preservation Society, 81 The Communist Manifesto (Engels and Marx), 46–7 Communities and Local Government Committee, 214n3, 238, 272, 293n4 community benefits, of land disposal, 228, 230, 232, 276–9 Community Care Act, 254 Community Empowerment (Scotland) Act (2015), 239 Community Land Act (1975), 107, 112, 113 Community Land Bill, 107 community land trust (CLT), 346–7 Community Right to Reclaim Land, 151, 228, 237, 238, 239 competition, 15–16, 18n2, 59, 61, 120–1 compulsion, of land disposal, 215–23 compulsory purchase, of land, 40–1, 95, 98–9, 110–1, 314, 320–1 The Condition of the Working Class in England (Engels), 67–8 Conservative Party (UK), 111, 119 donorship, 125 landlord MPs, 122 land privatization, 122, 176, 207, 213, 253, 268 views on landownership, 27, 93, 108, 173, 328 Cooper, Olivia, 88 Corby Borough Council, 266–7n5 Corbyn, Jeremy, 195–6, 337–8 Cornwall, 78 Couchman, James, 136 council estates ‘regeneration’ of, 160–3, 176n1, 236–7, 313, 325, 331 council housing, 240, 272, 314, 320–1, 339. see also Right to Buy policy birth of, 94–5 financing, 145–6, 212–3 land acquisition for, 94–6, 99–100 privatization, 1–2, 7–8, 144–6, 255, 267–8 repurchase by councils, 270–1 waiting lists, 271 Council Tax, 170, 196n2 ‘counter-movement’ (Polanyi), 324, 327, 328 Coventry, 100 Cowen, Tyler, 2–3 Cox, Andrew, 110, 165, 173 Coyle, Diane, 173 Cragoe, Matthew, 88–9 Crawley, 99 Crewe, Tom, 147, 148, 255, 258 Crichel Down affair/rules, 225, 227 Cromwell, Thomas, 79 Crosland, Anthony, 111 Crown Estate, 9–10, 10n1, 88, 116– 7, 259n1, 298 Crown Estate (Scotland), 10n1, 346 Crown land, 88 Cumbria County Council, 12n1 Currie, Edwina, 152 Dalton, Hugh, 110–1, 113 Dalyell, Tam, 217 Davies, Ceri, 18n2, 177–8, 179–80. see also Davies report (1983) Davies, Will, 15 Davies report (1983), 186, 210, 211, 254, 332. see also Davies, Ceri DB Schenker, 273 deBuys, William, 331 Defence Infrastructure Organisation, 165, 215 defence land. see Ministry of Defence, landholdings Defence Lands Committee, 105 deficit reduction, 119, 131, 152, 154, 213 Deloitte Real Estate, 218, 219, 332 Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG), 198n1, 208, 221–2, 235, 280–2, 284, 285n4, 340n3 Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) landholdings, 209, 259–60, 281 Department for Transport, 273 Department of Health, 221, 254, 280, 281, 333. see also National Health Service Department of the Environment, 187 de-risked sites, 235–6, 285 de Soto, Hernando Mystery of Capital, 34–5 Development Land Tax (1976), 112–3 Dissolution of the Monasteries, 79, 81 Dobson, Frank, 224, 225 Dobson, Julian, 277–9 Domesday Book, 73–4, 77, 199 Dorset, 105–6 ‘double movement’ (Polanyi), 68–9 Downing (property developer), 239 Dunkley, Emma, 1, 2 Eastbourne, 242 Eastbourne Review, 243–4 economic growth, land privatization and, 129, 157–8, 165–7, 264–5, 307–10 Edinburgh, 239 Education Funding Agency (EFA), 232n2, 319 Edwards, Chris, 2 efficiency land allocation, 4, 42–3, 59, 62–5, 286–96 land use, 11–12, 126–7, 136–43, 153, 177–85, 274 Elazar, Dahlia, 26, 27 Elephant Park, 314 employment, land privatization and, 129, 157, 165–7 enclosure movement, 11–4, 30–1, 79–85 Enfield, 320 Engels, Friedrich, 242 The Communist Manifesto, 46–7 The Condition of the Working Class in England, 67–8 enterprise privatizations, 1–3, 6–7, 120–1, 247–8, 299, 328 ‘factor of production,’ 29, 120 Fair, J.

Narrative Economics: How Stories Go Viral and Drive Major Economic Events
by Robert J. Shiller
Published 14 Oct 2019

All of these narratives imply that the causes and effects of the Great Depression extend beyond economists’ simple story of multiple rounds of expenditure and the effects of interest rates on rational investing behavior. The decline in modesty and compassion narratives since the Great Depression may help to explain many economic trends. The modesty decline is likely related to the rise in inequality, in the share of national income earned by the top 1%, documented by Thomas Piketty in his 2014 book Capital in the Twenty-First Century.39 It also is likely related to the long-term decline in managers’ feeling of loyalty to their employees, documented by Louis Uchitelle in his 2006 book The Disposable American.40 A narrative downplaying modesty and compassion was supported by Donald Trump in his 2007 book, Think Big and Kick Ass in Business and Life, coauthored with Bill Zanker.41 The frugality narrative was repeated in Japan after 1990, with different stories and personalities.

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Notably, Google Trends shows a huge uptrend in searches for the term universal basic income starting in 2012. ProQuest News & Newspapers reveals essentially the same uptrend. Public attention to inequality has burgeoned, with much attention to the increased share of income by the top 1% or the top one-tenth of 1%. Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century, which described this trend, was a best seller that generated intense discussion. The term “digital divide” has gone viral, describing a sort of inequality related to access to digital computers. No one can predict the effects of labor-saving and intelligent machines on livelihoods and work in the future, but the narratives themselves have the potential to drive amplified economic booms and recessions, as well as public policy.

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Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 44(2):51–66. Pierce, Karen, R. A. Müller, J. Ambrose, G. Allen, and E. Courchesne. 2001. “Face Processing Occurs Outside the Fusiform ‘Face Area’ in Autism: Evidence from Functional MRI.” Brain 124(10):2059–73. Piketty, Thomas. 2014. Capital in the Twenty-First Century. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Piore, Michael. 2010. “Qualitative Research: Does It Fit in Economics?” European Management Review 3(1):17–23. Polletta, Francesca. 2002. “Plotting Protest Mobilizing Stories in the 1960 Student Sit-Ins.” In Joseph E. Davis, ed., Stories of Change.

The Cosmopolites: The Coming of the Global Citizen
by Atossa Araxia Abrahamian
Published 14 Jul 2015

(Spiro, alongside philosopher Martha Nussbaum and former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, is named by Huntington as an example of “transnational” intellectuals who “abandon their commitment to their nation and their fellow citizens and argue the moral superiority of identifying with humanity at large.”) Citing Thomas Piketty’s best-selling Capital in the Twenty-First Century, Spiro summed up the book to a glassy-eyed crowd at a Henley & Partners conference in 2014 at which he was invited to speak: “The take away line was that inequality was suppressed during the twentieth century. The reason for that was that that was a period of great conflict along state lines, individuals felt like they could share with their fellow citizens.”

Blockchain Revolution: How the Technology Behind Bitcoin Is Changing Money, Business, and the World
by Don Tapscott and Alex Tapscott
Published 9 May 2016

Those with power and wealth are getting ahead, and those without are falling behind. This new prosperity paradox, not to be confused with the intergenerational “Paradox of Prosperity” coined by economists such as Gilbert Morris, has befuddled every policy maker in the Western world. One of the best-selling business books of 2014, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, became the #1 best seller on the New York Times hardcover nonfiction list in 2014. A tour de force of academic scholarship, Capital explains why inequality is accelerating and will likely continue to do so as long as the return on capital exceeds long-term economic growth.

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Prahalad, The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid: Eradicating Poverty Through Profits (Philadelphia: Wharton School Publishing, 2009). This figure is an estimate. 8. Interview with Joyce Kim, June 12, 2015. 9. www.ilo.org/global/topics/youth-employment/lang—en/index.htm. 10. Thomas Piketty, Capital in the Twenty-First Century (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press, 2014). 11. www.brookings.edu/~/media/research/files/papers/2014/05/declining%20business%20dynamism%20litan/declining_business_dynamism_hathaway_litan.pdf. 12. Ruth Simon and Caelainn Barr, “Endangered Species: Young U.S. Entrepreneurs,” The Wall Street Journal, January 2, 2015; www.wsj.com/articles/endangered-species-young-u-s-entrepreneurs-1420246116. 13.

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Airbnb, 115–17 Big Seven, 128–42 distributed applications, 117–22 distributed autonomous enterprises, 126–28 hacking your future, 142–44 Buterin, Vitalik, 87–88, 262, 278–80 autonomous agents, 123, 125 consensus mechanisms, 31 futarchy, 220 re-architecting the firm, 18, 87–88, 96, 100–101 Buzzcar, 137 Byrne, David, 227 Byrne, Patrick, 83 Byzantine Generals’ Problem, 241 Cabell, James Branch, 277 California Public Employees’ Retirement System, 77 Campus microgrids, 148 “Canonical persona,” 16, 140 Cap-and-trade system, 222–23 Capital in the Twenty-First Century (Piketty), 173, 175 Carlyle, James, 69 Cars, 137, 164–67, 165–67 Cavoukian, Ann, 27, 28, 41, 42, 51–52, 275 CBW Bank, 73 Ceglowski, Maciej, 254, 275 Central banks (banking), 9, 31, 57, 286–87, 293–96, 309 Cerf, Vint, 274, 281, 299 Chain (company), 67–68 Chamber of Digital Commerce, 208, 287, 288, 302, 303 Change.org, 304 Chase, Robin, 137 Chaum, David, 4, 219 Chesky, Brian, 135 China, 13, 56, 174, 243–45, 264, 266–67, 272 Choi, Constance, 288, 307 Christie, Chris, 98 Circle, 83, 284 Circle Internet Financial, 71–72 Cisco Quad, 139 Civil Justice Council, U.K., 221 Clark, David, 281 Clark, Jeremy, 215 Climate change, 149, 221–23 Cloud computing, 118, 122 Coalition for Automated Legal Applications (COALA), 301–2, 303 Coase, Ronald, 74, 92–93, 100, 105, 121, 142, 319n Cohen, Bram, 119, 262 Coinbase, 44, 83–84, 284, 302 Coin Center, 286, 287, 302, 303 CoinPip, 217 Collaboration, 139–42 Collins, John, 302 Colu, 238 CommitCoin, 215 “Commons-based peer production,” 129 Competitive advantage, 64, 66, 110–11, 140 Complex instruction set computer (CISC), 260–61 CompuServe, 118 Computer viruses, 122, 123 Computing, evolution of, 150–52 Conflict adjudication, 100, 105, 219, 221 Conflicts of interest, 100, 125 Consensus mechanisms, 30–33, 36–37, 95, 98, 262, 266, 305 Consensus Systems (ConsenSys), 15, 87–92, 99, 101, 112–14, 130 Consideration, 10, 30 Conspiracy theories, 213 Content ID, 235 Contract breaches, 104, 258 Contracting costs, 99–101 Contracts.

21 Lessons for the 21st Century
by Yuval Noah Harari
Published 29 Aug 2018

On long-term development strategies, see Ha-Joon Chang, Kicking Away the Ladder: Development Strategy in Historical Perspective (London: Anthem Press, 2003). 28 Lauren Gambini, ‘Trump Pans Immigration Proposal as Bringing People from “Shithole Countries”’, Guardian, 12 January 2018. 29 For the idea that an absolute improvement in conditions might be coupled with a rise in relative inequality, see in particular Thomas Piketty, Capital in the Twenty-First Century (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2013). 30 ‘2017 Statistical Report on Ultra-Orthodox Society in Israel’, Israel Democracy Institute and Jerusalem Institute for Israel Studies (2017), https://en.idi.org.il/articles/20439; Melanie Lidman, ‘As ultra-Orthodox women bring home the bacon, don’t say the F-word’, Times of Israel, 1 January 2016. 31 Lidman, ‘As ultra-Orthodox women bring home the bacon’, op. cit; ‘Statistical Report on Ultra-Orthodox Society in Israel’, Israel Democracy Institute and Jerusalem Institute for Israel Studies 18 (2016).

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, Washington Post, 25 June 2016; John Curtice, ‘US election 2016: The Trump–Brexit voter revolt’, BBC, 11 November 2016. 7 The most famous of these remains, of course, Francis Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man (London: Penguin, 1992). 8 Karen Dawisha, Putin’s Kleptocracy (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2014); Timothy Snyder, The Road to Unfreedom: Russia, Europe, America (New York: Tim Duggan Books, 2018); Anne Garrels, Putin Country: A Journey Into the Real Russia (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2016); Steven Lee Myers, The New Tsar: The Rise and Reign of Vladimir Putin (New York: Knopf Doubleday, 2016). 9 Credit Suisse, Global Wealth Report 2015, 53; Filip Novokmet, Thomas Piketty and Gabriel Zucman, ‘From Soviets to Oligarchs: Inequality and Property in Russia 1905–2016’, July 2017, World Wealth and Income Database; Shaun Walker, ‘Unequal Russia’, Guardian, 25 April 2017. 10 Ayelet Shani, ‘The Israelis Who Take Rebuilding the Third Temple Very Seriously’, Haaretz, 10 August 2017; ‘Israeli Minister: We Should Rebuild Jerusalem Temple’, Israel Today, 7 July 2013; Yuri Yanover, ‘Dep.

On the Clock: What Low-Wage Work Did to Me and How It Drives America Insane
by Emily Guendelsberger
Published 15 Jul 2019

Fitz The Mythology of Work: How Capitalism Persists Despite Itself, Peter Fleming Live Work Work Work Die: A Journey into the Savage Heart of Silicon Valley, Corey Pein Confronting Dystopia: The New Technological Revolution and the Future of Work, Eva Paus On economics An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, Adam Smith Capital, Karl Marx “Economic Possibilities for Our Grandchildren” (essay), John Maynard Keynes The Great Risk Shift: The New Economic Insecurity and the Decline of the American Dream, Jacob S. Hacker Capital in the Twenty-First Century, Thomas Piketty The Economics of Inequality, Thomas Piketty Who Gets What—and Why: The New Economics of Matchmaking and Market Design, Alvin E. Roth Misbehaving: The Making of Behavioral Economics, Richard H. Thaler Notes Introduction 1. Carl Benedikt Frey and Michael A. Osborne, “The Future of Employment: How Susceptible Are Jobs to Computerisation?

In Our Own Image: Savior or Destroyer? The History and Future of Artificial Intelligence
by George Zarkadakis
Published 7 Mar 2016

, in: Machines and Employment Workshop, Oxford: Oxford University Engineering Science Department and Oxford Martin Programme. 16Cowen, T. (2013), Average is Over: Powering American beyond the Age of the Great Stagnation. New York: Dutton. 17Brynjolfsson, E., and McAfee, A. (2014), The Second Machine Age: Work, Progress, and Prosperity in a time of Brilliant Technologies, New York: W.W. Norton & Co, p. 132. 18Piketty, T. (2014), Capital in the 21st Century. Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press. 19Krugman, P. (2013), ‘Sympathy for the Luddites’, in: New York Times, 13 June 2013. 20Bostrom, N. (2014), Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 21Tegmark, M. (2014), ‘Humanity in Jeopardy’, in: Huffington Post, 13 January 2014. 22Tegmark, N., Hawking, S., Russell, S., and Wilczek, F. (2014), ‘Transcendence looks at the implications of artificial intelligence – but are we taking AI seriously enough?’

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This means that most people in the world have not enjoyed any material benefits from the increase in the ‘bounty’ of the information age, because their incomes have remained low. High ‘spread’ in income also suggests that the bounty – or the new wealth created by the information age – has been mostly channelled to the very rich. Indeed, according to research by French economist Thomas Piketty, we now live in an age similar to the pre-industrial times in that a small minority of people – the notorious 1 per cent – owns most of the world’s wealth.18 The discrepancy between an increased ‘bounty’ and a widening ‘spread’ is likely to get much worse as we move further into the second machine age.

Grand Transitions: How the Modern World Was Made
by Vaclav Smil
Published 2 Mar 2021

The Earth’s biosphere is hardly present in Rosling’s book: there is nothing at all about such key concerns as the loss of biodiversity, and global warming gets 14 lines in 329 pages of the text. And if Rosling’s book is “about the world and how it really is,” why does it say nothing about increasing inequality of income and wealth distribution? This is a curious omission in a book that was published four years after Thomas Piketty’s much publicized Capital in the Twenty-First Century (Piketty 2014). I am well aware that Piketty’s conclusions have been questioned—notably, Auten and Splinter (2018) had convincingly demonstrated that not all of his claims about the shifts in the United States withstand a critical inquiry—but many other recent studies have shown that inequality has been on the rise around the world, perhaps most notably in China.

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Nature 458:1009–1013. Pichard, P. and F. Lagirarde, eds. 2014. The Buddhist Monastery: A Cross-Cultural Survey. Chiang Mai: Silkworm Books. Piers, L.S. and P.S. Shetty. 1993. Basal metabolic rates of Indian women. European Journal of Clinical Nutrition 47:586–591. Piketty, T. 2014. Capital in the Twenty-First Century. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Pimm, S.L. et al. 2014. The biodiversity of species and their rates of extinction, distribution, and protection. Science 344. doi: 10.1126/science.1246752 Pinker, S. 2011. The Better Angels of Our Nature. New York: Penguin Books. Pinker, S. 2018.

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How a gene from Japan revolutionized the world of wheat: CIMMYT’s quest for combining genes to mitigate threats to global food security. In: Y. Ogihara et al., eds., Advances in Wheat Genetics: From Genome to Field, Berlin, Springer-Verlag, pp. 13–20. Lutz, W. et al. 2001. The end of world population growth. Nature 412:543–545. Lutz, W. et al., eds. 2014. World Population and Global Human Capital in the 21st Century. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Ma, L. et al. 2010. Modeling nutrient flows in the food chain of China. Journal of Environmental Quality 39:1279–1289. Maddison, A. 2007. Contours of the World Economy, 1–2020 AD. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Madrigal, A.C. 2018. When did TV watching peak?

This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. The Climate
by Naomi Klein
Published 15 Sep 2014

The failure of deregulated capitalism to deliver on its promises is why, since 2009, public squares around the world have turned into rotating semipermanent encampments of the angry and dispossessed. It’s also why there are now more calls for fundamental change than at any point since the 1960s. It’s why a challenging book like Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century, exposing the built-in structures of ever-increasing wealth concentration, can sit atop bestseller lists for months, and why when comedian and social commentator Russell Brand went on the BBC and called for “revolution,” his appearance attracted more than ten million YouTube views.66 Climate change pits what the planet needs to maintain stability against what our economic model needs to sustain itself.

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Department of Energy, Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, June 14, 2013, http://energy.gov; “Greenhouse Gas 100 Polluters Index,” Political Economy Research Institute, University of Massachusetts Amherst, June 2013, http://www.peri.umass.edu. 47. Borgar Aamaas, Jens Borken-Kleefeld, and Glen P. Peters, “The Climate Impact of Travel Behavior: A German Case Study with Illustrative Mitigation Options,” Environmental Science & Policy 33 (2013): 273, 276. 48. Thomas Piketty, Capital in the Twenty-First Century, trans. Arthur Goldhammer (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2014); Gar Lipow, Solving the Climate Crisis through Social Change: Public Investment in Social Prosperity to Cool a Fevered Planet (Santa Barbara: Praeger, 2012), 56; Stephen W. Pacala, “Equitable Solutions to Greenhouse Warming: On the Distribution of Wealth, Emissions and Responsibility Within and Between Nations,” presentation to International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis, November 2007, p. 3. 49.

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W., 208 Bush, George W., 211–12, 328 cadmium, 176 Caldeira, Ken, 263–64, 271 Calgary, Canada, 2, 245–49 California, 13, 52, 347 California, University of: at Davis, Institute of Transportation Studies at, 101 at Irvine, 14 Cameron, David, 7, 106–7, 110, 149, 251 Cameron, James, 449 Canada, 11, 17, 19, 71, 83, 143 divestment movement in, 354 environmental legislation in, 202 extractive industry subsidies in, 127 fossil fuels in, 69, 79, 178 fracking in, 299, 303–4, 313 government attacks on Indigenous land rights in, 381–82 government repression of environmental protest in, 299, 303 politics of climate change in, 36, 46 pro-mining policies of, 382 S&P rating of, 368 tar sands in, see Alberta tar sands weakening of environmental protections in, 381–82 Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers, 149 Canadian Auto Workers Union, 122 Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, 70, 129, 400 Canadian Natural Resources, 281 Canadian Security Intelligence Service, 362 cancer, tar sands linked to, 327 cap-and-trade system, 208, 218, 226–29, 287 cap and dividend, 118 capitalism, 22, 25, 38–39, 47, 61, 88, 89, 125, 158, 159, 176, 179, 228n, 233, 450 and attempts to mitigate climate change, 230–55 climate change as argument against, 157 climate change regulation seen as threat to, 31, 33 conservation and, 185–86 deregulated, 18, 20, 75, 154 disaster, 51, 109, 154, 233 fossil fuels and, 175, 176 Gaia, 231 industrial, 173–74, 177 nature vs., 177, 186 rebranding of, 252 see also free-market ideology Capital in the Twenty-First Century (Piketty), 154–55 carbon: atmospheric, 109 high-risk, 130 new sources of, 141 carbon bubble, 358 carbon budget, collective, 153 carbon cowboys, 220–21 carbon credits, 305 carbon dioxide, 143 recycling into products, 246–47 carbon emissions, 14, 23, 79 caps on, 118, 141, 208, 218, 226–29, 287 climate debt and, 409 cutting of, see carbon reduction of developing world, 409–10 historical evidence for, 415, 452 Industrial Revolution and increase in, 175–76, 409 rising levels of, 4, 11, 13, 14–15, 26 of U.S., 113, 409 wartime activities and, 17 wealth and, 113–14 see also greenhouse gas emissions Carbon Engineering, 281 carbon footprint, 77, 144, 178, 235, 247, 248, 288 carbon markets, 211, 218–25, 233 failure of, 224–25, 252 carbon offsets, 8, 39, 212, 251, 287 ineffectiveness of, 223–24, 387 carbon sequestration, 134, 218, 221–23, 232, 245, 247–48, 284, 439 carbon-sucking machines, 236, 244, 245, 254, 257, 260, 263, 279, 288 carbon taxes, 112, 114, 125, 157, 218, 250, 400, 461 Carbon Tracker Initiative, 148 carbon trading, 39, 87, 124, 125, 199–201, 208, 218, 226–29, 287, 418 Carbon War Room, 199, 264 Cargill, 89 Caribbean, 240, 414–15 caribou, 435 Carleton College, 401 Carmichael, Ruth, 433–34 cars, 16, 90–91, 116, 210 Carson, Rachel, 185, 201, 207, 286, 337 Carter, Bob, 33, 47 Carter, Jimmy, 116–17, 205 Carter, Nick, 349 Case for Climate Engineering, A (Keith), 275 Casselton, N.Dak., 312, 333 Castro, Rodrigo, 161 Caterpillar, 227 Cato Institute, 32, 33, 36, 39, 45, 142 CBC, 362 CBS This Morning, 288 cell phones, 91n Cenovus, 349 Center for American Progress, 111 Center for Biological Diversity, 206 Center for Strategic and International Studies, 53 Center for Sustainable Shale Development (CSSD), 216, 356n Central America, sweatshops in, 81 Centre for Science and Environment, 96, 414 Centrica, 149 centrism, 22, 59, 83 Cha, J.

The Rise and Fall of American Growth: The U.S. Standard of Living Since the Civil War (The Princeton Economic History of the Western World)
by Robert J. Gordon
Published 12 Jan 2016

McCarthy, Jeanette J., McLeod, Howard L., and Ginsburg, Geoffrey S. (2013). “Genomic Medicine: A Decade of Successes, Challenges, and Opportunities,” Science Translational Medicine 5, no. 189: 189sr4. McCloskey, Deidre. (2014). “Measured, Unmeasured, Mismeasured, and Unjustified Pessimism: A Review Essay of Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century,” Erasmus Journal of Philosophy and Economics 7, no. 2: 73–115. McDowell, M. S. (1929). “What the Agricultural Extension Service Has Done for Agriculture,” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 142 (March): 250–56. McIntosh, Elaine N. (1995). American Food Habits in Historical Perspective.

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“Digital Technology and Institutional Change from the Gilded Age to Modern Times: The Impact of the Telegraph and the Internet,” Journal of Economic Issues 34, no. 2 (June): 266–89. Pierce, Bessie Louise. (1957). A History of Chicago, vol. III: The Rise of a Modern City 1871–1893. Chicago, IL/London: University of Chicago Press. Piketty, Thomas. (2014). Capital in the Twenty-First Century. Cambridge, MA/London: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. Piketty, Thomas, and Emmanuel Saez. (2003). “Income Inequality in the United States, 1913–1998,” Quarterly Journal of Economics 118, no. 1 (February): 1–39. Pinker, Steven. (2011). The Better Angels of Our Nature: The Decline of Violence in History and Its Causes.

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A symbol of rising inequality, a topic treated in chapter 18, is the ever-growing chasm between domestic travel in economy class and the quality of the premium cabin on international flights, whether from San Francisco to Hong Kong or from Seattle to Amsterdam. As stated by the Economist in its issue of September 20, 2014: Nowadays those at the cheap end of the plane barely have room to open their copies of Thomas Piketty’s Capitalism, at the top of the national best-seller lists for its lament about the new age of inequality. Airlines keep cramming more bodies into economy class while passengers, despite their moans, regard this as a fair tradeoff for cheap fares. But in the front of the cabin carriers have made seats as plush as first class seats used to be a few years earlier.48 One exception to the discomfort of economy-class air travel is the spread of inflight entertainment options.

This Could Be Our Future: A Manifesto for a More Generous World
by Yancey Strickler
Published 29 Oct 2019

“factories every day”: Elon Musk’s blog post announcing Tesla’s new patent policy was titled “All Our Patent Are Belong to You,” June 12, 2014 (https://www.tesla.com/blog/all-our-patent-are-belong-you). CHAPTER NINE: HOW TO DO A PERFECT HANDSTAND thirty years as a cadence for change: My thinking on the thirty-year theory of change was first sparked by Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century. In particular, his demonstration of the impact of a 1 percent growth rate over the course of thirty years. Using basic accounting and money management practices, Piketty shows how a small amount of change accelerates over time. I wondered, Is this what’s happening around us?

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Young, Doubt and Certainty in Science: A Biologist’s Reflections on the Brain Economics Rutger Bregman, Utopia for Realists: How We Can Build the Ideal World David Graeber, Debt: The First 5,000 Years (Updated and Expanded) Annie Lowrey, Give People Money: How a Universal Basic Income Would End Poverty, Revolutionize Work, and Remake the World Mariana Mazzucato, The Entrepreneurial State: Debunking Public vs. Private Sector Myths Mariana Mazzucato, The Value of Everything: Making and Taking in the Global Economy Carlota Perez, Technological Revolutions and Financial Capital: The Dynamics of Bubbles and Golden Ages Thomas Picketty, Capital in the Twenty-First Century E. F. Schumacher, Small Is Beautiful: Economics as If People Mattered Joseph Stiglitz, Amartya Sen, and Jean-Paul Fitoussi, Mismeasuring Our Lives: Why GDP Doesn’t Add Up Business Yvon Chouinard, Let My People Go Surfing: The Education of a Reluctant Businessman Phil Knight, Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of Nike Michael Lewis, Liar’s Poker Konosuke Matsushita, Not for Bread Alone Daniel H.

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Adele, xvi, 155–58, 161–63, 168–69, 175, 201, 216 Adeney, Peter, 166–67 Adler, Charles, 5 Age of Fracture (Rodgers), 236–37 algorithms, 152 “affirmative” type of, 216–17 for basketball scoring, 160–61 loyalty-measuring, 157–58, 161–62, 216 for ticket sales, 168–69, 263 Amazon, xii, 51, 54, 109, 177–78 Anderson, Elizabeth, 241–43 Apple, 54, 70–71, 78–79, 211 Ariely, Dan, 22–23 Aristotle, 134 Arnault, Bernard, 109–10 ARPANET, 79 Asimov, Isaac, 192 automation, 72–73, 192 autonomy, 45, 48, 119, 141, 145, 217, 236 awareness, 28, 57, 144–45, 167, 174, 202 Baker, Dusty, 8 banking industry, xiii, 44–47, 77–78, 257, 271 Beatles, xv, 11, 37, 143 Ben & Jerry’s, 169–70, 264 bento box, xvi, 125–26, 131, 138, 243 Bentoism, 191 examples of, 158, 161–62, 166, 168–69, 174–76 explanation of, 125–53, 199–201 “hockey stick” graph of, 125–27, 200, 243 for individuals, 201–9 for Maximizing Class, 213–18 for organizations, 209–13 origins of, 235–43 and values helix, 218–25 Bernstein, Carl, 11 Bezos, Jeff, 109–10, 114–15, 177–78, 260 Bible, 3, 104 big business, 39, 42, 51, 53–55, 82–83, 196 Billboard Hot Country Songs chart, 37, 40–41, 55 Bird, Larry, 159 Bloomberg, Michael, 110 “Body Like a Back Road” (Hunt), 37, 41, 55 Bohnet, Iris, 22 Bowerman, Bill, 186 Bowles, Jonathan, 48 Buffett, Warren, 15, 68, 109–10 Burke, Glenn, 8 Business Roundtable, 81–82 Cairo, Egypt, 13 Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, 156 Capital in the Twenty-First Century (Piketty), 265 capitalism, xiii–xiv, 27, 54, 92, 102, 115, 193–94, 240 Carlson, Tucker, xii–xiii Carnegie Mellon, 117, 261 Cathy, S. Truett, 165 Center for an Urban Future, 47–48 Chen, Perry, 4–5 Chesterton, G. K., 54 Chick-fil-A, 165–66, 169, 175, 264 Chile, 198–99 China, ix, xii, 58–59, 71 Chouinard, Yvon, 172 Clear Channel Communications, 39–40 climate change, 144, 191–92 Cold War, 27–28, 31, 105 communitarianism, 236–37 community, xv, 48, 135, 243 companies contribute to, 51, 213, 216–17 as governing value, 142, 145 highly valued, xi–xiii, 45, 48 in pursuit of, 162–63 companies on hypergrowth path, 95–97, 100, 236 and public service, 60, 62, 101–2 purpose-oriented, 100–101 secular missions of, 212–13, 217–18 share-holder centric, 82–85, 169–70 values-minded, 165–66, 210–18 See also specific names; specific topics competition, 33, 39, 53–54, 83, 98–99, 104, 153, 172–74, 196 Compleat Strategyst, The (Williams), 29–31 compound interest, xiv, 191, 194 Confederacy of Dunces, A (Toole), 11 Conrad, Parker, 95–96 consumerism, xii, 51, 120, 168, 187, 217 cooperation/collaboration, 32–34, 102, 198–99, 213 Creative Independent, The, 170–71, 270 creativity and creating value, 12, 171, 175 highly valued, 45, 48 investment in, 5, 7, 10–13, 88, 170–71 and producing profits, 43–44, 134, 170 credit cards, 65–66, 74 crowdfunding, 4–13, 15, 247–48.

Super Continent: The Logic of Eurasian Integration
by Kent E. Calder
Published 28 Apr 2019

Gini coefficients of income inequality have risen in all regions of the world ­except Latin America, sub-Saharan Africa, and the Middle East/North Africa, although Notes to Chapter 9 295 they were already high in those areas. The coefficient has risen most sharply in China. See ibid. 22. Thomas Piketty, Capital in the Twenty-First Century, trans. Arthur Goldhammer (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2014). 23. Fareed Zakaria, “Populism on the March: Why the West Is in Trouble,” Foreign Affairs, November/December 2016 issue, accessed online May 2, 2017, https://​www​ .foreignaffairs​.com/​articles/​united​-states/​2016​-10​-17/​populism​-march. 24.

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Most importantly, globalization seems to have deepened income inequality within nations—with the fruits of global interdependence flowing disproportionately to urban professionals, corporate executives, and in many cases government officials—particularly in the financial sector. In China, for example, the net Gini index has risen over fifteen points since 1990.20 This perverse pattern prevails in both the G-7 nations and the developing world.21 As Thomas Piketty has pointed out, returns Shadows and Critical Uncertainties 191 to capital have substantially increased relative to returns to labor over the three decades that globalization has recently intensified. And the prospects are strong that this general pattern of deepening intranational inequality will continue.22 Financial-sector globalization has also had a perverse, destabilizing potential impact, even as it has accelerated growth and enhanced economic efficiency.

The Golden Passport: Harvard Business School, the Limits of Capitalism, and the Moral Failure of the MBA Elite
by Duff McDonald
Published 24 Apr 2017

Indeed, as both a former top corporate executive as well as a former business school dean, he is nothing but sympathetic to these sorts of educational challenges. He is simply pointing out that the benefits of Western capitalism have come with a complicated and wholly political set of trade-offs. The reason French economist Thomas Piketty’s 2014 book, Capital in the Twenty-First Century, took off like a rocket was that he examined some of those trade-offs, such as economic inequality, and put forth well-researched arguments that they might not be sustainable, either socially or politically. The point here isn’t whether Piketty is correct, it’s that a book of that importance has never come out of the Harvard Business School.

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He’s right: HBS has explicitly compared the rate of median salary increase of its graduates to the rate of tuition increase when it has sought to justify increases in tuition, in the process reducing an education to nothing more than a return-on-investment calculation. Thomas Piketty, author of the surprise 2014 bestseller, Capital in the Twenty-First Century, is arguably the world’s top expert on income inequality—not from a “what to do about it perspective,” but the mere fact of it, as represented by his unrivaled analysis of data, across both geographies and time. In a 2003 paper cowritten with Emmanuel Saez, “Income Inequality in the United States, 1913–1998,” he encapsulated the dynamics of increasing inequality in the United States in just two sentences: “The marginal product of top executives in large corporations is notoriously difficult to estimate, and executive pay is probably determined to a significant extent by herd behavior.

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Norton and Dan Ariely, “Building a Better America—One Wealth Quintile at a Time,” Perspectives on Psychological Science 6, no. 9 (2011): 9–12. 5Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez, “Income Inequality in the United States, 1913–1998 (series Updated to 2000 Available),” working paper, National Bureau of Economic Research, September 2001, http://www.nber.org/papers/w8467. 6Liam Murphy, “Why Does Inequality Matter? Reflections on the Political Morality of Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century,” Tax Law Review, April 1, 2015, https://www.highbeam.com/doc/1P3–3831048851.html. 7Gerald F. Davis, “Corporate Power in the 21st Century,” in Subramanian Rangan, ed., Performance and Progress: Essays on Capitalism, Business and Society (Oxford, U.K.: Oxford University Press, forthcoming). 8“At the Center of Corporate Scandal Where Do We Go From Here?

Last Best Hope: America in Crisis and Renewal
by George Packer
Published 14 Jun 2021

They had been locked out by the company over a contract dispute and were picketing outside the mill. They faced months without a paycheck, possibly the loss of their jobs, and they talked about the end of the middle class. The only candidates who interested them were Trump and Bernie Sanders (one of the workers was reading Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century). No one even mentioned the two establishment favorites, Hillary Clinton and Jeb Bush. A steelworker named Jack Baum told me that he was supporting Trump. He liked Trump’s “patriotic” positions on trade and immigration, but he also found Trump’s insults refreshing, even exhilarating.

Tailspin: The People and Forces Behind America's Fifty-Year Fall--And Those Fighting to Reverse It
by Steven Brill
Published 28 May 2018

Whether it was a matter of ideology, short-termism, simple selfishness, or all three, they used their power to force the American community to look the other way and ignore what was happening to those left out of the knowledge economy. The result was exactly as Peterson predicted in 1971. Writing forty-three years later in his best-selling book about economic inequality, Capital in the Twenty-First Century, Thomas Piketty would describe what happened this way: It is obvious that lack of adequate investment in training can exclude entire social groups from the benefits of economic growth. Growth can harm some groups while benefiting others (witness the recent displacement of workers in the more advanced economies by workers in China).

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“Consumer prices”: “How China Is Battling Ever More Intensely in World Markets,” The Economist, September 23, 2017, https://www.economist.com/​news/​leaders/​21729430-does-it-play-fair-how-china-battling-ever-more-intensely-world-markets. “Yes, trade has cut costs”: Interview with Stiglitz. “It is obvious”: Thomas Piketty, Capital in the Twenty-First Century, translated by Arthur Goldhammer (Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2014). Coalition for Queens: Information about Coalition for Queens/Tech Equality comes from a series of interviews conducted with the founder, Jukay Hsu, and staff members and trainees in the spring and fall of 2017, as well as company materials that were provided to the board of directors, which I joined in 2016.

Behemoth: A History of the Factory and the Making of the Modern World
by Joshua B. Freeman
Published 27 Feb 2018

Hobsbawm, The Age of Revolution, 1789–1848 (New York: New American Library, 1962), 22–43. See also Roderick Floud, Kenneth Wachter, and Annabel Gregory, Height, Health and History: Nutritional Status in the United Kingdom, 1750–1980 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 292; Thomas Piketty, Capital in the Twenty-First Century (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2014), 71–72; and Central Intelligence Agency, World Factbook, 2017, 303, 895, 943. 4.Tim Strangleman, “‘Smokestack Nostalgia,’ ‘Ruin Porn’ or Working-Class Obituary: The Role and Meaning of Deindustrial Representation,” International Labor and Working-Class History 84 (Fall 2013), 23–37; Marshall Berman, “Dancing with America: Philip Roth, Writer on the Left,” New Labor Forum 9 (Fall–Winter 2001), 53–54. 5.

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Marx discussed the issue of economies of scale and the rise of the factory system at great length in Karl Marx, Capital: A Critique of Political Economy, vol. 1 ([1867] New York: International Publishers, 1967), chap. 13 and 14 (“Cooperation” and “Division of Labour and Manufacture”). 31.Jenkins, “Introduction,” x–xii; Berg, Age of Manufactures, 24; Hudson, Genesis of Industrial Capital, 81, 260; Thompson, Making of the English Working Class, 299, 302. 32.Gatrell, “Labour, Power, and the Size of Firms,” 96–97, 107. 33.On British forms of wealth, see Thomas Piketty, Capital in the Twenty-First Century (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2014), 113–20, 129–31. Willersley Castle now is a Christian Guild hotel. Fitton and Wadsworth, The Strutts and the Arkwrights, 91, 94–98, 102, 169, 246; R. S. Fitton, The Arkwrights: Spinners of Fortune ([1989] Matlock, Eng.: Derwent Valley Mills Educational Trust, 2012), 224–96; Frances Trollope, The Life and Adventures of Michael Armstrong the Factory Boy ([1840] London: Frank Cass and Company Limited, 1968), quote on 76. 34.Local church towers, however, did rival the mills in height.

Having and Being Had
by Eula Biss
Published 15 Jan 2020

The Monopolists: Obsession, Fury, and the Scandal Behind the World’s Favorite Board Game, Mary Pilon. Bloomsbury, 2015. CAPITALISM Capital: A Critique of Political Economy, volume 1, Karl Marx, translated by Ben Fowkes. Penguin Classics, 1992. First published in English in 1867. Capital in the Twenty-First Century, Thomas Piketty. Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2017. First published in English in 2014. “Economists Clash on Theory, but Will Still Share the Nobel,” Binyamin Appelbaum. New York Times, October 14, 2013. “Blame Economists for the Mess We’re In,” Binyamin Appelbaum. New York Times, August 24, 2019.

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I know that Dan already has two other bikes, but I also know how much he rides. When he comes in, I ask him about capitalism. He’s a sociologist, and the first person I’ve talked with who seems comfortable with the subject. You’ve read Marx? he checks. I read Capital in college, I tell him. And I’ve just read the first chapter of Capital in the Twenty-First Century, so I know that Piketty, like Marx, believes that capitalism, unchecked, will always produce inequality. But I still don’t understand the inner workings of contemporary capitalism, the nuts and bolts of the markets, the push and pull of bubbles and recessions. Even economists, Dan says, don’t understand that.

Future Politics: Living Together in a World Transformed by Tech
by Jamie Susskind
Published 3 Sep 2018

Examples of capital include land that yields rents, shares that yield dividends, industrial machinery that yields profits, and intellectual property that yields royalties.5 Since the early 1980s, the share of overall income yielded by capital has steadily grown in relation to the share earned by labour. In Capital in the Twenty-First Century (2013), Thomas Piketty predicts that the rate of return on capital OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 26/05/18, SPi РЕЛИЗ ПОДГОТОВИЛА ГРУППА "What's News" VK.COM/WSNWS The Wealth Cyclone 315 will continue to outpace overall economic growth.6 If that’s right, then it means, on average, that those who own capital will enjoy higher returns than those who labour for a living.

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For further reading, see Nick Srnicek and Alex Williams, Inventing the Future: Postcapitalism and a World Without Work (London:Verso, 2015); David Frayne, The Refusal of Work:The Theory and Practice of Resistance to Work (London: Zed Books, 2015); André Gorz, Reclaiming Work: Beyond the Wage-Based Society, translated by Chris Turner (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2005); André Gorz, Capitalism, Socialism, Ecology, translated by Martin Chalmers (London and New York:Verso, 2012); and Bertrand Russell, In Praise of Idleness (Abingdon: Routledge, 2004). Chapter 18 1. Robert Nozick, Anarchy, State, and Utopia (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2008), 169. 2. Tim Wu, The Master Switch: The Rise and Fall of Information Empires (London: Atlantic, 2010), 276. 3. Ibid. 4. Cited in Wu, Master Switch, 276–7. 5. Thomas Piketty, Capital in the Twenty-First Century (Cambridge, Mass: The Belknapp Press of Harvard University Press, 2014), 18. OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 30/05/18, SPi РЕЛИЗ ПОДГОТОВИЛА ГРУППА "What's News" VK.COM/WSNWS Notes 427 6. Piketty, Capital, 26. 7. Piketty, Capital, 22; Ryan Avent, The Wealth of Humans:Work, Power, and Status in the Twenty-First Century (New York: St.

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In the next section, I sketch out six possible alterations to the Private Property Paradigm. These are not the only options but they may provide a helpful starting point. The New Property Paradigm Tax on Capital One way to counteract the Wealth Cyclone would be to levy a tax on capital or the profits earned by it. In Capital in the Twenty-First Century, Piketty argues for a ‘progressive global tax on capital’ as the OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 26/05/18, SPi РЕЛИЗ ПОДГОТОВИЛА ГРУППА "What's News" VK.COM/WSNWS 328 FUTURE POLITICS ‘ideal’ way to avoid ‘an endless inegalitarian spiral’ and regain control over ‘the dynamics of accumulation’.48 A Robot Tax of the kind proposed by Bill Gates could be targeted at productive technologies.49 There may even be ways of taxing the usage or flow of data.

How Democracy Ends
by David Runciman
Published 9 May 2018

The third of the conditions I listed as a driver of populism was rising inequality. This has been a persistent problem in modern democratic societies. It is certainly a problem today: Western democracies are reaching levels of inequality in both income and wealth that have not been seen since the end of the nineteenth century, the last great ‘gilded age’. Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century (2014) describes the inexorable tendency for inequality to rise over the long history of capitalism, which overlaps with the history of democracy.28 That trend was reversed during the twentieth century, but even then only as a consequence of the collective experience of war.

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, YouGov–Cambridge, 13 February 2015, http://bit.ly/2ACrfI5 (full survey results: http://bit.ly/2k2kvNf). 25Quoted in Christian Davies, ‘The conspiracy theorists who have taken over Poland,’ Guardian ‘Long Read’, 16 February 2016 http://bit.ly/2enJyvI 26See ‘Free silver and the mind of “Coin” Harvey’, in Richard Hofstadter, The Paranoid Style in American Politics (New York: Vintage, 2008). 27For the classic version of this story, see Richard Hofstadter, The Age of Reform: From Bryan to F.D.R. (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1955). 28Thomas Piketty, Capital in the Twenty-first Century (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2014). 29Walter Scheidel, The Great Leveler: Violence and the History of Inequality From the Stone Age to the Twenty-first Century (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2017). 2 Catastrophe! 30Rachel Carson, ‘Silent spring – I’, New Yorker, 16 June 1962, http://bit.ly/2zYoOlx 31John Hersey, ‘Hiroshima’, New Yorker, 31 August 1946, http://bit.ly/2yibwPT 32Hannah Arendt, ‘Eichmann in Jerusalem – I’, New Yorker, 16 February1963 (and four following issues), http://bit.ly/2gkvNOi 33As above. 34‘The desolate year’, Monsanto Magazine, October 1962, pp. 4–9. 35Paul Krugman, ‘Pollution and politics’, New York Times, 27 November 2014, http://nyti.ms/2B288H9 36Eben Harrell, ‘The four horsemen of the nuclear apocalypse’, Time, 10 march 2011, http://ti.me/2hmn8RY 37Timothy Snyder, On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century (London: The Bodley Head, 2017), p. 50. 38Timothy Snyder, Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin (New York: Basic Books, 2010). 39Derek Parfit, Reasons and Persons (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984), pp. 453ff. 40Quoted in Craig Lambert, ‘Nuclear weapons or democracy’, Harvard Magazine, March 2014, http://bit.ly/2i2BFgc 41Nick Bostrom, ‘Existential risks: analyzing human extinction scenarios and related hazards’, Journal of Evolution and Technology (9, 2002), http://bit.ly/2jSajtw 42As above. 43Raffi Khatchadourian, ‘The Doomsday Invention’, New Yorker, 23 November 2015, http://bit.ly/2zdfTJY 44Cormac McCarthy, The Road, p. 54 (London: Picador, 2006). 45David Mitchell, The Bone Clocks (London: Sceptre, 2014). 46E.

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.: Pax Technica, 197–8, 205–6 Hungary, 175 I Iceland, 162, 163 identity politics, 72, 150, 178, 202–3 immigration, 55, 68, 183, 184, 210 India conspiracy theories, 65–6 independence, 120, 121 movement politics, 149 political enfranchisement, 76 pollution, 89 reform, 77 technology, 121–2 inequality and corporations, 131 and digital technology, 203 and environment, 90 and populism, 77–8 and violence, 78–80 information technology, 6–8, 196; see also internet interconnectedness, 112–15 International Monetary Fund (IMF), 32 internet, 152–3, 163 advertising, 157, 159 decision-making, 161 governance of, 198 invention of, 120 and liberation, 195–6 and surveillance, 153–5 of things, 197 utopias, 194–5 see also digital revolution Iraq War (2003), 75 Italy, 50, 148, 162 J Japan, 207, 208, 209–11 Hiroshima, 83–4, 84–5, 93–4 immigration, 210 Nagasaki, 94 population, 209 violence, 210 Jaurès, Jean, 71 Jews conspiracy theories, 65, 66, 68 Dreyfus Affair, 69 Holocaust, 84 juntas, 38, 50 K Kazcynski, Jaroslaw, 65, 66 Kazcynski, Lech, 66 Kennedy, President John F., 87–8, 108 Khrushchev, President Nikita, 108 Kimera Systems (digital technology company), 189 Kissinger, Henry, 56, 95, 96 knowledge acquisition of, 153 and discrimination, 180 internet and, 153 political, 188–9 and power, 186–7, 204 social, 196 social scientific, 183 Krugman, Paul, 90 Kubrick, Stanley: Dr Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (film), 95–6, 109 L Land, Nick, 165–7 Le Pen, marine, 149 Lenin, Vladimir Ilych: The State and Revolution, 171 libertarianism, 194 Lilla, mark, 150 Limbaugh, Rush, 20 Lincoln, President Abraham, 14 Lloyd George, David, 71 Long, Huey, 49 loss aversion, 175, 188 Luttwak, Edward: Coup D’État: A Practical Handbook, 41, 44 M McCarthy, Cormac: The Road, 113, 118–19 McGinnis, Joe: The Selling of the President, 158 machines, 121–2, 125–6, 127, 196, 197, 199, 200–201, 202, 205, 219; see also artificial intelligence; computers; robots; technocracy; technology McKinley, President William, 74 Macron, President Emanuel, 148, 149–50 Man on Wire (film), 117–18 Marx, Karl: ‘The Fragment on machines’, 196–7 Marxism-Leninism, 171 Mason, Paul: Postcapitalism, 196, 197, 199, 205 Mélenchon, Jean-Luc, 58 Mencius Moldbug see Yarvin, Curtis metadata, 154 Mill, John Stuart, 182–3, 185 Miller, Stephen, 13 mindlessness, 84, 86–8 Mitchell, David: The Bone Clocks, 113 Modi, Narendra, 65–6, 149 monarchs, 167 Monsanto (company): ‘The Desolate Year’, 88 Mugabe, President Robert, 48 Mullin, Chris: A Very British Coup, 58 N NATO, 59 Nazis, 85, 97, 99 Netherlands, 148 networks and anarchism, 193 and change, 196 interconnectedness, 112–15 political movements, 149 social 136, 151, 160, 177; see also Facebook; social media; Twitter utopian, 200 see also internet New York crime, 211 World Trade Center, 117–18 New York Times, 159–60 New Yorker (magazine), 82–3, 84, 106 news, fake, 64, 75, 98, 156, 157 Nixon, President Richard, 56, 90, 158 North Korea, 213 Nozick, Robert: Anarchy, State, and Utopia, 193–4, 195 nuclear disarmament, 107 Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND), 94–5 nuclear weapons, 56, 83–4, 86, 94, 95, 96–7, 102, 103–104, 106, 107 Nunn, Sam, 95 O Obama, President Barack and climate change, 92 and conspiracy theory, 64 executive initiatives, 55 and inequality, 79 and Trump’s election, 13, 14, 15, 16, 18 oil companies, 131 Orban, Viktor, 175 Osborne, George, 208 Oxford and Cambridge Review, 120 P Papademos, Lucas, 39 Papandreou, Andreas, 27 Papandreou, George, 39 paranoia, 67, 74 Parent, Joe, 62 Parfit, Derek, 100, 202–3 Paul, Rand, 154 Perry, William, 95 pesticides, 87–9 Petit, Philippe, 117–18 Piergiacomi, Alessio, 167–8 Piketty, Thomas: Capital in the Twenty-First Century, 78 Pinker, Steven: The Better Angels of our Nature, 211 Plato, 179 Poland, 65, 66 police, 171 political parties, 214 artificiality, 145–6 charisma, 147 and identity politics, 150 as machines, 127 membership, 146, 147–8 ‘Net’, 162 partisan nature, 146 ‘Pirate’, 162 United States, 146–7, 221 politicians: and trust, 144–5, 164, 214 pollution, 89, 90 populism, 13, 175 and banality, 98–9 causes of, 67 and conspiracy theory, 65–7, 72, 168 and disconnect, 141 and economic growth, 192 and inequality, 77–8 and movement politics, 148–9 United States, 67–70, 73 and war, 75 precautionary principle, 100–101 pressure groups, 89 prisons, 151, 152, 212 Putin, President Vladimir, 157 R racism, 143 Rand, Ayn, 194 rational choice theory, 108–9 referendums, 47–8, 179, 183 France, 70 Turkey, 52 United Kingdom, 48 reform, 70, 71, 78, 79, 185; see also social change revolutions, 41, 78, 196; see also digital revolution risk, 101–5, 110–12, 116 robots, 7, 103, 111, 128–9, 130, 168, 210 Rockefeller, John D., 131–2 Roosevelt, President Theodore, 70, 71, 131 Russia ‘competitive authoritarianism’, 175 Cuban missile Crisis (1962), 107–8 data harvesting, 156 foreign policy, 30 S Sacco, Justine, 143 San Francisco, 162, 163 Sandberg, Cheryl, 137 Sanders, Bernie, 58, 149 Sarandon, Susan, 198 Scarry, Elaine: Thermonuclear Monarchy: Choosing between Democracy and Doom, 104 Scheidel, Walter: The Great Leveler, 78 Schlesinger, James, 56 Schultz, George, 95 Shita, Mouna, 189–90 Simon, Herbert, 153 el-Sisi, General Abdul Fatah, 48–9 slavery, 23, 35, 73, 123–4 sleepwalking, 115, 116, 117 Snowden, Edward, 151–2 Snyder, Timothy: On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century, 97–8, 99 social change, 192, 219; see also reform social media, 149; see also Facebook; networks: social; Twitter socialism 171 Socrates, 38 Spain, 162 Stalinism, 99, 169, 171 suffrage, universal, 187–8 Sulzberger, Cyrus, 27, 28 surveillance, 152–5 Sweden, 162, 163 T taxation, 70, 72, 193 technocracy, 180–81, 191–2, 198, 205, 214 technology, 125, 126 corporations, 131 digital, 144, 151, 154, 161, 162–3; see also internet and dignity, 203 information, 7–8 and mortality, 24–5 and risk management, 105 and ‘the shock of the old’, 122 threat of, 103, 120–21 see also machines terrorism, 74 terrorists, 97, 212 Texas, 163 Thiel, Peter, 198 tightrope-walking, 117–18 totalitarianism, 98; see also tyrannies tribalism, 163–4 Truman, President Harry S., 84–5 Trump, Melania, 13 Trump, President Donald, 49 behaviour, 20–21, 22–3, 159, 173 and change, 198 and Charlottesville demonstrations, 4 and climate change, 93 and conspiracy theory, 64–5 and dignity, 173 election of, 1–2, 5, 13, 16–18, 19, 20, 25, 118, 149, 156 and executive aggrandisement, 92 and fake news, 157 inaugural speech, 11–14, 74 military’s influence on, 59 novels inspired by, 57 and nuclear war, 86 and political violence, 212 presidency, 213 and Silicon Valley firms, 137 supporters of, 98 on surveillance, 154 use of Twitter, 143 Tsipras, Alexis, 33–4, 209 Turkey, 50–3 conspiracy theories, 65, 66 coups, 50–2, 53, 66 and Cyprus, 38 elections, 51 Justice and Development Party (AKP), 51 movement politics, 149 referendum (2017), 52 Twitter, 65, 137, 142, 143, 156 tyrannies 61; see also totalitarianism U United Kingdom austerity, 208 Boer War, 75 Brexit, 48, 156, 179 Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND), 94–5 Conservative Party, 146, 209 general election (2017), 95 Labour Party, 58, 70, 94–5, 148–9, 150 metadata, 154 political enfranchisement, 76 reform, 185 welfare state, 76 United States, 23–4, 25, 49–50 CIA, 28, 30 climate change, 92 Congress, 19 conspiracy theories, 62, 67 corporations, 132 Cuban missile Crisis (1962), 107–8 democratic failure, 2, 14 demonstrations, 4 direct democracy, 163 economic growth, 175 and Egypt compared, 49–50 environment, 87–90 and Greece, 30 immigration, 183 inequality, 79 judiciary, 19 McCarthyism, 67 metadata, 154 military, 17, 18 National Security Agency (NSA), 152 New Deal, 76, 78 and nuclear war, 86, 95 ‘pax Americana’, 198 pesticides, 87–9 political enfranchisement, 76 political parties Democrats, 15, 62, 64, 108, 146–7, 221 Republicans, 62, 146–7, 221 politicians, 164 populism, 67–70, 73 presidential elections, 14, 16, 54–5, 58, 68, 220–24 Kennedy, John F., 108 Trump, Donald, 1–2, 5, 13, 19, 20, 25, 118, 149 prisons, 212 reform, 70 rights, 72 road accidents, 211–12 Silicon Valley, 137, 204 ‘tyranny of the majority’, 142 violence, 73–4, 211–12 war with Spain (1890s), 75 see also Chicago; New York; San Francisco; Texas Uscinski, Joe, 62 utopias, 126, 194, 195, 201 V Varoufakis, Yanis, 32–4, 116–17, 209 Venezuela, 154–5, 208 violence, 6, 73–5 ancient Athens, 38 decline of, 13 and environmental disaster, 93 Greece, 31, 210 and inequality, 78–80 Japan, 210 online, 142–4 political, 16–17, 18 United States, 73–4, 211–12 voting AI and, 189–90 right to, 76, 183–4 systems, 182–3 see also elections W wars, 74–7 citizens’ experience of, 77 and conspiracy theory, 77 First World War, 76, 115 of national survival, 75 nuclear, 83–4, 84–5, 87, 93–7, 109, 213 and populism, 75 total, 76–7 United States and North Korea, 115 see also Cold War wealth: and death, 204; see also elites Weber, Max, 127, 131, 147, 164, 187–8 welfare states, 70, 76, 109–10 whistleblowers see Snowden, Edward Wilson, President Woodrow, 69, 71, 75–6 Y Yarvin, Curtis, 167 Z Zimbabwe, 48 Zuckerberg, Mark, 131, 133, 135, 137, 138, 140, 157–8, 215; see also Facebook ALSO FROM PROFILE BOOKS Political Order and Political Decay: From the Industrial Revolution to the Globalisation of Democracy Francis Fukuyama The most important book about the history and future of politics since The End of History.

Humans Need Not Apply: A Guide to Wealth and Work in the Age of Artificial Intelligence
by Jerry Kaplan
Published 3 Aug 2015

Income data is from the World DataBank, “GNI per Capita, PPP (Current International $)” table, accessed November 29, 2014, http://databank.worldbank.org/data/views/reports/tableview.aspx#. 4. For example, Robert Reich (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Reich, last modified December 31, 2014); Paul Krugman (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Krugman, last modified December 12, 2014); and the recent influential book by Thomas Piketty, Capital in the Twenty-first Century (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap, 2014). 5. This analogy relies primarily on income data from the U.S. Census (http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/income/data/historical/families/index.html, last modified September 16, 2014). 6. I recall as a child buying packs of “chocolate cigarettes” (cylindrical sticks of candy wrapped in rolling papers). 7.

A World of Three Zeros: The New Economics of Zero Poverty, Zero Unemployment, and Zero Carbon Emissions
by Muhammad Yunus
Published 25 Sep 2017

Somehow the invisible hand must be heavily biased toward the richest—otherwise, how could today’s enormous wealth concentration continue to grow? Many of us were raised to believe in the slogan “Economic growth is a rising tide that lifts all boats.” The saying ignores the plight of the millions who are clinging to leaky rafts—or who have no boats at all. In his best-selling book Capital in the Twenty-First Century (Harvard University Press, 2014), economist Thomas Piketty provided an exhaustive analysis of the tendency of contemporary capitalism to increase economic inequality. His diagnosis of the problem stimulated debate around the world. Piketty was fundamentally correct about the nature of the problem. But his proposed solution, which relies mainly on the use of progressive taxation to remedy income imbalances, was not equal to the task.

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See Boston Consulting Group Benioff, Marc, 106 Berger, Jacques, 60 Bernou, Jean, 105, 136 biofuels, 44 Bloomberg L.P., 189 Bon et Bien, 139, 140, 141 Bosnia, 133 Boston Consulting Group (BCG), 56 Branson, Richard, 105, 106 Bruysten, Saskia, 56, 184 businesses organization of, 26 solving problems with, 26 two types of, 28 Campo Vivo, 136, 138, 141 Capital In the Twenty-First Century (Piketty), 8 capitalism alternatives for, 147 crises of, 41–48, 263–264 damage of, 15 economic growth with, 8 economy and, 7 framework of, 259 human freedom and, 230 inequality and, 6–10 millennial and, 145 new economic system and, 37, 264 problem of, 39 system of, 229–230 theory of, 260 zero-sum assumption of, 15 See also free market Capitalist Man GDP and, 14 Real Man versus, 11–15, 260 carbon emissions, 125 Chapiro, Cecilia, 157 charity economic system and, 71 efforts for, 262 governments and, 213 wealthy people and, 10 child mortality, 123 China, 20 civic projects, 212–213 civil institutions governments and, 220 human freedoms and, 219 threats against, 220–221 Climate Action, 128 climate change, 18 activist for, 20 agriculture and, 46 Bangladesh and, 95 China and, 20 dangers of, 19 focus on, 19 human society and, 21 poor people and, 130 sea level rise and, 97 sustainability and, 125 Trump and Paris Accord, 20 turning point of, 120 Clinton, Hillary, 85 Clinton Foundation, 108 Coel, 196, 197 collateral, 23–24, 88 communism, 147 consumption, 128 conventional banks, 23, 29 COP21.

The Rise of Carry: The Dangerous Consequences of Volatility Suppression and the New Financial Order of Decaying Growth and Recurring Crisis
by Tim Lee , Jamie Lee and Kevin Coldiron
Published 13 Dec 2019

This places the Fed in an unenviable and, in our view, ultimately unwinnable bind. The Fed was born out of a desire to stop financial panics from infecting the real economy, so it must act in the wake of a carry crash. Yet those actions increasingly are seen as putting it on the side of the elite and as reinforcing unfair economic outcomes. Thomas Piketty’s 2014 book, Capital in the Twenty-First Century, is often described as a “surprise” bestseller. The term “surprise” is revealing on several dimensions. First, there was the surprise generated by his data showing that capitalism naturally gravitates toward very unequal wealth distributions over time. A more balanced distribution, which had been thought to be normal especially in the United States, was actually an exception due to the effects of World War II’s massive capital destruction.

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See Bank of Japan Brazil, 19, 39, 55n6, 65–66 current account, 31 Brazilian real, 11, 30, 66 Bretton Woods system, 218 Brownian noise, 97, 97f Bruno, Valentina, 80–81 bubble-boom economies, carry bubble conditions and, 39 business cycle carry and global, 2 carry bubbles and, 127–134 carry crashes and, 127–134 carry influence on, 57, 69 carry regime and, 125–127 money supply and, 125–126 Caballero, Ricardo, 59 call options, 146–147 Cambridge Associates, 79 capital asset pricing model, 99 Capital in the Twenty-First Century (Piketty), 219 221 222 capital inflows, Australia, 40, 40f, 42 capitalism, 195, 219, 220 carry central banks’ role in, 5–8 compensation incentives for, 70–72 corporate use of, 80–83 as cumulative advantage, 181–184 defining, 2 as flow from weak to strong, 179–181 global business cycle and, 2 hedge funds as agents of, 72–73 insidious structural aspects of, 200–205 leverage importance to, 70–72 lost opportunity to lean against, 220 as luck compounded, 184–186 monetary policy and, 3 as naturally occurring phenomenon, 88 necessary amounts of, 174 omnipresence of, 190–191 as power, 191–192 as rent-seeking, 175–177 rise of, 1 volatility, 86 carry bubbles, 6, 7 business cycle and, 127–134 credit bubbles and, 37–38, 41 credit demand and, 114 disguised, 134–140 economic indicators distorted by, 44–45 economic problems obscured by, 44 inflation and, 39 monetary conditions and, 39 nonmonetary assets and, 169 Ponzi schemes and, 140–143 as risk mispricing, 142 Turkey, 42–46 carry crashes, 6 Asian financial crisis and, 23–25 bailouts limiting losses from, 203 business cycle and, 127–134 carry trade returns and, 36 deflation and, 7, 170 deflation shock and, 121–124 in emerging economies, 201 incentive changes and, 84 inevitability of, 34–35, 108 leverage and, 96–98 liquidity and, 128 money supply and, 122–123 INDEX of 1998, 25–26 Turkey, 42–46 Turkish lira, of 2018, 45 of 2008, 30, 31 Volmageddon, 98, 161 yen melt-up and, 23–24 carry portfolios backtesting, 65–67 BIS data comparison with, 63, 63t constructing, 49–50 lessons from historical study of, 64–65 losses in, 51–56, 54f carry regime, 2 anti-carry regime similarity to, 173–175 asset prices and, 204 business cycle and, 125–127 central bank policies and, 86–89, 107, 208, 210 central bank power and, 123 central banks and collapses of, 215–216 central banks weakened by, 7 debt levels and, 168 defining, 107–108 deflation and, 113–121, 203, 210, 213 development of, 127, 134 economic growth and, 209 economic imbalances from, 201 financial market structure and, 7 fragility of, 201 monetary equilibrium and, 169 monetary growth and, 169 monetary perspective on, 168–170 money in, 108–113 nonmonetary assets and, 112, 114, 122 resource allocation and, 114–115 risk mispricing and, 134–140 S&P 500 importance to, 86–87, 87f theoretical alternative to, 166–168 vanishing point and, 116, 195, 209–210 volatility signs of ending, 214–218 carry trade.

Prediction Machines: The Simple Economics of Artificial Intelligence
by Ajay Agrawal , Joshua Gans and Avi Goldfarb
Published 16 Apr 2018

The traditional argument that we do not need to worry about the robots taking our jobs still leaves us with the worry that the only reason we will still have our jobs is because we are willing to do them for lower wages.6 If the machines’ share of work continues to increase, then workers’ income will fall, while that accruing to the owners of the AI will rise. In his best-selling book, Capital in the Twenty-First Century, Thomas Piketty highlighted that for the past few decades, labor’s share of national income (in the United States and elsewhere) has been falling in favor of the share earned by capital. This trend is concerning because it has led to increased inequality. The critical question here is whether AI will reinforce this trend or mitigate it.

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See also autonomous vehicles autonomous vehicles, 8, 14–15 decision making by, 111–112 knowledge loss and, 78 legal requirements on, 116 loss of human driving skill and, 193 mail delivery, 103 in mining, 112–114 passenger interests and, 95 preferences and, 88–90 rail systems, 104 reward function engineering in, 92 school bus drivers and, 149–150 tolerance for error in, 185–187 value capture and, 164–165 Autopilot, 8 Babbage, Charles, 12, 65 back propagation, 38 Baidu, 164, 217, 219 bail-granting decisions, 56–58 bank tellers, 171–173 Bayesian estimation, 13 Beane, Billy, 56, 161–162 Beijing Automotive Group, 164 beta testing, 184, 191 Bhalla, Ajay, 25 biases, 19 feedback data and, 204–205 human predictions and, 55–58 in job ads, 195–198 against machine recommendations, 117 regression models and, 34 variance and, 34–35 binding affinity, 135–138 Bing, 50, 204, 216 biopsies, 108–109, 148 BlackBerry, 129 The Black Swan (Taleb), 60–61 Blake, Thomas, 199 blockchain, 220 Bostrom, Nick, 221, 222 boundary shifting, 157–158, 167–178 data ownership and, 174–176 what to leave in/out and, 168–170 breast cancer, 65 Bresnahan, Tim, 12 Bricklin, Dan, 141, 163, 164 A Brief History of Time (Hawking), 210–211 Brynjolfsson, Erik, 91 business models, 156–157 Amazon, 16–17 Camelyon Grand Challenge, 65 capital, 170–171, 213 Capital in the Twenty-First Century (Piketty), 213 capsule networks, 13 Cardiio, 44 Cardiogram, 44–45, 46, 47–49 causality, 63–64 reverse, 62 CDL. See Creative Destruction Lab (CDL) Champy, James, 123–134 Chavez, R. Martin, 125 Chen Juhong, 164 China, 8 AI advantages of, 218–220 autonomous vehicles in, 164 language translation in, 26–27 Chiou, Lesley, 216 Chisel, 3, 53–54, 68 Christensen, Clay, 50, 181 churn, 32–36 classification, 13 cloud, data from the, 188–189, 202 clustering, 13 collaboration, human/machine, 65–67, 212 bank tellers/ATMs and, 171–173 job redesign for, 141–151 in medical imaging, 146–147 collateralized debt obligations (CDOs), 36–37 complements, 15, 76.

How Did We Get Into This Mess?: Politics, Equality, Nature
by George Monbiot
Published 14 Apr 2016

39.Going Naked Part 8: Out of Sight, Out of Mind 40.The Holocaust We Will Not See 41.The Empire Strikes Back 42.Unremitting Pain 43.Bomb Everyone Part 9: Holding Us Down 44.A Global Ban on Leftwing Politics 45.Innocent until Proved Dead 46.The Paranoia Squad 47.Union with the Devil Part 10: Finding Our Place 48.Someone Else’s Story 49.Highland Spring 50.A Telling Silence 51.The Values of Everything Acknowledgements Notes Index Introduction In Capital in the Twenty-First Century, Thomas Piketty argues that no government programme could be sustained without an ‘apparatus of justification’.1 Without the corporate press, without spin doctors and lobbyists and think tanks, the unnecessary programmes of austerity that several governments have imposed would be politically impossible.

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Thank you too to my assistant Ketty Hughes; my agents James Macdonald Lockhart and Antony Harwood; the editor and commissioner of this book, Leo Hollis, whose idea it was; and the many friends (and opponents) with whom I have debated the issues it contains. September 2015 Notes Introduction 1Thomas Piketty, 2014, Capital in the Twenty-First Century, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA. 2Susan Jacoby, 2008, The Age of American Unreason: Dumbing Down and the Future of Democracy, Old Street Publishing, London. 3David Harvey, 2005, A Brief History of Neoliberalism, Oxford University Press, Oxford; Naomi Klein, 2007, The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism, Penguin Books, London. 4Isaiah Berlin, 1958, Two Concepts of Liberty, published in Isaiah Berlin, 1969, Four Essays on Liberty, Oxford University Press, Oxford. 5Fred Block and Margaret Somers, 2014, The Power of Market Fundamentalism: Karl Polanyi’s Critique, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA. 6Amartya Sen, 1981, Poverty and Famines: An Essay on Entitlement and Deprivation, Oxford University Press, Oxford. 1.

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H., 94 Auschwitz, 232 Australia acoustic dispersal devices/acoustic deterrence, 69 coal exports from, 172 destruction of rainforest in, 86 disappearance of predators in, 81 trade agreement with Hong Kong, 250 Avatar (film), 227, 230, 231 B Babiak, Paul, 190 BAE, 244 bail outs, 102, 198, 199, 202, 210 Baker, Norman, 30 Bandar bin Sultan, 242, 244 Bandow, Doug, 223 Bank of England, 156 Barclays Global Power and Utilities, 20 BBC, 41, 90 bears, return of to former ranges, 97 The Bell Curve (Murray and Herrnstein), 163 Bellway Homes, 45, 46 Beowulf, 90 Berlin, Isaiah, 4 Bialowieza Forest (Poland), 96 billionaires Charles and David Koch, 211, 214 freedom of not to pay taxes, 24 Ian Wood, 155 negative freedom enjoyed by, 4 political involvement of, 209–12 on population growth, 106 Biochimica et Biophysica Acta, 194 Biological Weapons Convention, 153 Blair, Tony, 219, 244, 264, 266, 281, 287 Blears, Hazel, 149 Block, Fred, 180, 182 Board, Belinda, 189 boarding schools, 64 Boarding Schools Association, 65 Boarding School Syndrome, 64 bosses as allowed to blackmail their workers, 264 and capital gains tax, 280 Carly Fiorina on list of worst, 186 as consuming utility their workers provide, 187 income of as compared to average full-time worker, 12 psychopathic traits of as being rewarded, 189–90 self-attribution of, 191 Boston College, 12 BP, 151 Brazil farming in, 140 genocide in, 230 government’s contraceptive programme, 76 Brembs, Bjorn, 196 Brennan, John, 55 A Brief History of Neoliberalism (Harvey), 218 Britain Unleashed (article series), 216 Britannia Unchained, 216 British Journal of Psychotherapy, 64 British Medical Journal, 75 British Social Attitudes, 287 Brown, Gordon, 219, 263, 264, 267, 281, 287 Buffini, Damon, 264 Bush, George, 76, 266 Bush, George W., 54, 209, 223 Business Council, 264 C Californian condor, decline of, 84–5 Cambridge University, 20, 49, 50, 51 Cameron, David, 76, 275, 282, 283 Cameron, James, 227 Canada greenhouse gas emissions in, 87 revocation of patents by, 251 rise in moose numbers, 86 Canadian tar sands, 151 capital gains tax, 276, 280 Capital in the Twenty-First Century (Piketty), 1 capitalism, 176, 187, 195. See also consumer capitalism capitalists, 193 carbon, governments in rich world exhorting citizens to use less, 148 carbon capture and storage, 147, 150 carbon-cutting programmes, 151 carbon dioxide catching and burying of, 150 contributions of whales in removal of, 83 production of, 86, 148, 204 rise in, 84, 103–4 carbon-fuelled expansion, 176 Carbon Tracker Initiative, 156 Cardigan Bay, 95 care workers, 184–6 Carnegie, Andrew, 1, 191 carnivores, impact of large carnivores, 80 Catholic church, on abortion and contraception, 72–6 CBI (Confederation of British Industry), 263, 267 Center for Responsive Politics, 24 Centre for Policy Studies, 219 chastity, 59 Cherry Orchard estate, 45 Chesterman, Gordon, 51 child prisoners, 69 children.

EuroTragedy: A Drama in Nine Acts
by Ashoka Mody
Published 7 May 2018

Macron’s labor-​market reforms seemed set to deliver the same outcomes as other such European reforms had done: more employment on short-​term contracts while the French economy’s productivity growth rate would remain low and possibly fall. Macron’s proposals for tax and spending cuts appeared likely to benefit the rich and hurt the poor. Thomas Piketty, the celebrity economist and author of Capital in the 21st Century, was one of Macron’s earliest critics. In the days before the presidential election, Piketty had predicted that Macron, a former banker, would favor policies that enriched bankers and other wealthy French citizens. Macron lived up to that stereotype.58 His budget for 2018 abolished the Impôt de solidarité sur la fortune, a tax on wealth, and reduced the tax on dividends, interest, and capital gains.

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When growth slows, households do not typically reduce the share of their incomes that they save. The savings add to household wealth, and, hence, the wealth-​to-​income ratio increases. The slower the rate of economic growth, the faster the increase in the wealth-​to-​income ratio. Economists Thomas Piketty and Gabriel Zucman find that starting precisely in the early 1970s, wealth-​to-​income ratios increased through much of the industrialized world but especially rapidly in Europe, where growth had slowed the most.31 Households parked more of their wealth as deposits and other financial investments in banks.

12 Bytes: How We Got Here. Where We Might Go Next
by Jeanette Winterson
Published 15 Mar 2021

Thompson, 1963 Industry and Empire: From 1750 to the Present Day, Eric Hobsbawm, 1968 Why the West Rules – For Now, Ian Morris, 2010 Debt: The First 5000 Years, David Graeber, 2011 ‘The Masque of Anarchy’ (poem), Percy Bysshe Shelley, 1832: ‘Ye are many—they are few’ ‘A Short History of Enclosure in Britain’ (essay), Simon Fairlie, 2009 PostCapitalism: A Guide to Our Future, Paul Mason, 2015 Capital in the Twenty-First Century, Thomas Piketty, 2013 Move Fast and Break Things: How Facebook, Google, and Amazon have cornered culture and undermined democracy, Jonathan Taplin, 2017 The Mill on the Floss, George Eliot, 1860 From Sci-fi to Wi-fi to My-Wi Rocannon’s World, Ursula K. Le Guin, 1966 The Midwich Cuckoos, John Wyndham, 1957 Brave New World, Aldous Huxley, 1932 Weaving the Web: The Original Design and Ultimate Destiny of the World Wide Web, Tim Berners-Lee, 1999 ‘We Can Remember It for You Wholesale’ (short story), Philip K.

Skin in the Game: Hidden Asymmetries in Daily Life
by Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Published 20 Feb 2018

I have always been aware of their existence, but a salient—and pernicious—attribute came to me while observing the reactions of its members to the works of the French economist Thomas Piketty. Piketty followed Karl Marx by writing an ambitious book on capital. A friend gave me the book as a gift when it was still in French (and unknown outside France) because I find it commendable that people publish their original, nonmathematical work in social science in book format. The book, Capital in the Twenty-first Century, makes aggressive claims about the alarming rise of inequality, adding to it a theory of why capital tends to command too much return in relation to labor and how the absence of redistribution and dispossession might make the world collapse.

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Chaos: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Nonlinear Science 26(2): 023103. Available: scitation.aip.org/content/aip/journal/chaos/26/2/10.1063/1.4940236 Piketty, Thomas, 1995. “Social Mobility and Redistributive Politics.” The Quarterly Journal of Economics 110(3): 551–584. ———, 2015. Capital in the Twenty-first Century. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. Pinker, Steven, 2011. The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined. Penguin. Pitman, E. 1980. “Subexponential Distribution Functions.” Journal of the Australian Mathematical Society, Series A, 29(3): 337–347. Pitman, J. W., 1975.

A Little History of Economics
by Niall Kishtainy
Published 15 Jan 2017

In the last few years, the Occupy movement protested against the rapid growth of the tallest giants, the so-called ‘1 per cent’ of top earners. In major cities protestors camped out and set up makeshift universities where people debated the reasons for increasing inequality and what could be done about it. Economics professors joined the debate. The French economist Thomas Piketty (b. 1971) published a book in 2014, Capital in the Twenty-First Century, which examined the rise of the rich and confirmed fears about how fast they were pulling ahead of everybody else. How did the giants get so huge? Karl Marx said that they’re the capitalists who exploit the workers to make money; Joseph Schumpeter, that they’re bold people who take risks and get rich when they get lucky.

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absolute poverty (i) acid rain (i) adaptive expectations (i) adverse selection (i) advertising (i) agriculture (i), (ii), (iii) aid (i) Akerlof, George (i) alienation (i) Ambrose, St (i) animal spirits (i), (ii), (iii) antitrust policies (i) Apple (i) Aquinas, St Thomas (i), (ii) Aristotle (i) Arrow, Kenneth (i) ascending auction (i) Asian Tigers (i), (ii) Atkinson, Anthony (i), (ii) auction theory (i) auctions (i) Augustine of Hippo, St (i) austerity (i) balance of trade (i) banks and entrepreneurs (i) and interest rates (i) and loans (i) and monopoly capitalism (i), (ii) and speculation (i) see also Britain, Bank of England; central banks; independent central banks; World Bank battle of the methods (i) Becker, Gary (i) behavioural economics (i) benevolent patriarch (i) Beveridge, William (i) big push (i) Black Wednesday (i) bonds (i) bourgeoisie (i), (ii), (iii) brand image (i) Britain Bank of England (i) inflation (i) pegged currency (i) Second World War (i) war with China (i) war with South Africa (i) bubbles (i), (ii) Buchanan, James (i) budget deficit (i) Burke, Edmund (i) capabilities (i) capital (i) and growth (i) Marx on (i) Capital (Marx) (i) Capital in the Twenty-First Century (Piketty) (i) capitalism (i), (ii), (iii) and entrepreneurs (i) and governments (i) and the Great Depression (i) and the Great Recession (i) historical law of (i) Marx on (i) world (i) see also communism Capitalism and Freedom (Friedman) (i) Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy (Schumpeter) (i) capitalists (i), (ii), (iii), (iv) and imperialism (i), (ii), (iii) Marx on (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v) carbon tax (i) carbon trading permits (i) Carlyle, Thomas (i), (ii) Castro, Fidel (i), (ii) central banks (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v) central planning (i), (ii) chaebols (i) chain of being (i), (ii) Chamberlin, Edward (i) Chaplin, Charlie (i) Chicago Boys (i) Chicago school (i), (ii), (iii), (iv) China, war with Britain (i) Christianity, views on money (i) Churchill, Winston (i) classical dichotomy (i) classical economics (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v) coins (i), (ii) Colbert, Jean-Baptiste (i) colonies/colonialism (i), (ii), (iii), (iv) American (i) Ghana (i), (ii) commerce (i), (ii), (iii), (iv) communism (i) and the Soviet Union (i) Communist Manifesto, The (Engels and Marx) (i), (ii) comparative advantage (i), (ii) competition (i), (ii), (iii), (iv) Condorcet, Marquis de (i) Confessions of an Economic Heretic (Hobson) (i) conspicuous consumption (i) constitution (rules) (i) consumers (i), (ii), (iii), (iv) contagion, economic (i) core (i) Corn Laws (i), (ii) Cortés, Hernan (i) cost (i) creative destruction (i) Credit Crunch (i) crime, economic theory of (i) Cuba (i) currency (i), (ii) see also coins currency markets (i), (ii) currency reserves (i) Debreu, Gérard (i) demand law of (i) see also supply and demand demand curve (i) democracy (i), (ii) Democratic Republic of the Congo (i) dependency theory (i) Depression (Great) (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v), (vi), (vii) and economic growth (i) and the US central bank (i) descending auction (i) developing/underdeveloped countries (i), (ii) development economics (i) Development of Underdevelopment, The (Frank) (i) diminishing marginal utility (i), (ii) diminishing return to capital (i) discretion (i) discrimination coefficient (i) distribution of income (i), (ii) diversification (i), (ii) dividends (i) division of labour (i) doomsday machines (i) Drake, Sir Francis (i) Drew, Daniel (i) dual economy (i) economic value (i), (ii), (iii), (iv) economics defined (i) normative (i) Economics of Imperfect Competition (Robinson) (i) economies of scale (i) economists (i), (ii), (iii) efficient markets hypothesis (i), (ii), (iii), (iv) efficient/inefficient economic outcome (i) see also pareto efficiency; pareto improvement Elizabeth I (i) Elizabeth II (i) employment, full (i) Engels, Friedrich (i) England’s Treasure by Forraign Trade (Mun) (i) entitlement (i), (ii) entrepreneurs (i), (ii) equilibrium (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v) exchange of goods (i), (ii) exchange rates (i) expectations, adaptive/rational (i), (ii), (iii), (iv) exploitation (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v) exports (i) and poor countries (i), (ii), (iii) externalities (i), (ii), (iii), (iv) Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds (MacKay) (i) failure, market (i), (ii), (iii), (iv) Fama, Eugene (i) famine (i), (ii), (iii), (iv) feminist economics (i) feudalism (i), (ii), (iii), (iv) financial systems (i), (ii) Finer, Herman (i) first price auction (i), (ii) First Welfare Theorem (i), (ii) First World War (i) fiscal policy (i), (ii) floating exchange rate (i) Florence (i) Folbre, Nancy (i) Fourier, Charles (i) framing (i), (ii) France agriculture (i) economic models (i), (ii) revolution (i), (ii), (iii), (iv) and taxation (i) Frank, Andre Gunder (i) free choice (i), (ii) free-market economics (i), (ii), (iii), (iv) free trade (i), (ii), (iii) Friedman, Milton (i), (ii), (iii) full employment (i) game theory (i), (ii), (iii) general equilibrium (i), (ii), (iii), (iv) General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money, The (Keynes) (i) Germany, infant industries (i) Ghana (i), (ii) Gilded Age (i) Global Financial Crisis (i), (ii) global warming (i) Goethe, Johann Wolfgang (i) gold (i), (ii) Golden Age (i) goods and services (i) government, and economies (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v), (vi), (vii) Great Moderation (i), (ii) Great Recession (i) Greece (i), (ii), (iii) gross domestic product (i) growth (i) and dependency theory (i) of government (i) and the Great Moderation (i) and Pakistan (i) and population (i) theory (i) Guevara, Ernesto ‘Che’ (i), (ii) guilds (i) Hamilton, Alexander (i) Hansen, Alvin (i) harmony, system of (i) Hayek, Friedrich (i), (ii) hedge funds (i) herds (i) Hicks, John (i) historical law of capitalism (i) HIV/AIDS (i) Hobson, John (i) Homobonus, St (i) human capital (i) human development (i), (ii) Human Development Index (i) imperfect competition (i), (ii) imperialism (i) Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism (Lenin) (i) imports (i), (ii), (iii) income (i), (ii) and bank loans (i) and capitalism (i) and communism (i) distribution of (i), (ii) and growth (i), (ii) national (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v) income per person (i), (ii) independent central banks (i) Industrial Revolution (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v) inequality (i), (ii) infant industries (i) inflation (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v) information economics (i), (ii), (iii) injection of spending (i) innovations (i), (ii) insurance (i), (ii) interest rates (i) British (i) and monetary policy (i) and recession (i) and usury (i) International Monetary Fund (i) investment (i) and the big push (i) and recession (i), (ii) invisible hand (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v) iron law of wages (i) Irrational Exuberance (Shiller) (i) Jefferson, Thomas (i) Jevons, William (i) just price (i) Kahneman, Daniel (i), (ii) Kennedy, John F.

Termites of the State: Why Complexity Leads to Inequality
by Vito Tanzi
Published 28 Dec 2017

Pechman, Joseph, 1987, Federal Tax Policy, Fifth Edition (Washington, DC: The Brookings Institution). Persson, Torsten and Guido Tabellini, 2003, The Economic Effects of Constitutions (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press). Pigou, A. C., 1920, The Economics of Welfare (London: Macmillan). Piketty, Thomas, 2014, The Capital in the Twenty-first Century (Cambridge, MA and New York: Harvard University Press). 2015, The Economics of Inequality (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press). Piketty, Thomas, Emmanuel Saez, and Stefanie Stantcheva, 2011, “Optimal Taxation of Top Labor Incomes: A Tale of Three Elasticities,” Working Paper 17616, NBER.

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Giavazzi, 2012, “The Output Effect of Fiscal Consolidation,” NBER, Working Paper No. 18336 (June). Alesina, Alberto and Francesco Passarelli, 2014, “Regulation versus Taxation,” Journal of Public Economics 110, pp. 147–156. Alter, Jonathan, 2006, The Defining Moment (New York: Simon & Schuster). 401 402 Bibliography Alvaredo Facundo, Anthony B. Atkinson, Thomas Piketty, and Emmanuel Saez, 2013, “The Top 1 Percent in International and Historic Perspective,” The Journal of Economic Perspectives 27 (3), pp. 3–20. Amar, Akhil Reed, 2012, America’s Unwritten Constitution (New York: Basic Books). American Action Forum (AAF), 2016, “How Many Federal Forms Are There?”

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Atkinson, Anthony B., 1999, The Economic Consequences of Rolling Back the Welfare State (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press). 2008, “European Union Social Policy in a Globalizing Context” in Costabile, editor, pp. 15–32. Atkinson, Anthony B. and Gunnar Viby Mogensen, 1993, Welfare and Work Incentives : A North European Perspective (Oxford: Clarendon Press). Atkinson, Anthony B., Thomas Piketty, and Emmanuel Saez, 2011, “Top Incomes in the Long Run of History,” Journal of Economic Literature 39 (1), pp. 3–71. Atkinson, Sir Anthony, 2015, Inequality: What Can Be Done? (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press). Baiardi, Donatella, Paola Profeta, Riccardo Puglisi and Simona Scabrosetti, 2017, “Tax Policy and Economic Growth: Does It Really Matter?”

How Democracies Die
by Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt
Published 16 Jan 2018

Mark Penn and Andrew Stein: Penn and Stein, “Back to the Center, Democrats.” Also Mark Lilla, “The End of Identity Liberalism.” “The simple fact of the matter”: Danielle Allen, “Charlottesville Is Not the Continuation of an Old Fight. It Is Something New,” Washington Post, August 13, 2017. The intensity of partisan animosities: Thomas Piketty, Capital in the Twenty-First Century (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2013). Today’s racially tinged partisan polarization: Robert Gordon, The Rise and Fall of American Growth: The U.S. Standard of Living Since the Civil War (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2016), p. 613. economic changes of the last few decades: Katherine Kramer, The Politics of Resentment: Rural Consciousness in Wisconsin and the Rise of Scott Walker (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2016), p. 3.

The Corruption of Capitalism: Why Rentiers Thrive and Work Does Not Pay
by Guy Standing
Published 13 Jul 2016

He concluded in his epochal General Theory that, as capitalism spread, it would mean the euthanasia of the rentier, and, consequently, the euthanasia of the cumulative oppressive power of the capitalist to exploit the scarcity-value of capital … [W]hilst there may be intrinsic reasons for the scarcity of land, there are no intrinsic reasons for the scarcity of capital … I see, therefore, the rentier aspect of capitalism as a transitional phase which will disappear when it has done its work.2 Eighty years on, the rentier is anything but dead; rentiers have become the main beneficiaries of capitalism’s emerging income distribution system. Yet the term does not appear in the index of Tony Atkinson’s magisterial book Inequality, while Thomas Piketty’s much-cited tome Capital in the Twenty-First Century claims that rentier capitalism has faded.3 Keynes was mistaken because he did not foresee how the neoliberal framework built since the 1980s would allow individuals and firms to generate ‘contrived scarcity’ of assets from which to gain rental income. Nor did he foresee how the modern ‘competitiveness’ agenda would give asset owners power to extract rental subsidies from the state.

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NOTES 1 An Economy for the 1%, Oxfam Briefing Paper 210, January 2016. 2 J. M. Keynes, The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money (Palgrave Macmillan, 1936), Chapter 24. 3 A. B. Atkinson, Inequality: What can be done? (Cambridge, MA, and London: Harvard University Press, 2015); T. Piketty, Capital in the Twenty-First Century (Boston: Harvard University Press, 2014). 4 Some use a more restrictive definition to mean an economy where more is collected in rent than in taxes, the rent comes from foreign sources, only an elite gain from rent seeking and the government is the main rent collector. See H. Beblawi, ‘The rentier state in the Arab world’, in G.

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Another plan is to encourage ‘shared ownership’, where people buy a share of a house and pay rent on the rest, with an option to buy in full later. None of this helps low-income groups. Housing wealth has been key to rising inequality in Britain and elsewhere. One study argues that the rising share of income going to capital identified by Piketty in Capitalism in the Twenty-First Century is largely attributable to increased payments to house owners.33 In seven rich countries, capital income from housing accounted for 3 per cent of the total in 1950 but 10 per cent today. These results may be exaggerated, since rental income has been growing from other sources too.

Hustle and Gig: Struggling and Surviving in the Sharing Economy
by Alexandrea J. Ravenelle
Published 12 Mar 2019

More than a fifth of my Airbnb hosts respondents have multiple units; one respondent in particular maintains space for twenty-five guests a night. In his words: “I own a hotel. I’m a hotelier. I just have a room here and apartment there. . . . Until I have that chain of hotels, I just have a chain of different apartments all over this island.” In Capital in the Twenty-First Century, Thomas Piketty notes that in a slow-growth economy, wealth provides better returns than labor. As a result, those with wealth to invest will get wealthier; those without probably won’t. Or as William Alden explains, “These markets also tend to attract a class of well-heeled professional operators, who outperform the amateurs—just like in the rest of the economy.

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Transportation Research Record: Journal of the Transportation Research Board 2519:179–88. Peterson, Latoya. 2015. “Uber’s Convenient Racial Politics.” Fusion, July 23. Pew Research Center. 2014. Views of Job Market Tick Up, No Rise in Economic Optimism. Washington, DC: Pew Research Center. Piketty, Thomas. 2014. Capital in the Twenty-First Century. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Piketty, Thomas, and Emmanuel Saez. 2003. “Income Inequality in the United States, 1913–1998.” Quarterly Journal of Economics 118(1):1–39. Plaut, Melissa. 2007. Hack: How I Stopped Worrying about What to Do with My Life and Started Driving a Yellow Cab.

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See also bathroom access British law, 64–65, 66, 92 broken-windows theory, 151–52 Brynjolfsson, Erik, 17, 162, 186 Bureau of Economic Analysis, 9 Bureau of Labor Statistics, 10, 37, 101, 176, 180 business-to-business tier, 182, 228n14 Busque, Leah, 54 C2C (consumer-to-consumer sales). See consumer-to-consumer (C2C) sales Callinicos, Brent, 76 Camp, Garrett, 49, 223n75 Cantillon, Ricard, 36 Capital in the Twenty-First Century (Piketty), 40 capitalism, 5, 23 capital issue: overview, 7, 23, 31, 39; distribution inequality, 186; in gig economy services, 166–68; hosts and, 19–20, 165; human and social capital, 183; participant recruitment and methodology, 42 career opportunities, 23, 36, 50, 56, 58–59, 162–63, 162–64.

Inheritance
by Leo Hollis

According to the Land Registry, the average property value in London in 1977 was £13,180. In the subsequent forty-three years it has grown, by March 2020, to £485,794.16 This rise had mainly been as a result of rising urban land prices rather than just the bricks and mortar above ground. This is proof of economist Thomas Piketty’s historic argument in Capital in the Twenty-First Century, that capital has always had the advantage over income.17 At the same time, it has become increasingly difficult to regulate, or even register who owns what, and where. * * * ‘Buy land’, joked the American humourist Mark Twain. ‘They’re not making any more of it.’

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P. ‘The resilience of a London great estate: urban development, adaptive capacity and the politics of stewardship’, Journal of Urbanism, Vol. 11, no. 1 (2018), p. 109 15 Ibid., p. 111 16 UK House Price Index, Land Registry website, https://landregistry.data.gov.uk/ 17 Piketty, T. Capital in the Twenty-first Century, Harvard University Press, 2014 18 Christophers, B. 2018 19 Monbiot, G., Grey, R., Kenny, T., Macfarlane, L., Powell-Smith, A., Shrubsole, G. and Stratford, B. Land for the Many, 2019, https://landforthemany.uk/ Index References to images are in italics. abduction 76 Albemarle, Duke of 120, 121 Alexander, Mr 175 Alston, John 243, 257 America 48, 73, 77–8, 189 American Embassy (London) 256 Andrews, Mr 168 Andrews, Richard 237, 248 Anglicanism 24, 101, 102, 106, 109 Anjou, Philippe, Duke of, see Philip V of Spain, King Anne of Great Britain, Queen 89, 114, 147, 175, 229 anti-Catholic sentiment 101–5 architecture 30, 73–4, 82–3, 92–3, 226, 254–5 Ariès, Philippe 60–1 aristocracy 30, 50, 68, 115–16, 120–1, 252–3 Arlington, Lord 50, 79, 113 Arthur, Mr 2, 4, 153, 156 and Hôtel Castile 158, 159, 160, 164 asylums 220–1 Atkins, Thomas 143 Atkinson, Rowland 252 Atkyns, Edward 54 Aubrey, John 141 Audley, Hugh 14–16, 20–1, 23–7, 31, 33, 247 and Goring House 49 and Manor of Ebury 22 Axtell, Anne 181–2, 183, 208 Ayres, Dr 4, 158, 159–60, 162–3, 176, 195–6, 204 Baker, Robert 30 banking 15, 112 Barbon, Nicholas 117–20, 122 An Apology for the Builder 254–5 Barlow, Thomas 237, 240, 243 Barnaby, Bryan 35 Becket, Thomas à 209 Bedlam, see Bethlem Hospital Behn, Aphra 89 Belgravia (London) 10, 32 Berkeley, Lady 121–2 Berkeley, Lord 67, 72–5, 85, 113 Bethlem Hospital (London) 134, 135, 220 Blake, Sir William 49 Blencoe, Sir John 212 Bloomsbury (London) 115–17, 232 Blount, Lady Anne 96 Boghurst, William 36 Bond, Sir Thomas 121, 122 Bonfroy, Nicholas 25–6, 27 Bonfroy, Thomas 25–6 Bonnie Prince Charlie, see James Francis Edward Stuart Booth’s Uprising (1659) 80, 100 Bossy, John 106–7 Bowtell, John 143 Bracey, Anne 178, 213 Bradshaw, John 185 Brerewood, William 138, 139, 144, 197–8 Britannia Illustrata (Kip/Knyff) 225–6, 227 Brough, Dorothy 169 Browne, Thomas 113 Buckingham, Duke of 21, 79–80 Buckingham Palace (London) 22, 49 Burlington, 1st Earl of 67 Burlington, 3rd Earl of 234, 235 Burlington House (London) 234 Burnaby, Richard 181, 182, 183, 189, 208 Burton, Robert: The Anatomy of Melancholy 135–6 Burton, Thomas 94–5 Bury, Sir Thomas 212 Byerley, Joseph 150, 151, 177, 180 Cadogan, Lord 233 Campbell, Colen 234, 235, 244 capitalism 19–20, 78, 112, 247 Carew, Thomas 249 Carlos II of Spain, King 150 Cartwright, Dr Thomas, Bishop of Chester 107, 110, 129 Catherine of Braganza, Queen 101 Catholic Church 18, 90, 101–5, 109 and Grosvenor, Dame Mary 105–6, 107–8 and Rome 152–3 see also Jacobites Cavendish, Margaret 89 Cavendish Square (London) 238, 240, 245 Chancery 217 Charaz, Frederick 177–8 Charles I of England, King 20, 23, 72, 73, 92–3 and execution 186 and London 66 Charles II of England, King 24, 29, 30, 50, 77, 120 and death 108 and Great Fire 54, 56 and heir 101, 104–5 and London 65 and plague 39 Charles VI, Holy Roman Emperor 150, 151 Chester 79, 80, 83, 84, 91–6, 99–100 and anti-Catholicism 102, 103, 104 and James II 110 Cheyne, George: The English Malady 137 childbirth 125–6, 127–8 children 60–4, 130 Chirk Castle (North Wales) 248 Cholmondeley, Charles 96, 98, 221, 222 Cholmondeley, Francis 93, 143, 207, 218–19 and Fenwick 172–3, 180 and Grosvenor children 211–13, 214–15, 221–2, 225 Cholmondeley, Robert 100 Cholmondeley, Sir Thomas 85, 134, 143, 144, 168, 172 Christophers, Brett 7 The New Enclosure 259 churches 69, 232, 237 Churches, Christine 46 Civil Wars 25, 27, 30, 49, 72–3 and Catholic Church 102 and Chester 99–100 and Grosvenors 80 and Westminster 185 and women 91 Clarendon, Earl of 20, 22, 67–8, 113, 120–1 class 63, 70, 191, 217 Clement XI, Pope 152, 153 common land 18–19 Compton, Henry 212 Cook, John 35 Cookson, Mrs 146, 152, 198 Corsellis, Nicholas 52 Cotton, Lady 138 Court of Chancery 173 Court of Delegates 209–10, 212–14 Court of Wards and Liveries (London) 16, 20, 22–3, 24, 216, 217 couverture 45, 247 Cowper, William 233 Cox, Sarah 76 Cranfield, Lionel 21–2, 31, 48 Cromwell, Oliver 23, 29, 32, 47, 80 and head 185 and London 66 and matrimony 70 Crown, the 16–17, 18, 22, 32, 254 Culpeper, Nicholas 126 Cutler, Sir John 13 Dahl, Michael 2, 147 Daniell, Peter 80 Davies, Alexander 24, 25–6, 27, 30–1, 49 and death 40–4, 60, 64 and inheritance 32–4, 35 and land 78 Davies, John 25 Davies, Mary, see Grosvenor, Dame Mary Davies, Thomas 25–6, 27, 33, 43, 44, 48 Davies, William 43 Davis, Juliet 257–8 Davis, Rob 134, 197 De Worde, Wynkyn 14 Defoe, Daniel 220, 241, 244 A Journal of the Plague Year 36, 39, 40, 42 Delaval, Robert 91 Delaval, William 150, 177 Denham, Sir John 234 Dissolution of the Monasteries 18, 22, 32, 45 Doblen, John 53 Dockwra, Richard 167 Dockwra, William 145, 167, 168, 203 Dorchester Hotel (London) 22 Drake, Judith: An Essay in Defence of the Female Sex 88–9 Dubois, Nicholas 235 Dufief, Madame 159, 176, 177, 200, 201–2 Dukeson, Dr Richard 24, 27, 85 Dutton, Thomas 103 Earle, John 102 Eaton Hall (Chester) 79, 82, 83, 84, 91–6, 97, 169–70 and Britannia Illustrata 226, 227 and Grosvenor, Sir Richard 225 Ebury Manor, see Manor of Ebury Eccleston 99, 140–1, 249 education 61, 62–4 Egerton, Elizabeth 128 Elizabeth I of England, Queen 29, 36, 89 Ellis, Bishop 155, 179–80 Enlightenment 8, 112, 137 environmentalism 256 Erickson, Amy Louise 45, 46 Errington, John 149 Europe, see Grand Tour; Paris; Rome; Spain Evans, Catherine 197 Evelyn, John 50, 95, 61–2, 73–4, 116, 121 Fumifugium 29–30 and Great Fire 53, 56 and London 68, 69 Exclusion Crisis 101–5, 106, 116, 185 Fairchild, Thomas: The City Gardener 243 Fallowes, Thomas 220–1 Faversham, Earl of 108 Fawkes, Guido 185 Fenwick, Edward 2, 4–5, 6–7, 146, 147–8, 179 and Court of Delegates 210, 212–13, 214 and estate 168–9, 181–3, 208, 209 and Hôtel Castile 158, 159, 160–5 and marriage 173–5 and Paris 154–5, 156, 177 and trial 180, 189–206 and Westminster 170–1 Fenwick, Sir John 189 Fenwick, Lodowick 1, 4, 130–1, 139, 142 and Court of Delegates 212–13 and Ellis 179–80 and Hôtel Castile 158, 159, 160, 161, 162, 163–4, 178 and travel 144, 152, 154, 155, 156 and trial 190, 192, 193, 195, 196, 198, 199, 203 fire insurance 117, 122 Fitzwilliams, Michael 103 Fleet Street (London) 57–8 Flitcroft, Henry 235 Foucault, Michel 216, 217, 220 Franklin, Thomas 181–2, 183, 208 Frith, Richard 122, 123 Fuller, Thomas 19 Fulwood, Roger 76 funerals 140–2 gardens 243, 257 Gatty, Charles 26 Gay, John: The Beggar’s Opera 44 Gehl, Jan 256 George I of Great Britain, King 230, 232, 233, 243 George of Denmark, Prince 147 ghost houses 258 Glorious Revolution (1688) 111 Godfrey, Sir Edmund Berry 101 Goodchild, John 33, 34 Goring, Lord 49 Goring House (London) 32, 48–9, 50, 65, 72, 79 and Arlington 113 Grand Remonstrance (1641) 22–3 Grand Tour 81–2, 211, 226 Grange (Dorset) 92 Great Fire of London 50–8, 69 Grosvenor, Anne (daughter) 144, 167, 207–8, 219, 237 Grosvenor, Dame Mary 1–2, 207–8, 210–11, 248–9, 250 and Berkeley 72, 74–5 and birth 34, 35 and care 218–20, 221, 222–4 and Catholicism 105–6, 107–8 and childhood 60–1, 63, 64–5 and Court of Delegates 212, 213, 214 and Eaton Hall 91–2, 93, 94–5 and Fenwick, Edward 4–5, 6–7, 168–70, 171–3, 174–6, 177–8 and Fenwick, Lodowick 130–1 and first marriage 8 and Hôtel Castile 158–65 and inheritance 3–4, 9–10, 45, 46–8, 50, 58 and Manor of Ebury 123–4 and marriage 84–6, 87–8, 90, 96, 98 and mental health 131–2, 133–4, 137, 138–9, 155–6, 167–8, 215–16 and Millbank 166–7 and motherhood 125–7, 128–30 and Paris 149, 150, 151–2 and portrait 2–3 and widowhood 140, 142–3 and Rome 153–5 and travel 144, 145–8 and trial 179–81, 182–3, 189–206 Grosvenor, Richard, Earl (grandson) 249 Grosvenor, Sir Richard (son) 79–81, 143, 145, 207–8 and death 249 and Grand Tour 211 and Grosvenor Estate 242, 243, 246, 247 and inheritance 214–15, 221–2, 225 and marriage 228–9 and politics 230 and portrait 226, 228 and speculating 235–6, 237 Grosvenor, Sir Robert (son) 143, 207–8, 230–1, 236–7, 249 Grosvenor, Sir Thomas (husband) 8, 79, 81–2, 83–6 and death 139, 140–4 and Eaton Hall 94–5 and Exclusion Crisis 101–2, 104, 105 and James II 108–10 and land 112–13 and marriage 87–8 and politics 98–9, 100–1, 124–5 and religion 107, 108 Grosvenor, Sir Thomas (son) 143, 207–8, 230–1, 249 Grosvenor Square (London) 240–7, 251, 256–8 Guy, Thomas 220 Gwynne, Nell 68 Hale, Sir Matthew 201 Hamilton, Duke of 204 Hanover Square (London) 232, 245 Harcourt, Simon 190–1 Harvey, Robert 25–6, 27 Hawksmoor, Nicholas 232, 235 Hay Fair 114–15 Henri IV of France, King 48 Henry II of England, King 186, 209 Henry VIII of England, King 18, 20, 47 Hermannides, Rutger 28, 29 Hill, Emery 35 Hinde, John 121–3 Hodges, Nathaniel 37, 39 Hollar, Wenceslaus 184, 185 Holt, Lord Chief Justice John 6, 188–9, 194, 205–6 Hooke, Robert 56, 57, 116, 134, 137 Hooper, Mr 193–4, 195, 196, 197 Hopper, George 212 Hôtel Castile (Paris) 1–2, 4, 6, 10, 156, 157, 158–65 and Fenwick’s story 174–5 and Middleton 176, 177 housing 7, 30, 57, 68, 69, 258 and Barbon 118–20 and gardens 243 and Grosvenor Square 246 and London 234–5 Houston, R.

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A. 137–8 Hubert, Robert 55 Huguenots 48 Hyde Manor (London) 31 Hyde Park (London) 66–7 Innocent XII, Pope 152, 153 insane, see madness Ireland 23, 74, 75, 100, 102 Ireton, Henry 185 Jacobites 148, 149, 150, 151, 189 and rebellion 229, 230, 231, 249 Jacobs, Jane 257 James I of England, King 20, 21, 22, 36, 48 James II of England, King 2, 72, 73, 101, 108, 109–11 and Catholic Church 153 and death 178 and the law 188 and Paris 148, 149–50 and Rye House Plot 116 James Francis Edward Stuart 150, 178, 230, 249 James, John 232 Jenkins, Simon 8, 259 Landlords to London 252 Jennings, Will 146, 152, 198 Jerman, Edward 69 Jermyn, Henry 68, 115 Jones, Inigo 67, 82, 92 Jonson, Ben 14 Kensington (London) 10, 55 Kent, William 235 Kip, Johannes and Knyff, Leonard: Britannia Illustrata 225–6, 227 Lammas Ground 19 land 7, 8, 10–11, 138, 258–60 and America 77–8 and aristocracy 252–3 and Audley 21 and common 18–19 and compound fine 23–4 and control 16–18 and Davies 32–3 and Grosvenors 112–13 and London 113–14, 115–16 and suburbs 68, 69 and women 45–7 see also property law, the 17, 18, 209–10, 212–14 and women 45, 46, 90 Lawe’s Resolutions of Women’s Rights, The 90 Le Brun, Charles 149 Le Cleve, Thomas 178 Le Vau, Louis 149 Leicester Square (London) 30 Lely, Sir Peter 83–4, 147 Leoni, Giacomo 235 Leopold I, Holy Roman Emperor 150 Lewis, Mr 4–5, 164–5 Lilly, William 35 Lincoln’s Inn Fields (London) 34, 35 Livingston, Elizabeth 91 Lloyd, Nathaniel 171, 172 Locke, John 255 An Essay Concerning Human Understanding 62 Fundamental Constitutions of Carolina 77–8 Lockwood, Marie 25 Lodge, Tom 146, 154, 155–6, 163–4, 165 and trial 199–200, 204 Londinum London (map) 28, 29 London 6–8, 10–11, 65–70 and anti-Catholicism 102 and Audley 15–16 and Barbon 117–19 and Bloomsbury 115–17 and Burlington Estate 234–5 and Davies 32–4 and Evelyn 29–30 and expansion 113–14, 115–16, 231–2 and Great Fire 50–8 and Grosvenor Estate 235–8, 240–7, 256–8 and housing 119–20 and maps 27–9, 30–2 and Mayfair 251–2 and ownership 252–4 and Pepys 13–14 and plague 36–43, 47 and property prices 259 and South Sea Bubble 238, 240 and speculators 121–3 and squares 232–3 Louis XIV of France, King 148, 149, 150, 151, 178 Luttrell, Narcissus 206 Lyon 155–6, 176, 177 Macclesfield, Earl of 105 Mackay, John 239, 240 Macky, John: Journey through England 235 Mad House Act (1774) 217, 221 Maddison, Charles 138, 139, 198 madness 132–3, 134–8, 216–18, 220–1 Magna Carta 17 Mainwaringe, Dr Everard 32 Manchester, Lady 150 Mandeville, Geoffrey de 22 Manor of Ebury (Westminster) 9, 10, 19, 31–2, 48, 56 and Audley 21, 22, 26–7 and Fenwick 181–2, 208 and Grosvenor, Dame Mary 123–4 and Grosvenor, Richard 222 and Parliament 229–30 and tenants 173–4, 211–12 maps 27–9, 30–2, 97, 157, 239, 240 Market Meadows 32, 33, 35, 44 Marlborough, John Churchill, Duke of 108 marriage 70–2, 76, 90–1, 209, 213–14 Marriage Acts: 1653: 70 1753: 214 Mary II of England, Queen 111, 131 Massey, Edward 100, 103 Massey, William 103, 104, 106 May, Hugh 73–4, 82 May Fair 114–15 Mayfair (London) 8, 10, 251–2 melancholy 135–7 Mercator, Nicholas 82 Middleton, George 171, 172, 173, 176–7, 178–9, 180 and imprisonment 191 Miège, Guy 232 Millbank (London) 5, 28, 29, 40, 44, 235–6 and Great Fire 55 Miller, Tom 146, 152, 154, 155, 167, 213 and Hôtel Castile 161, 162, 165 and trial 192, 195, 199–200, 204 Mills, Peter 57 Misson, Henri 141, 142 Monbiot, George 260 moneylending 15–16 Monmouth, James, Duke of 104–5, 108, 109 Monument (London) 69, 102 Moore, Francis 150 More, Thomas: Utopia 19 Morris, Dr 62–4 Myddleton, Sir Richard 143, 221, 237–8 Myddleton, Robert 248 Myddleton, Thomas 85 Neate House (London) 31, 32 neoclassicism 226, 234, 244 New World, see America Newton, Sir Isaac 238 Nicholls, Dr John 138, 167, 197 Nicolson, William 212 Norman Conquest 16, 22, 79 North, Roger 118 Oates, Titus 101, 102, 185 Orton, John 181–2, 183, 208 Osbourne, Thomas 40 Oxford 23, 39 Oxford, Edward Harley, Earl of 238 Palladio, Andrea 226 Panton, Thomas 30 Papists, see Catholic Church Paris 8, 148–50, 154–5; see also Hôtel Castile; Versailles Parliament 17, 18, 22–3, 24, 99 and churches 232 and James II 109–10 and land 48 and Manor of Ebury 229–30 and power 111 and property 78–9 Parry, Henry 177 Pepys, Samuel 13–14, 50, 66, 68, 73 and Great Fire 51, 52 Perrault, Claude 149 Peterborough, Earl of 34 Peterborough, Henry Mordaunt, Lord 72 Peterborough, Lady 168, 173 Peterborough House (London) 41, 168, 236 Pevet, Margaret 155 Philip V of Spain, King 150, 151, 167, 178 Phipps, Edward 181–2, 183, 208 Piccadilly (London) 30 Piggot, Mr 169, 170, 198, 230–1 Piketty, Thomas: Capital in the Twenty-First Century 259 Pimlico (London) 10 place-making 255–7 plague 36–43, 47 Plessington, John 103–4, 106 Poole, James 103 poor, the 18–19, 37, 40, 42 Powell, Sir John 212 Powys, Sir Thomas 189–90, 194, 197, 202–3 Pratt, Roger 57, 82 Certain Heads to be Largely Treated Concerning the Undertaking of Any Building 67 pregnancy 125–7 Price, Thomas 153–4 primogeniture 17, 247 Private Eye (magazine) 252 private property 8–9, 10–11, 24, 55–7, 259 property 16–18, 138, 117–20, 181–3, 225–6 and investment 258 and London 252–4 and marriage 71 and ownership 77–9 and women 45–7, 89 see also housing; private property Property Week (magazine) 253 Protestantism 107 psychiatry 132–3, 134–7, 216 public land 259–60 Purcell, Dr John 136 Qatar 253 Queen’s Bench 180–1, 182, 188 Queen’s House (London) 92–3 Questel, Robert 213 Radcliffe, Francis 4, 154, 164, 165, 213 and trial 180, 204 Raleigh, Sir Walter 185 Ralph, James 245 rape 201, 203 Rea, John 24, 27 Rebuilding Act (1667) 57 rentier capitalism 78 Restoration 24, 29, 44, 49 Ridley, Mrs 204 Rippon, William 133, 197 Roberts, Hugh 80–1 Rolfe, Samuel 69 Rome 144, 151, 152–5 Roxburghe, Duke of 233 Royal Exchange (London) 69 Royal Society 136 Royalists 24, 26, 47, 49, 72–3 and Chester 80 and Cromwell 23, 32 Rue Saint-Dominique, see Hôtel Castile Russell, Lady Rachel 116, 117, 215, 232 Russell, William, Lord 116 Rye House Plot 116 St James’s Park (London) 50 St James’s Square (London) 68 St Paul’s Cathedral (London) 13, 25, 69–70, 89 and Great Fire 53, 54, 55 Samwell, William 82–3, 92–3 sanitation 242 Scarborough, Richard Lumley, Earl of 232–3, 237 Schlarman, Julie 246 Second Anglo-Dutch War 50 Sedgemoor, Battle of (1685) 108 Selby, Mrs 146, 152, 154, 167, 213 and Hôtel Castile 159, 160, 161–2, 163–4, 165 and trial 192–5, 199–200, 204, 205 Shaftesbury, Earl of 77, 101, 109–10 Shakespeare, William 70 Shepherd, Edward 245 Sherrington, Grace 63 Shireburn, Sir Richard 102 Showalter, Elaine 137 Shrewsbury, Earl of 124 Simmons, John 244–5 slavery 108, 188–9, 238 Sloane, Daniel 191, 194, 203 Smith, Judge John 212 South Sea Bubble 238, 240 Spain 150–1 Spanish Succession, War of the 178, 231 Sprat, Thomas 212 squares 232–3, 240–7 Stanley, Rowland 103 Stawker, Robert 33, 34 Strype, John 116–17, 123–4 Stukeley, Dr William 136 suburbs 38, 56, 68, 69, 119 Summerson, Sir John 245 Sydenham, Thomas 37 syndicates 121–3 Taswell, William 50, 52–3, 54 Tate, Francis 141 Temple, Sir William 71, 75 Test Act (1678) 101, 103 Thomas, Cadogan 122, 123 Thornton, Alice 127–8 Tonkin Liu 257 trade 13–14, 16, 100, 113 Tregonwell, John (stepfather) 47–8, 49–50, 64, 74, 78–9, 85 Tregonwell, Mary (mother) 6, 43–5, 47–8, 169, 180, 222 and daughter 144, 145, 166–7, 168, 218–19 and death 236 and Manor of Ebury 123–4 and motherhood 59–61, 63, 64, 70, 71 Trelawney, Charles 124 Trial of the Seven Bishops, The (Herbert) 187, 188 true mile 18 Turnour, Mr 139, 146, 147, 191–2 Turnour, Mrs 129–30, 139, 145, 147, 151 and trial 174, 189 urban planning 57 usury 15–16 Utrecht, Treaty of (1713) 231 Versailles 82, 149, 150, 151 Vincent, Thomas 37, 52, 53 Vitruvius Britannicus (Campbell) 234 Ward, Sir Edward 212 Ward, Ned 65–6 Watts, William 35 wealth 252 Weights and Measures Act (1593) 18 West End (London) 115–16 Westminster, Dukes of 10, 249 Westminster Abbey (London) 22, 32 Westminster Diocese 170–1 Westminster Hall (London) 5–6, 184–8 Whigs 101, 105, 109–10, 124 widows 43, 44–5 William II of England, King 185–6 William III of England, King 111, 131, 150, 153, 178 Willis, Thomas 136–7 women 43, 44–7, 88–9 and childbirth 125–9 and education 63–4 and Grosvenor Estate 246–7 and marriage 71, 90–1 and mental health 137–8, 217 and religion 106–7 Wood, Ellen Meiksins 19–20 Wood, Ralph 19 Worcester, Battle of (1651) 32 Wren, Christopher 56, 57, 68, 69–70 Wright, Nathan 173 Wyndham, Jane 229 Wyndham, William 229, 230 Wynne Rees, Peter 254 York, James, Duke of, see James II of England, King York, Robert 191 A Oneworld Book First published by Oneworld Publications in 2021 This ebook published 2021 Copyright © Leo Hollis 2021 The moral right of Leo Hollis to be identified as the Author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs, and Patents Act 1988 All rights reserved Copyright under Berne Convention A CIP record for this title is available from the British Library ISBN 978-1-78607-995-4 eISBN 978-1-78607-996-1 Illustration credits: All images author’s own or Creative Commons unless otherwise stated.

Nervous States: Democracy and the Decline of Reason
by William Davies
Published 26 Feb 2019

Various “social indicators” have been constructed since the 1960s, such as “quality of life,” to challenge the dominance of economic measures in public policy debate. The “radical statistics” movement was founded in the 1970s, to channel statistical expertise toward specifically progressive political goals. The French economist Thomas Piketty demonstrated the unrivaled power of statistics to draw public attention to a moral concern, with his best-selling 2015 book Capital in the Twenty-First Century, consisting largely of statistical analysis of inequality. And activist movements dedicated to counting things that are otherwise never counted—such as missing migrants around the world or the civilian death toll in Iraq—offer hard facts where there is otherwise just general moral concern.

…

A/B testing, 199 Acorn, 152 ad hominem attacks, 27, 124, 195 addiction, 83, 105, 116–17, 172–3, 186–7, 225 advertising, 14, 139–41, 143, 148, 178, 190, 192, 199, 219, 220 aerial bombing, 19, 125, 135, 138, 143, 180 Affectiva, 188 affective computing, 12, 141, 188 Agent Orange, 205 Alabama, United States, 154 alcoholism, 100, 115, 117 algorithms, 150, 169, 185, 188–9 Alsace, 90 alt-right, 15, 22, 50, 131, 174, 196, 209 alternative facts, 3 Amazon, 150, 173, 175, 185, 186, 187, 192, 199, 201 American Association for the Advancement of Science, 24 American Civil War (1861–5), 105, 142 American Pain Relief Society, 107 anaesthetics, 104, 142 Anderson, Benedict, 87 Anthropocene, 206, 213, 215, 216 antibiotics, 205 antitrust laws, 220 Appalachia, 90, 100 Apple, 156, 185, 187 Arab Spring (2011), 123 Arendt, Hannah, xiv, 19, 23, 26, 53, 219 Aristotle, 35, 95–6 arrogance, 39, 47, 50 artificial intelligence (AI), 12–13, 140–41, 183, 216–17 artificial video footage, 15 Ashby, Ross, 181 asymmetrical war, 146 atheism, 34, 35, 209 attention economy, 21 austerity, 100–101, 225 Australia, 103 Australian, 192 Austria, 14, 60, 128, 153–75 Austria-Hungary (1867–1918), 153–4, 159 authoritarian values, 92–4, 101–2, 108, 114, 118–19, 211–12 autocracy, 16, 20, 202 Babis, Andrej, 26 Bacon, Francis, 34, 35, 95, 97 Bank of England, 32, 33, 55, 64 Banks, Aaron, 26 Bannon, Steve, 21, 22, 60–61 Bayh–Dole Act (1980), 152 Beck Depression Inventory, 107 Berlusconi, Silvio, 202 Bernays, Edward, 14–15, 16, 143 “Beyond the Pleasure Principle” (Freud), 110 Bezos, Jeff, 150, 173 Big Data, 185–93, 198–201 Big Government, 65 Big Science, 180 Bilbao, Spain, 84 bills of mortality, 68–71, 75, 79–80, 81, 127 Birmingham, West Midlands, 85 Black Lives Matter, 10, 225 Blackpool, Lancashire, 100 blind peer reviewing, 48, 139, 195 Blitz (1940–41), 119, 143, 180 blue sky research, 133 body politic, 92–119 Bologna, Italy, 96 bookkeeping, 47, 49, 54 Booth, Charles, 74 Boston, Massachusetts, 48 Boyle, Robert, 48–50, 51–2 BP oil spill (2010), 89 brainwashing, 178 Breitbart, 22, 174 Brexit (2016–), xiv, 23 and education, 85 and elites, 33, 50, 61 and inequality, 61, 77 and NHS, 93 and opinion polling, 80–81 as self-harm, 44, 146 and statistics, 61 Unite for Europe march, 23 Vote Leave, 50, 93 British Futures, 65 Brooks, Rosa, 216 bullying, 113 Bureau of Labor, 74 Bush, George Herbert Walker, 77 Bush, George Walker, 77, 136 cadaverous research, 96, 98 call-out culture, 195 Calvinism, 35 Cambridge, Cambridgeshire, 85 University, 84, 151 Cambridge Analytica, 175, 191, 196, 199 Cameron, David, 33, 73, 100 cancer, 105 Capital in the Twenty-First Century (Piketty), 74 capital punishment, 92, 118 car accidents, 112–13 cargo-cult science, 50 Carney, Mark, 33 cartography, 59 Case, Anne, 99–100, 102, 115 Catholicism, 34 Cato Institute, 158 Cavendish, William, 3rd Earl of Devonshire, 34 Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), 3, 136, 151, 199 Center for Policy Studies, 164 chappe system, 129, 182 Charles II, King of England, Scotland, and Ireland, 34, 68, 73 Charlottesville attack (2017), 20 Chelsea, London, 100 Chevillet, Mark, 176 Chicago School, 160 China, 13, 15, 103, 145, 207 chloroform, 104 cholera, 130 Chongqing, China, 13 chronic pain, 102, 105, 106, 109 see also pain Churchill, Winston, 138 citizen science, 215, 216 civil rights movements, 21, 194 civilians, 43, 143, 204 von Clausewitz, Carl, 128–35, 141–7, 152 and defeat, 144–6 and emotion, 141–6, 197 and great leaders, 146–7, 156, 180–81 and intelligence, 134–5, 180–81 and Napoleon, 128–30, 133, 146–7 and soldiers, number of, 133–4 war, definition of, 130, 141, 193 climate change, 26, 50, 165, 205–7, 213–16 Climate Mobilization, 213–14 climate-gate (2009), 195 Clinton, Hillary, 27, 63, 77, 99, 197, 214 Clinton, William “Bill,” 77 coal mining, 90 cognitive behavioral therapy, 107 Cold War, 132, 133, 135–6, 137, 180, 182–4, 185, 223 and disruption, 204–5 intelligence agencies, 183 McCarthyism (1947–56), 137 nuclear weapons, 135, 180 scenting, 135–6 Semi-Automatic Ground Environment (SAGE), 180, 182, 200 space race, 137 and telepathy, 177–8 colonialism, 59–61, 224 commercial intelligence, 152 conscription, 127 Conservative Party, 80, 154, 160, 163, 166 Constitution of Liberty, The (Hayek), 160 consumer culture, 90, 104, 139 contraceptive pill, 94 Conway, Kellyanne, 3, 5 coordination, 148 Corbyn, Jeremy, 5, 6, 65, 80, 81, 197, 221 corporal punishment, 92 creative class, 84, 151 Cromwell, Oliver, 57, 59, 73 crop failures, 56 Crutzen, Paul, 206 culture war, xvii Cummings, Dominic, 50 currency, 166, 168 cutting, 115 cyber warfare, xii, 42, 43, 123, 126, 200, 212 Czech Republic, 103 Daily Mail, ix Damasio, Antonio, 208 Darwin, Charles, 8, 140, 142, 157, 171, 174, 179 Dash, 187 data, 49, 55, 57–8, 135, 151, 185–93, 198–201 Dawkins, Richard, 207, 209 death, 37, 44–5, 66–7, 91–101 and authoritarian values, 92–4, 101–2, 211, 224 bills of mortality, 68–71, 75, 79–80, 81, 89, 127 and Descartes, 37, 91 and Hobbes, 44–5, 67, 91, 98–9, 110, 151, 184 immortality, 149, 183–4, 224, 226 life expectancy, 62, 68–71, 72, 92, 100–101, 115, 224 suicide, 100, 101, 115 and Thiel, 149, 151 death penalty, 92, 118 Deaton, Angus, 99–100, 102, 115 DeepMind, 218 Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), 176, 178 Delingpole, James, 22 demagogues, 11, 145, 146, 207 Democratic Party, 77, 79, 85 Denmark, 34, 151 depression, 103, 107 derivatives, 168, 172 Descartes, René, xiii, 36–9, 57, 147 and body, 36–8, 91, 96–7, 98, 104 and doubt, 36–8, 39, 46, 52 and dualism, 36–8, 39, 86, 94, 131, 139–40, 179, 186, 223 and nature, 37, 38, 86, 203 and pain, 104, 105 Descartes’ Error (Damasio), 208 Devonshire, Earl of, see Cavendish, William digital divide, 184 direct democracy, 202 disempowerment, 20, 22, 106, 113–19 disruption, 18, 20, 146, 147, 151, 171, 175 dog whistle politics, 200 Donors Trust, 165 Dorling, Danny, 100 Downs Survey (1655), 57, 59, 73 doxing, 195 drone warfare, 43, 194 drug abuse, 43, 100, 105, 115–16, 131, 172–3 Du Bois, William Edward Burghardt, 74 Dugan, Regina, 176–7 Dunkirk evacuation (1940), 119 e-democracy, 184 Echo, 187 ecocide, 205 Economic Calculation in the Socialist Commonwealth (Mises), 154, 166 economics, 59, 153–75 Economist, 85, 99 education, 85, 90–91 electroencephalography (EEG), 140 Elizabethan era (1558–1603), 51 embodied knowledge, 162 emotion and advertising, 14 artificial intelligence, 12–13, 140–41 and crowd-based politics, 4, 5, 8, 9, 10, 15, 16, 21, 23–7 Darwin’s analysis, 8, 140 Descartes on, 94, 131 and experts, 53, 60, 64, 66, 90 fear, 11–12, 16–22, 34, 40–45, 52, 60, 142 Hobbes on, 39, 41 James’ analysis, 140 and markets, 168, 175 moral, 21 and nationalism, 71, 210 pain, 102–19 sentiment analysis, xiii, 12–13, 140, 188 and war, 124–6, 142 empathy, 5, 12, 65, 102, 104, 109, 112, 118, 177, 179, 197 engagement, 7, 219 England Bank of England founded (1694), 55 bills of mortality, 68–71, 75, 79–80, 81, 89, 127 civil servants, 54 Civil War (1642–51), 33–4, 45, 53 Elizabethan era (1558–1603), 51 Great Fire of London (1666), 67 hospitals, 57 Irish War (1649–53), 59 national debt, 55 Parliament, 54, 55 plagues, 67–71, 75, 79–80, 81, 89, 127 Royal Society, 48–52, 56, 68, 86, 208, 218 tax collection, 54 Treasury, 54 see also United Kingdom English Defense League, ix entrepreneurship, 149, 156, 162 environment, 21, 26, 50, 61, 86, 165, 204–7, 213–16 climate change, 26, 50, 165, 205–7, 213–16 flying insects, decline of, 205, 215 Environmental Protection Agency, 23 ether, 104 European Commission, 60 European Space Agency, 175 European Union (EU), xiv, 22, 60 Brexit (2016–), see under Brexit and elites, 60, 145, 202 euro, 60, 78 Greek bailout (2015), 31 immigration, 60 and nationalism, 60, 145, 146 quantitative easing, 31 refugee crisis (2015–), 60, 225 Unite for Europe march (2017), 23 Exeter, Devon, 85 experts and crowd-based politics, 5, 6, 23, 25, 27 Hayek on, 162–4, 170 and representative democracy, 7 and statistics, 62–91 and technocracy, 53–61, 78, 87, 89, 90 trust in, 25–33, 63–4, 66, 74–5, 77–9, 170, 202 violence of, 59–61 Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animal, The (Darwin), 8, 140 Exxon, 165 Facebook, xvi, 15, 201 advertising, 190, 192, 199, 219, 220 data mining, 49, 185, 189, 190, 191, 192, 198, 219 and dog whistle politics, 200 and emotional artificial intelligence, 140 as engagement machine, 219 and fake news, 199 and haptics, 176, 182 and oligarchy, 174 and psychological profiling, 124 and Russia, 199 and sentiment analysis, 188 and telepathy, 176–8, 181, 185, 186 and Thiel, 149, 150 and unity, 197–8 weaponization of, 18 facial recognition, 13, 188–9 failed states, 42 fake news, 8, 15, 199 Farage, Nigel, 65 fascism, 154, 203, 209 fear, 11–12, 16–22, 34, 40–45, 52, 60, 142 Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), 137 Federal Reserve, 33 feeling, definition of, xii feminism, 66, 194 Fifth Amendment, 44 fight or flight, 111, 114 Financial Times, 15 first past the post, 13 First World War, see World War I Fitbit, 187 fixed currency exchange rates, 166 Florida, Richard, 84 flu, 67, 191 flying insects, 205, 215 France censuses, 66, 73 conscription introduced (1793), 127 Front National, 27, 61, 79, 87, 92 Hobbes in (1640–51), 33–4, 41–2 Le Bon’s crowd psychology, 8–12, 13, 15, 16, 20, 24, 25, 38 life expectancy, 101 Napoleonic Wars (1803–15), see Napoleonic Wars Paris climate accord (2015), 205, 207 Paris Commune (1871), 8 Prussian War (1870–71), 8, 142 Revolution (1789–99), xv, 71, 126–9, 141, 142, 144, 204 statistics agency established (1800), 72 unemployment, 83 Franklin, Benjamin, 66 free markets, 26, 79, 84, 88, 154–75 free speech, 22, 113, 194, 208, 209, 224 free will, 16 Freud, Sigmund, 9, 14, 44, 107, 109–10, 111, 112, 114, 139 Friedman, Milton, 160, 163, 166 Front National, 27, 61, 79, 87, 92, 101–2 full spectrum warfare, 43 functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), 140 futurists, 168 Galen, 95–6 Galilei, Galileo, 35 gambling, 116–17 game theory, 132 gaming, 193–4 Gandhi, Mohandas, 224 gate control theory, 106 Gates, Sylvester James “Jim,” 24 Gavotti, Giulio, 143 geek humor, 193 Gehry, Frank, 84 Geller, Uri, 178 geometry, 35, 49, 57, 59, 203 Gerasimov, Valery, 123, 125, 126, 130 Germany, 34, 72, 137, 205, 215 gig economy, 173 global financial crisis (2007–9), 5, 29–32, 53, 218 austerity, 100–101 bailouts, 29–32, 40, 42 and gross domestic product (GDP), 76 as “heart attack,” 57 and Obama administration, 158 and quantitative easing, 31–2, 222 and securitization of loans, 218–19 and statistics, 53, 65 and suicide, 101 and unemployment, 82 globalization, 21, 78, 84, 145, 146 Gonzales, Alberto, 136 Google, xvi, 174, 182, 185, 186, 191, 192 DeepMind, 218 Maps, 182 Transparency Project, 198 Government Accountability Office, 29 Graunt, John, 67–9, 73, 75, 79–80, 81, 85, 89, 127, 167 Great Fire of London (1666), 67 great leaders, 146–8 Great Recession (2007–13), 76, 82, 101 Greece, 5, 31, 101 Greenpeace, 10 Grenfell Tower fire (2017), 10 Grillo, Beppe, 26 gross domestic product (GDP), 62, 65, 71, 75–9, 82, 87, 138 guerrillas, 128, 146, 194, 196 Haldane, Andrew, 32 haptics, 176, 182 Harvey, William, 34, 35, 38, 57, 96, 97 hate speech, 42 von Hayek, Friedrich, 159–73, 219 health, 92–119, 224 hedge funds, 173, 174 hedonism, 70, 224 helicopter money, 222 Heritage Foundation, 164, 214 heroin, 105, 117 heroism and disruption, 18, 146 and genius, 218 and Hobbes, 44, 151 and Napoleonic Wars, 87, 127, 142 and nationalism, 87, 119, 210 and pain, 212 and protection, 202–3 and technocracy, 101 and technology, 127 Heyer, Heather, 20 Hiroshima atomic bombing (1945), 206 Hobbes, Thomas, xiii, xvi, 33–6, 38–45, 67, 147 on arrogance, 39, 47, 50, 125 and body, 96, 98–9 and Boyle, 49, 50, 51 on civil society, 42, 119 and death, 44–5, 67, 69–70, 91, 98–9, 110, 151, 184 on equality, 89 on fear, 40–45, 52, 67, 125 France, exile in (1640–51), 33–4, 41 on geometry, 35, 38, 49, 56, 57 and heroism, 44, 151 on language, 38–9 natural philosophy, 35–6 and nature, 38, 50 and Petty, 56, 57, 58 on promises, 39–42, 45, 148, 217–18 and Royal Society, 49, 50, 51 on senses, 38, 49, 147 and sovereign/state, 40–45, 46, 52, 53, 54, 60, 67, 73, 126, 166, 217, 220 on “state of nature,” 40, 133, 206, 217 war and peace, separation of, 40–45, 54, 60, 73, 125–6, 131, 201, 212 Hobsbawm, Eric, 87, 147 Hochschild, Arlie Russell, 221 holistic remedies, 95, 97 Holland, see under Netherlands homeopathy, 95 Homer, xiv Hungary, 20, 60, 87, 146 hysteria, 139 IBM, 179 identity politics, 208, 209 Iglesias Turrión, Pablo, 5 imagined communities, 87 immigration, 60, 63, 65, 79, 87, 145 immortality, 149, 183–4, 224 in-jokes, 193 individual autonomy, 16 Industrial Revolution, 133, 206 inequality, 59, 61, 62, 76, 77, 83, 85, 88–90 inflation, 62, 76, 78, 82 infographics, 75 information theory, 147 information war, 43, 196 insurance, 59 intellectual property, 150 intelligence, 132–9 intensity, 79–83 International Association for the Study of Pain, 106 International Monetary Fund (IMF), 64, 78 Internet, 184–201, 219 IP addresses, 193 Iraq War (2003–11), 74, 132 Ireland, 57, 73 Irish Republican Army (IRA), 43 “Is This How You Feel?

The Sum of Small Things: A Theory of the Aspirational Class
by Elizabeth Currid-Halkett
Published 14 May 2017

As Packer himself put it in a PBS interview, the “unwinding” is that of America’s “contract that said if you work hard, if you essentially are a good citizen, there will be a place for you, not only an economic place, you will have a secure life, your kids will have a chance to have a better life, but you will sort of be recognized as part of the national fabric.”14 Despite earning seemingly good paychecks and owning their homes in pleasant suburbs, much of America is victim to “median wage stagnation”: for the past 40 years, everyone but the top 10% has experienced flat annual incomes, with paychecks no better in real dollars than they were in 1973. As Luce writes, “That means that most Americans have been treading water for more than a generation.”15 Even more alarming, Paris School economist Thomas Piketty argues in his runaway 2014 hit Capital in the Twenty-first Century that the period of relative equality between World War I and the early 1970s was an anomalous period of capitalism. Using detailed data from countries around the world across a 200-year period, Piketty makes a compelling case that for the years between 1914 and 1973, a series of government policies and global crises flattened out the gap between rich and poor and prevented the rich from getting greater returns on capital.

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Retrieved from http://www.statista.com/statistics/184272/educational-attainment-of-college-diploma-or-higher-by-gender/. Pezinni, M. (2012). An emerging middle class. OECD Observer. http://oecdobserver.org/news/fullstory.php/aid/3681/An_emerging_middle_class.html. Piketty, T. (2014). Capital in the twenty-first century. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Piore, M. J., & Sabel, C. F. (1984). The second industrial divide: Possibilities for prosperity. New York: Basic Books. Postrel, V. (2008, July 8). Inconspicuous consumption: A new theory of the leisure class. Atlantic. Retrieved from http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2008/07/inconspicuous-consumption/306845/2/.

Ghost Work: How to Stop Silicon Valley From Building a New Global Underclass
by Mary L. Gray and Siddharth Suri
Published 6 May 2019

Andy Stern and Lee Kravitz, Raising the Floor: How a Universal Basic Income Can Renew Our Economy and Rebuild the American Dream (New York: PublicAffairs, 2016); Alyssa Battistoni, “The False Promise of Universal Basic Income,” Dissent, Spring 2017, https://www.dissentmagazine.org/article/false-promise-universal-basic-income-andy-stern-ruger-bregman; Rana Foroohar, “We’re About to Live in a World of Economic Hunger Games,” Time, July 19, 2016, http://time.com/4412410/andy-stern-universal-basic-income/; Thomas Piketty, Capital in the Twenty-First Century, trans. Arthur Goldhammer, reprint (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2017). [back] 15. “Common Ground for Independent Workers,” From the WTF? Economy to the Next Economy (blog), November 10, 2015. https://wtfeconomy.com/common-ground-for-independent-workers-83f3fbcf548f#.ey89fvtnn.

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In A Hidden Workforce, 44–65. Women in Society series. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 1989. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-19854-2_4. Perez, Tom E., and Penny Pritzker. “A Joint Imperative to Strengthen Skills.” The Commerce Blog. U.S. Department of Commerce website, September 11, 2013. Piketty, Thomas. Capital in the Twenty-First Century. Translated by Arthur Goldhammer. Reprint. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2017. Poster, Winifred R. “Hidden Sides of the Credit Economy: Emotions, Outsourcing, and Indian Call Centers.” International Journal of Comparative Sociology 54, no. 3 (June 2013): 205–27. https://doi.org/10.1177/0020715213501823.

Practical Doomsday: A User's Guide to the End of the World
by Michal Zalewski
Published 11 Jan 2022

The 2007 financial crisis and the Occupy Wall Street movement, for example, served as an inflection point that recast top earners as villains who crashed the economy and made out like bandits thanks to the bailouts—a claim repeated not just in the fliers of local socialist clubs, but in mainstream politics. The arguments formulated in Capital in the Twenty-First Century, a seminal manifesto by the French economist Thomas Piketty (Belknap Press, 2014), have convinced millions that greatly increased taxes on top earners aren’t just proper, but absolutely necessary to remedy the growing inequality in the West. This renewed antipathy toward the affluent made it easier for regulators to confiscate foreign deposits during the Cypriot debt crisis, and to put wealth taxes back on the agenda in the United States.

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Numbers 2FA (two-factor authentication), 108 3M gasmaks, 177 3M respirators, 175 9-11 attacks, 26–27 9mm Luger, 214 28 Days Later, 32 .38 Special, 214 A Abine, 110 accidental injuries car accidents, 96–98 firearms, 196, 217–218 industrial accidents, 19–20, 177 statistics on, 12–13 action plan, 121–125 Acxiom, 110 addiction, 99–100 adverse judgments, 69–70 advertising industry, 110 AGI (artificial general intelligence), 42 AI winter, 42 AIDS, 32 alarm systems, 112 alcohol use, 100–101 Alinco, 188 alkaline batteries, 154–155 allergies, 150 aluminum zirconium tetrachlorohydrex gly, 149 amateur radio, 188–189 ammunition, 217 amoxicillin, 151 anesthetics miconazole nitrate, 150 animal-borne diseases, 176 antibiotics, 151 antifungal cream, 150 anti-itch cream, 150 antiperspirant, 149 antivirus programs, 106 Anytime Mailbox, 111 apocalypse, predictions of, 30–31 appliances, 152–159 APRS (Automatic Packet Reporting System), 188–189 Aquatabs, 134 Aqua-Tainer products, 133 AR-15, 215–216 Arm & Hammer, 149 Armero volcano eruption, 35 artificial intelligence, 31, 42 asteroids, 34 asthma, 150 atom bombs, 30–31, 39–40, 178–180 Augason Farms, 141 auto accidents, 96–98 auto insurance, 51–52 auto repairs, 163–164 automated billing, 51 automatic center punches, 164 Automatic Packet Reporting System (APRS), 188–189 avian flu, 26 B backyard gardens, 144 bail-ins, 22 bailouts, 68–69 baking soda, 148 ballistic vests, 129–130 bank accounts, 68–69, 76–77 banking crises, 22, 68–69 Bankrate.com, 10 Banqiao dam failure, 20 BaoFeng, 188 Barbot, Oxiris, 25 barter, 58–59, 73–74 batteries, 154–155, 163 bear spray, 171 BeenVerified, 110 Beirut nitrate explosion, 20 benzalkonium chloride (BZK) wipes, 149 benzocaine ointments, 151 The Bet (Sabin), 8 Bhopal disaster, 20 bicycles, 166 billionaires, 73 bird shot, 217 birth certificates, 166–167 Bitcoin, 66–68 Black Death, 32, 176 black holes, 35 bleeding, 151, 177 blizzards, 18 blockchain, 67 blunt instruments, 208 Bogle, John C., 80–81 bonds, 77–78 books, 191–192 bows, 208–209 brain in a jar, 42 break-ins, 111–112, 201 bromadiolone, 177 bromethalin, 177 Brooks, Max, 30 buckshot, 217 bug-out situations, 165–171 bulletproof vests, 129–130 bullets, 217 Bureau of Justice Statistics, 13 burglaries, 13, 111–112, 201 Butte fire complex, 18 BZK (benzalkonium chloride) wipes, 149 C caffeine pills, 150 California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), 111 California Gun Laws (Michel and Cubeiro), 196 calorie needs, 138–139 calorie restriction, 117–118 cameras, 201 camping, 167–168, 171 Canberra MRAD113, 179 candles, 154 Capital in the Twenty-First Century (Piketty), 72 car accidents, 96–98 car break-ins, 111 car insurance, 51–52 car repairs, 163–164 career planning, 91–93 cash, 49–55, 75–76 Cato Institute, 23 CB (citizens band) radios, 186 CCPA (California Consumer Privacy Act), 111 CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention), 13 cell phones, 155–156, 181 cetirizine, 150 chains, 163 chainsaws, 162 Champion generators, 156 Charlie’s Soap, 149 Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, 20, 31 Chicago Sunday Tribune, 37–38 chlorination, 134 choking, 104 cholecalciferol, 177 Christmas Island, 33 citizens band (CB) radios, 186 class tensions, 72–73 clathrate gun hypothesis, 33 cleaning, 148 climate change, 18, 33–34 clip-on pulse oximeters, 150 CME (coronal mass ejection), 35–36 cocaine, 100 coincidence of wants, 58 coins, 59–63 collectibles, 86–87, 201 Colorado floods, 11 come-alongs, 162–163 commodity futures options, 71, 81–83 commodity money, 60 communications, 181–190 community property, 125 compensation, 50 confiscatory taxes, 72–73 constitutional carry, 206 consumer debt, 53–54 consumer lending, 63 consumer prices, 70–71 contraceptives, 150 convictions, 6–8 cooking, 158 CoreLogic, 110 coronal mass ejection (CME), 35–36 cosmic threats, 35–36 cost of living, 11 cough, 150 court fights, 69–70 coveralls, 175 COVID-19 pandemic, 25–26, 174–176 CPR procedure, 151–152 credit cards, 53–54 Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction, 34 criminal victimization, 13 crisis indicators, 124 critical decision points, 124 crony beliefs, 6–8 crossbows, 208–209 cryptocurrencies, 66–68, 84, 87 Cubeiro, Matthew D., 196 currencies, history of, 58–68 customer data, 110 cuts, 150 Cypriot debt crisis, 69, 73 D data brokers, 110 Datrex, 143 d-CON, 177 DDT (dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane), 176 De Waal, Frans, 20 death causes of, 13 planning, 14–15, 124–125 debt, 10–11, 50, 53–54, 59–60 debt crisis, 22 Debt: The First 5000 Years (Graeber), 59 de-escalation skills, 13 defensive driving, 96–98 dehydration, 134 DeleteMe Help Center, 110 deltamethrin, 176 dental care, 151 dental picks, 151 developing countries, 33–34 dextromethorphan, 150 diarrhea, 150 dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane (DDT), 176 Didion, Joan, 122 dietary supplements, 180 diets, 115–118 digital communications, 188–189 Digital Mobile Radio (DMR), 188 diindolylmethane (DIM), 179 dinosaurs, 34 diseases, 32–33, 173–177 dishwashing, 148 Diversey Oxivir Five 16, 176 Diversey PERdiem, 148 diversified portfolios, 88–-90 divorce, 69–70 documents, 166–167 Dogecoin, 68 dogs as burglary deterrent, 112 domestic terrorism, 26–27 driving habits, 96–98 drowning, 104 drugs, 99–101, 150 D-STAR, 188 “duck and cover,” 39 DuPont Tychem coveralls, 175 dust storms, 18 duty to retreat, 205 Dynarex, 149 E earthquake probabilities, 19 Ebola, 26, 32 economic crises, 22–24 economic hardships, 10–11 economic persecution, 72 ecosystem collapse, 34 Ehrlich, Paul R., 7–8, 30 elastic bandages, 150 electricity, 36, 152–159 electrolyte imbalance, 150 emergency ration bars, 143 emergency repairs, 162–163 EMP (electromagnetic pulse), 40–41 employment, 91–93 encephalitis lethargica, 25 Energizer Ultimate batteries, 155 entertainment, 191–192 epinephrine inhalers, 150 Epsilon Data Management, 110 Equifax, 110 equities, 79–81 escheatment, 77 eugenics, 37 eugenol, 151 evacuation, 165–171 exercise, 117–118 expenses, 51–52 Experian, 110 Expose, 176 extinction, 34 extraterrestrial life, 43 extreme weather, 18, 156–158, 168 F Facebook, 109, 110, 155 fall injuries, 98–99 false vacuum decay, 35 Family Radio Service (FRS), 186–187 farming, 137 Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), 19, 132 fever, 150 fiat money, 64–65 fiction, 29–30 fighting, 113, 206 financial problems, 10–11 firearms, 196–197, 211–219 fires Butte fire complex, 18 house fires, 11, 18, 103–104 wildfires, 18, 44, 124 firewood, 158, 170 first aid, 149–152 fitness, 115–118 fixed-blade knives, 170 flashlights, 154–155 flat tires, 163 floods, 19, 147–148 floss, 151 flu, 25 fluticasone propionate, 150 FMJ (full metal jacket) bullets, 217 food-borne illness, 141–142 food preparation, 158 food security, 137–144 foraging, 168–169 foreclosures, 10–11 foreign currencies, 78–79 Forgey, William W., 152 Forster, E.

Capitalism: Money, Morals and Markets
by John Plender
Published 27 Jul 2015

The phrase ‘cash nexus’ comes from Thomas Carlyle, who used it in Chartism, 1840, and Past and Present, 1843. 196 See Gold and Iron: Bismarck, Bleichröder and the Building of the German Empire, Fritz Stern, Vintage Books, 1979. 197 The British Tax System, Oxford University Press, 1978. 198 Remarks from Ayrshire Pullman Motor Services v. Inland Revenue, 1929. 199 Capital in the Twenty-First Century, Harvard University Press, 2014, translated by Arthur Goldhammer. 200 I owe this insight to Brian Reading of Lombard Street Research. 201 Penguin Classics, 2009, translation by David Constantine. All subsequent quotes from Goethe are from the same source. 202 Stabilizing an Unstable Economy, Yale University Press, 1986. 203 ‘Manifest der Kommunistischen Partei’ in Marx-Engels Werke, Vol. 4, Berlin, 1969.

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On this view, politicians and bureaucrats were ‘personal utility maximisers’ who needed to be curbed. Such thinking played a part in the Californian tax revolt in the late 1970s that led to the famous Proposition 13 referendum, which put a curb on property taxes. Now a new challenge has arisen from the left of centre. The French economist Thomas Piketty has advanced a novel theory of capitalist accumulation, backed by a mass of data on income and wealth over three centuries, which asserts that the ratio of capital to income will rise without limit so long as the rate of return on capital is significantly higher than the rate of growth of the economy.

Frugal Innovation: How to Do Better With Less
by Jaideep Prabhu Navi Radjou
Published 15 Feb 2015

Lastly, we appreciate the care and support of our families and friends throughout the writing of this book. We couldn’t have done any of this without them. Notes and sources Notes 1Frugal innovation: a disruptive growth strategy 1Rosemain, M., “Renault 2013 Sales Gain on Surging Demand for Dacia Cars”, Bloomberg, January 21st 2014. 2Piketty, T. and Goldhammer, A., Capital in the Twenty-first Century, Belknap Press, 2013. 3Cone, C., global chair, Edelman Business + Social Purpose, interview with Navi Radjou, November 26th 2012. 4European Commission, “Environment: New rules on e-waste to boost resource efficiency”, press release, August 13th 2012. 5Mainwaring, S., We First: How Brands and Consumers Use Social Media to Build a Better World, Palgrave Macmillan, 2011. 6Hatch, M., The Maker Movement Manifesto: Rules for Innovation in the New World of Crafters, Hackers, and Tinkerers, McGraw-Hill, 2013. 7Rifkin, J., The Age of Access: The New Culture of Hypercapitalism, Where All of Life Is a Paid-for Experience, J.P.

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In Japan, where the poverty rate shot up to a record 16% in 2012, consumers are shifting from premium brands to inexpensive private-label products in retail stores. Rather than eating out, more Japanese workers now pack their own lunch, earning themselves the nickname bento-danshi or “box-lunch man”. These changes are here to stay. Thomas Piketty, a French economist, predicts that income inequality in developed economies will widen in the coming decades, as long-term annual growth rates remain stuck below 2%.2 With inflation outpacing their incomes since 2007, 76% of US adults now believe their children will be financially worse off than them in the future.

A History of the World in Seven Cheap Things: A Guide to Capitalism, Nature, and the Future of the Planet
by Raj Patel and Jason W. Moore
Published 16 Oct 2017

In Tropical Babylons: Sugar and the Making of the Atlantic World, 1450–1680, edited by Stuart B. Schwartz, 27–41. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. ———. 2013. Slavery in Medieval and Early Modern Iberia. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Pigou, A.C. 1920. The Economics of Welfare. London: Macmillan. Piketty, Thomas. 2014. Capital in the Twenty-First Century. Translated by Arthur Goldhammer. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. Pitts, Jennifer. 2010. “Political Theory of Empire and Imperialism.” Annual Review of Political Science 13: 211–35. Piven, Frances Fox. 1990. “Ideology and the State: Women, Power, and the Welfare State.”

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The relations between bankers and governments lead in the short term to reinvestment, in the medium term to the concentration of wealth and returns in the financial sector, and in the long term to the rise and fall of commercial power centered on a city, state, or international regime.82 In that arc, some people benefit a great deal, while others merely get by—or worse. Thomas Piketty’s ideas on how investment return has outstripped GDP growth in the Global North have generated much interest recently, but they belong to an older class of insights about how finance relates to the rest of capitalism’s ecology under successive state regimes.83 Capitalism is not just the sum of “economic” transactions that turn money into commodities and back again; it’s inseparable from the modern state and from governments’ dominions and transformations of natures, human and otherwise.

Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress
by Steven Pinker
Published 13 Feb 2018

As we just saw, wealth is not like that: since the Industrial Revolution, it has expanded exponentially.7 That means that when the rich get richer, the poor can get richer, too. Even experts repeat the lump fallacy, presumably out of rhetorical zeal rather than conceptual confusion. Thomas Piketty, whose 2014 bestseller Capital in the Twenty-First Century became a talisman in the uproar over inequality, wrote, “The poorer half of the population are as poor today as they were in the past, with barely 5 percent of total wealth in 2010, just as in 1910.”8 But total wealth today is vastly greater than it was in 1910, so if the poorer half own the same proportion, they are far richer, not “as poor.”

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N. 1994. Bourgeois virtue. American Scholar, 63, 177–91. McCloskey, D. N. 1998. Bourgeois virtue and the history of P and S. Journal of Economic History, 58, 297–317. McCloskey, D. N. 2014. Measured, unmeasured, mismeasured, and unjustified pessimism: A review essay of Thomas Piketty’s “Capital in the twenty-first century.” Erasmus Journal of Philosophy and Economics, 7, 73–115. McCullough, M. E. 2008. Beyond revenge: The evolution of the forgiveness instinct. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. McEvedy, C., & Jones, R. 1978. Atlas of world population history. London: Allen Lane. McGinn, C. 1993.

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New York: Encounter Books. Lukianoff, G. 2014. Freedom from speech. New York: Encounter Books. Luria, A. R. 1976. Cognitive development: Its cultural and social foundations. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Lutz, W., Butz, W. P., & Samir, K. C., eds. 2014. World population and human capital in the twenty-first century. New York: Oxford University Press. Lutz, W., Cuaresma, J. C., & Abbasi-Shavazi, M. J. 2010. Demography, education, and democracy: Global trends and the case of Iran. Population Development Review, 36, 253–81. Lynn, R., Harvey, J., & Nyborg, H. 2009. Average intelligence predicts atheism rates across 137 nations.

Phishing for Phools: The Economics of Manipulation and Deception
by George A. Akerlof , Robert J. Shiller and Stanley B Resor Professor Of Economics Robert J Shiller
Published 21 Sep 2015

Brian Hindo and Moira Herbst, “Personal Best Timeline, 1986: ‘Greed Is Good,’” BusinessWeek, http://www.bloomberg.com/ss/06/08/personalbest_timeline/source/7.htm. 31. Bruck, The Predators’ Ball, p. 320. 32. Bruck, The Predators’ Ball. 33. FDIC v. Milken, pp. 70–71. 34. Alison Leigh Cowan, “F.D.I.C. Backs Deal by Milken,” New York Times, March 10, 1992. 35. See Thomas Piketty, Capital in the Twenty-First Century (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2014), p. 291, fig. 8.5, and p. 292, fig. 8.6. 36. Andrei Shleifer and Robert W. Vishny, “The Takeover Wave of the 1980s,” Science 249, no. 4970 (1990): 745–49. Chapter Eleven: The Resistance and Its Heroes 1. For 2013. World Bank, “Life Expectancy at Birth, Male (Years)” and “Life Expectancy at Birth, Female (Years),” accessed March 29, 2015, http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.DYN.LE00.MA.IN/countries and http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.DYN.LE00.FE.IN/countries. 2.

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Last accessed April 30, 2015. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/18/washington/18cnd-medicare.html?_r=0. “The Personal Reminiscences of Albert Lasker.” American Heritage 6, no. 1 (December 1954). Accessed May 21, 2015. http://www.americanheritage.com/content/personal-reminiscences-albert-lasker. Piketty, Thomas. Capital in the Twenty-First Century. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2014. Pizzo, Stephen, Mary Fricker, and Paul Muolo. Inside Job: The Looting of America’s Savings and Loans. New York: Harper Perennial, 1991. “Poor Beer vs. Pure Beer.” Advertisement reproduced in Current Advertising 12, no. 2 (August 1902): 31.

Rise of the Robots: Technology and the Threat of a Jobless Future
by Martin Ford
Published 4 May 2015

.* Yet another problem, of course, is paying for these equity endowments. My guess is that redistribution of vast amounts of capital would prove even more politically toxic than would be the case for income. One possible mechanism for prying wealth away from its current owners was proposed by Thomas Piketty in his book Capital in the Twenty-First Century: a global tax on wealth. Such a tax would require cooperation between nations in order to avoid massive capital flight into lower-tax jurisdictions. Nearly everyone (including Piketty) agrees that this would be impractical for the foreseeable future. Piketty’s book, which was deluged with attention in 2014, argues that future decades are likely to be marked by an inevitable progression toward increased inequality of both income and wealth.

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See also deep learning The Atlantic (magazine), 71, 237, 254, 273 AT&T, 135, 159, 166 Audi, 184 Australian agriculture, x–xi, 24–25 Australian Centre for Field Robotics (ACFR), 24–25 AutoDesk, 234 automated invention machines, 110 automated trading algorithms, 56, 113–115 automation alien invasion parable, 194–196, 240 anti-automation view, 253–257 cars and (see autonomous cars) effect on Chinese manufacturing, 3, 10–11, 225–226 effect on prices, 215–216 health care jobs and, 172–173 information technology and, 52 job-market polarization and, 50–51 low-wage jobs and, 26–27 offshoring as precursor to, 115, 118–119 predictions of effect of, 30–34 reshoring and, 10 retail sector and, 16–20 risk of, 256 service sector and, 12–20 solutions to rise of, 273–278 (see also basic income guarantee) as threat to workers with varying education and skill levels, xiv–xv, 59 of total US employment, 223 Triple Revolution report, 30–31 white-collar, 85–86, 105–106, 126–128 See also robotics; robots automotive industry, 3, 76, 193–194 autonomous cars, xiii, 94, 176, 181–191 as shared resource, 186–190 Autor, David, 50 Average Is Over (Cowen), 123, 126n aviation, 66–67, 179, 256 AVT, Inc., 18 Ayres, Ian, 125 Babbage, Charles, 79 Baker, Stephen, 96n, 102n Barra, Hugo, 121 Barrat, James, 231, 238–239 basic income guarantee, 31n, 257–261 approaches to, 261–262 downsides and risks of, 268–271 economic argument for, 264–267 economic risk taking and, 267–268 incentives and, 261–264 paying for, 271–273 Baxter (robot), 5–6, 7, 10 BD Focal Point GS Imaging System, 153 Beaudry, Paul, 127 Beijing Genomics Institute, 236n Bell Labs, 159 Berg, Andrew G., 214–215 Bernanke, Ben, 37 big data, xv, 25n, 86–96 collection of, 86–87 correlation vs. cause and, 88–89, 102 deep learning and, 92–93 health care and, 159–160 knowledge-based jobs and, 93–96 machine learning and, 89–92 The Big Switch (Carr), 72 Bilger, Burkhard, 186 “BinCam,” 125n “Bitter Pill” (Brill), 160 Blinder, Alan, 117–118, 119 Blockbuster, 16, 19 Bloomberg, 113–114 Bluestone, Barry, 220 Borders, 16 Boston Consulting Group, 9 Boston Globe (newspaper), 149 Boston Red Sox, 83 Boston University, 141 Bowley, Arthur, 38 Bowley’s Law, 38–39, 41 box-moving robot, 1–2, 5–6 brain, reverse engineering of human, 237 breast cancer screening, 152 Brill, Steven, 160, 163 Brin, Sergey, 186, 188, 189, 236 Brint, Steven, 251 Brooks, Rodney, 5 Brown, Jerry, 134 Brynjolfsson, Erik, 60, 122, 254 Bureau of Labor Statistics, 13, 16, 38n, 158, 222–223, 281 Bush, George W., 116 business interest lobbying, economic policy and, 57–58 “Busy child scenario,” (Barrat) 238–239 Calico, 236 California Institute of Technology, 133 Canada, 41, 58, 167n, 251 “Can Nanotechnology Create Utopia?” (Kaku), 247n capital individual endowments of, 273–275 taxes on, 277–278 Capital in the Twenty-First Century (Piketty), 275 capitalism, drive to automate and, 255–256 Car and Driver (magazine), 185 carbon-based materials, 70, 70n carbon nanotubes, 70n, 245 carbon tax, 272 Carr, Nicholas, 72, 254, 256, 257 cars, autonomous, xiii, 94, 176, 181–191 cause, big data and correlation vs., 102 CBE.

Stakeholder Capitalism: A Global Economy That Works for Progress, People and Planet
by Klaus Schwab
Published 7 Jan 2021

While a higher score over time tells us that inequality has risen, it's difficult to understand what that means in practice. In the US, for example, the Gini coefficient rose from its low point of 0.43 in 1971 to a post-war high of 0.58 today.40 It is an increase, of course, but precisely how good or bad is either number? Thomas Piketty, a French economist, laid out the problem in a better way. In his 2013 book Capital in the Twenty-First Century,41 he revealed how the share of income that went to the top 10 percent of earners evolved over time. In 1971, his data showed the top 10 percent earners took home one third of national income. In the early 2010s, they took half of income.

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See West Germany BYD (“Build Your Dreams”), 60 ByteDance, 61 C Caballero, Sandra, 163–164 California efforts to reduce emissions in, 167 Gig Workers Rising in, 241 Proposition C proposing tax to help the homeless, 212–213 rejected Proposition (2020) designating gig workers as employees, 187–188 Rideshare Drivers United advocacy group, 187 See also United States Capital in the Twenty-First Century (Piketty), 38 Capitalism the golden age (1945–early 1970s) of, 8 history of medieval, 131 ideological battle between communism and, 7 Marc Benioff's speech (2020) on, 164, 211 productivity growth during golden age of, 33–34 shareholder, 171–172, 173 state, 171, 172–173, 193 See also Stakeholder capitalism Capitalism, Alone (Milanovic), 173 Carbon footprints finding hope for lowering, 159 no magic formula for lowering, 157 Paris Agreement aim to lower, 150, 165, 182, 183, 189, 198 urbanization and increased, 159–160 Carnegie, Andrew, 132 Carnegie Hall, 132 Carney, Mark, 162 Carroll, Aaron E., 231 Case, Anne, 42 Castro, Fidel, 76 Central European University, 113 Central European Warsaw Pact, 77 CEO Climate Leaders, 167 Checks and balances, 185, 193–198 Chevron, 134 Chiang Kai-shek, 56 Chicago School, 14, 136, 140 Chile copper exports, 64 China (People's Republic) age/gender representation political issues in, 188 becoming an upper-middle-income country, 36 Chinese Dream in, 184 city of Shenzhen of, 55, 57–61 continued trust in public institutions in, 196 demographic changes in, 161 one-child policy of, 161 People's Republic established by CPC, 56–57 Sham Chun River in, 55, 61 World Inequality Lab (WIL) on rising inequality in, 72–73fig World Trade Organization membership of, 18 WTO membership of, 18, 59, 64 ZF Drivetech Co.

The Data Detective: Ten Easy Rules to Make Sense of Statistics
by Tim Harford
Published 2 Feb 2021

The show was an ambitious hour-long special in front of a studio audience during which various worthies would discuss why inequality in the UK mattered. In early discussions with the program’s production team, I pointed them toward the World Inequality Database, a resource that was originally put together by the economists Tony Atkinson and Thomas Piketty. Piketty, of course, was the superstar author of Capital in the Twenty-First Century; Sir Tony, who died in 2017, was one of his academic mentors. The two of them favored stiff redistributive taxes and wide-ranging government intervention in the economy. Like many economists, I’m quite wary of that sort of policy, but I recommended their database anyway.

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See also choice research Bell, Vanessa, 256–57 Bem, Daryl, 111, 113–14, 119–23 benefits of statistical analysis, 9 Berti, Gasparo, 172 Bevacqua, Graciela, 194–95, 212 Beyth, Ruth, 248–49, 251, 254 biases biased assimilation, 35–36 confirmation bias, 33 current offense bias, 169 and motivated reasoning, 27–29, 32–36, 38, 131, 268 negativity bias, 95–99 non-response bias, 146–47 novelty bias, 95–99, 113, 114, 122 optimism bias, 96 and power of doubt, 13 publication bias, 113–16, 118–23, 125–27 racial bias in criminal justice, 176–79 in sampling, 135–38, 142–45, 147–51 selection bias, 2, 245–46 survivorship bias, 109–10, 112–13, 122–26 systematic bias in algorithms, 166 and value of statistical knowledge, 17 big data and certification of researchers, 182 and criminal justice, 176–79 and excessive credulity in data, 164–67 and found data, 149, 151, 152, 154 and Google Flu Trends, 153–57 historical perspective on, 171–75 influence in today’s world, 183 limitations and misuse of, 159–63, 170–71 proliferation of, 157–59 and teacher evaluations, 163–64 See also algorithms Big Data (Cukier and Mayer-Schönberger), 148, 157 “Big Duck” graphics, 216–18, 217, 229–30 Big Issue, The, 226n “Billion Pound-O-Gram, The” (infographic), 223 billionaires, 78–80 binge drinking, 75 Bird, Sheila, 68 bird’s-eye view of data, 61–64, 203, 221, 265 BizzFit, 108 Black Swan, The (Taleb), 101 Blastland, Michael, 10, 68, 93 blogs, 76 Bloomberg TV, 89 body count metrics, 58 Boijmans Museum, 20 Boon, Gerard, 19, 30–31 border wall debate, 93–94 Borges, Jorge Luis, 118 Boyle, Robert, 172–75 brain physiology, 270 Bredius, Abraham, 19–23, 29–32, 35, 43–45, 78, 242, 262 Bretton Woods conference, 262 Brettschneider, Brian, 224 Brexit, 71, 277 British Army, 213–14, 220–21 British Election Study, 145–46 British Medical Journal, 6, 67 British Treasury, 256–57 Broward County Sheriff’s Office, 176 Brown, Derren, 115 Brown, Zack “Danger,” 108 Buchanan, Larry, 229, 232 budget deficits, 188, 192–93, 195 Buffett, Warren, 259 Bureau of Economic Analysis, 190, 205 Bureau of Labor Statistics, 190, 205, 212 business-cycle forecasting, 258–59 business writing, 123–24 Butoyi, Imelda, 62–63 Cairo, Alberto, 227 Cambridge Analytica, 158 Cambridge University, 162. See also King’s College, Cambridge Cameron, David, 146 camouflage, 218–19 campaign finance, 274–75 Campbell, Donald T., 59 Campbell Collaboration, 134 Canada, 196–97, 209, 211 cancer diagnoses and research, 3–6, 24, 97, 241, 248, 279 Capital in the Twenty-First Century (Piketty), 83 capital punishment, 35–36 Caravaggio, Michelangelo, 30–31 carbon emissions, 272–73 Carter, Jimmy, 188 casualty statistics, 58, 231–37, 234, 235 categorization of statistical data, 68–70 causation vs. correlation, 15, 64, 156–57, 275 Census Bureau, 190, 205 census data, 147–48, 196–99, 205–6 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), 153, 154, 155 Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine, 128 certification of researchers, 182 Chalmers, Iain, 133 Chambers, David, 259 charts, 215–16, 218n, 224, 227–29, 232–36, 232, 234, 235.

Stakeholder Capitalism: A Global Economy That Works for Progress, People and Planet
by Klaus Schwab and Peter Vanham
Published 27 Jan 2021

While a higher score over time tells us that inequality has risen, it's difficult to understand what that means in practice. In the US, for example, the Gini coefficient rose from its low point of 0.43 in 1971 to a post-war high of 0.58 today.40 It is an increase, of course, but precisely how good or bad is either number? Thomas Piketty, a French economist, laid out the problem in a better way. In his 2013 book Capital in the Twenty-First Century,41 he revealed how the share of income that went to the top 10 percent of earners evolved over time. In 1971, his data showed the top 10 percent earners took home one third of national income. In the early 2010s, they took half of income.

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See West Germany BYD (“Build Your Dreams”), 60 ByteDance, 61 C Caballero, Sandra, 163–164 California efforts to reduce emissions in, 167 Gig Workers Rising in, 241 Proposition C proposing tax to help the homeless, 212–213 rejected Proposition (2020) designating gig workers as employees, 187–188 Rideshare Drivers United advocacy group, 187 See also United States Capital in the Twenty-First Century (Piketty), 38 Capitalism the golden age (1945–early 1970s) of, 8 history of medieval, 131 ideological battle between communism and, 7 Marc Benioff's speech (2020) on, 164, 211 productivity growth during golden age of, 33–34 shareholder, 171–172, 173 state, 171, 172–173, 193 See also Stakeholder capitalism Capitalism, Alone (Milanovic), 173 Carbon footprints finding hope for lowering, 159 no magic formula for lowering, 157 Paris Agreement aim to lower, 150, 165, 182, 183, 189, 198 urbanization and increased, 159–160 Carnegie, Andrew, 132 Carnegie Hall, 132 Carney, Mark, 162 Carroll, Aaron E., 231 Case, Anne, 42 Castro, Fidel, 76 Central European University, 113 Central European Warsaw Pact, 77 CEO Climate Leaders, 167 Checks and balances, 185, 193–198 Chevron, 134 Chiang Kai-shek, 56 Chicago School, 14, 136, 140 Chile copper exports, 64 China (People's Republic) age/gender representation political issues in, 188 becoming an upper-middle-income country, 36 Chinese Dream in, 184 city of Shenzhen of, 55, 57–61 continued trust in public institutions in, 196 demographic changes in, 161 one-child policy of, 161 People's Republic established by CPC, 56–57 Sham Chun River in, 55, 61 World Inequality Lab (WIL) on rising inequality in, 72–73fig World Trade Organization membership of, 18 WTO membership of, 18, 59, 64 ZF Drivetech Co.

Vanishing Frontiers: The Forces Driving Mexico and the United States Together
by Andrew Selee
Published 4 Jun 2018

However, the US rate has expanded in recent years, while the Mexican rate dropped noticeably over two decades but still remained high. See Mark Deen, “Chile, Mexico, U.S. Have Highest Inequality Rates, OECD Says,” Bloomberg, November 24, 2016. On growing inequality in the United States, see Thomas Piketty, Capital in the Twenty-First Century (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2014). On Mexico, see Gerardo Esquivel, Desigualdad extrema en Mexico (Mexico City: Oxfam, 2015). Medium enterprises with more: Eduardo Bolio et al., “A Tale of Two Mexicos: Growth and Prosperity in a Two-Speed Economy,” McKinsey Global Institute, March 2014, http://www.mckinsey.com/global-themes/americas/a-tale-of-two-mexicos (podcast also available).

Reimagining Capitalism in a World on Fire
by Rebecca Henderson
Published 27 Apr 2020

My healthcare coverage is too expensive.’” He told the New Yorker that it was not fair for employees of a Fortune 50 company to be struggling to make ends meet, and explicitly linked the decision to the broader debate about inequality, mentioning that he had given copies of Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century to all his top executives. “Companies are not just money-making machines,” he told the magazine. “For the good of the social order, these are the kinds of investments we should be willing to make. There definitely is a moral component and, you know, I had plenty of arguments that the spreadsheet wouldn’t pencil out.

Value of Everything: An Antidote to Chaos The
by Mariana Mazzucato
Published 25 Apr 2018

They are seen as profiting from speculative activities based on little more than buying low and selling high, or buying and then stripping productive assets simply to sell them on again with no real value added. More sophisticated analyses have linked rising inequality to the particular way in which the ‘takers' have increased their wealth. The French economist Thomas Piketty's influential book Capital in the Twenty-First Century focuses on the inequality created by a predatory financial industry that is taxed insufficiently, and by ways in which wealth is inherited across generations, which gives the richest a head start in getting even richer. Piketty's analysis is key to understanding why the rate of return on financial assets (which he calls capital) has been higher than that on growth, and calls for higher taxes on the resultant wealth and inheritance to stop the vicious circle.

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Glyn, Capitalism Unleashed: Finance, Globalization and Welfare (Oxford: University Press, 2006), p. 53; almost 80 per cent of the total increase in US demand from 1995 to 2000 is represented by household spending on consumption and residential investment. 43. A. Barba and M. Pivetti, ‘Rising household debt: Its causes and macroeconomic implications - a long-period analysis', Cambridge Journal of Economics, 33(1) (2009), pp. 113-37. 44. Glyn, Capitalism Unleashed, p. 7. 45. T. Piketty, Capital in the Twenty-First Century (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2014), p. 438. 46. Source: A. Haldane, Labour's Share (London: TVC, 12 November 2015), p. 32, adapted from J. P. Pessoa and J. Van Reenen, ‘The UK productivity and jobs puzzle: Does the answer lie in labour market flexibility?', Centre for Economic Performance Special Paper 31 (2013), compared to 65-70 per cent during similar periods at the end of the 1960s and during the 1980s. 47.

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G., Kamarudeen, S., Mills, K. and Wild, R., ‘Total public service output, inputs and productivity', Economic and Labour Market Review, 4(10) (2010), pp. 89-112: http://doi.org/10.1057/elmr.2010.145 Philippon, T., ‘Finance vs Wal-Mart: Why are financial services so expensive?', in Blinder, A., Lo, A. and Solow, R. (eds), Rethinking the Financial Crisis (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2012): http://www.russellsage.org/sites/all/files/Rethinking- Finance/Philippon_v3.pdf Pigou, A. C., The Economics of Welfare (London: Macmillan, 1926). Piketty, T., Capital in the Twenty-First Century (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2014). Pisano, G., Science Business: The Promise, the Reality, and the Future of Biotech (Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Press, 2006). Polanyi, K., The Great Transformation: The Political and Economic Origins of Our Time (1944; Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 2001).

The Innovation Illusion: How So Little Is Created by So Many Working So Hard
by Fredrik Erixon and Bjorn Weigel
Published 3 Oct 2016

As the managerialist disposition for predictability and preservation seized the corporate world, capitalism lost its orientation. It wrecked its compass for economic dynamism and competition that contests markets. Now capitalism is challenged, not from outside competition, but by the four horsemen of capitalist decline. The existential challenge of capitalism in the twenty-first century is a growing inability to foster contestable innovation and entrepreneurial competition. The importance can hardly be exaggerated: reversing capitalism’s decline is pivotal to stopping the growing populist unrest in the West. Capitalism is no longer what most people think it is. 2 WHEN CAPITALISM BECAME MIDDLE-AGED The long, dull, monotonous years of middle-aged prosperity … are excellent campaigning weather for the devil.

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While, for instance, the growth in net worth of US nonfinancial company holdings in foreign subsidiaries accelerated from the late 1980s up to the late 1990s, a trend decline followed and its trend growth in the past ten years has been lower than from the late 1950s to the early 1980s. 47.PR Newswire, “Dealogic Data.” 48.M&A activity is generally higher in periods of high stock market valuation. 49.Doidge, Karolyi, and Stulz, “The US Listing Gap.” 50.Litan, “Among Ingredients Needed for Faster Growth?” 51.The Economist, “Corporate Cocaine.” 3 The Color of Capitalism Is Gray 1.Team, “Harley-Davidson’s Success.” 2.Gross et al., “The Turnaround at Harley-Davidson.” 3.Piketty, Capital in the Twenty-First Century. 4.Kohn and Yip-Williams, “The Separation of Ownership from Ownership.” 5.Beetsma and Vos, “Stabilisers or Amplifiers.” 6.Vitali, Glattfelder, and Battiston, “The Network of Global Corporate Control.” 7.Minsky, “Uncertainty and the Institutional Structure of Capitalist Economies,” sec. 4. 8.Kay, Other People’s Money, 1–2. 9.Greenwood and Scharfstein, “The Growth of Modern Finance”; Weissmann, “How Wall Street Devoured Corporate America.” 10.Federal Reserve, “Assets and Liabilities.” 11.Harris, Schwedel, and Kim, “A World Awash in Money.” 12.Greenwood and Scharfstein, “The Growth of Modern Finance.” 13.Roxburgh et al., “The Emerging Equity Gap.” 14.Awford, “Room for a (Souped-up) Ford Fiesta?”

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49.Haldane, “Patience and Finance.” 50.Zweig, “Why Hair-Trigger Traders Lose the Race.” 51.NYSE, “Fact Book Online: Interactive Viewer.” 52.MoneyBeat, “Why Hair-Trigger Traders Lose the Race” and NYSEData.com Factbook, “Interactive Viewer.” 53.Philippon and Reshef, “Wages and Human Capital in the US Financial Industry.” 54.Greenwood and Scharfstein, “The Growth of Modern Finance.” 55.Cecchetti and Kharroubi, “Why Growth in Finance Is a Drag on the Real Economy.” 56.Arcand, Berkes, and Panizza, “Too Much Finance?”; Cecchetti and Kharroubi, “Reassessing the Impact of Finance on Growth.” 57.Swagel, “The Financial Crisis.” 58.Cecchetti and Kharroubi, “Why Growth in Finance Is a Drag on the Real Economy.” 59.Christensen, Kaufman, and Shih, “Innovation Killers,” 1–2. 60.Piketty, Capital in the Twenty-First Century, 264–81. 4 The Rise and Rise Again of Corporate Managerialism 1.Martti, Nokia: The Inside Story. 2.Steinbock, The Nokia Revolution. 3.Ahmad, Nokia’s Smartphone Problem. 4.Kuittinen, “Nokia Sells Handset Business to Microsoft.” 5.Lomas, “Nokia’s $7.2BN Devices & Services Exit.” 6.Cheng, “It’s Official: Motorola Mobility Now Belongs to Lenovo.” 7.Bass, “Microsoft’s Concept Videos.” 8.Jenkins, “Jenkins: Only Bill Gates Can Change Microsoft.” 9.Yarow, “Here’s What Steve Ballmer Thought about the iPhone.” 10.A good survey of companies failing at exits is McGrath, The End of Competitive Advantage. 11.Steinberg, “Among the First to Fall at I.B.M.” 12.Crainer, “‘Saving Big Blue.’” 13.Clinch, “How Apple Prompted This Country’s Downgrade.” 14.Schumpeter, Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy, 132. 15.Coase, “The Nature of the Firm,” 388. 16.Oliver Williamson, who received the Nobel Prize in economics for his work on economic governance, developed the idea of firm boundaries and put the emphasis on the internal or endogenous capacity of the firm to generate output that is more competitive than the market. 17.Santos and Eisenhardt, “Organizational Boundaries and Theories of Organization,” 491. 18.Coase, “The Nature of the Firm,” 390. 19.Coase, “The Nature of the Firm,” 404–5. 20.Zenger, Felin, and Bigelow, “Theories of the Firm–Market Boundary.” 21.Tett, The Silo Effect. 22.Morieux, “How Too Many Rules at Work Keep You from Getting Things Done.” 23.See, for instance, Caliendo and Rossi-Hansberg, “The Impact of Trade on Organization and Productivity.” 24.Zhou, “Coordination Costs, Organization Structure and Firm Growth.” 25.Langlois and Everett, “Complexity, Genuine Uncertainty, and the Economics of Organization”; Joskow, “Vertical Integration.” 26.Strom, “Big Companies Pay Later.” 27.Rajan and Zingales, “The Firm as a Dedicated Hierarchy.” 28.Bhide, The Origin and Evolution of New Business, 94. 29.Rajan and Zingales, “The Firm as a Dedicated Hierarchy,” 7. 30.Teece, “Profiting from Technological Innovation.” 31.Jensen, “Agency Cost of Free Cash Flow, Corporate Finance, and Takeovers.” 32.Stein, “Agency, Information and Corporate Investment”; Matvos and Seru, “Resource Allocation within Firms.” 33.See Berger and Ofek, “Diversification’s Effect on Firm Value”; Rajan, Servaes, and Zingales, “The Cost of Diversity.” 34.Scharfstein and Stein, “The Dark Side of Internal Capital Markets.” 35.Scharfstein and Stein.

The Great Surge: The Ascent of the Developing World
by Steven Radelet
Published 10 Nov 2015

It requires a growth-and-development strategy focused on creating economic opportunities for the majority of people (including the poor), coupled with strategic investments in health, education, and infrastructure, and well-designed safety nets. That the dominant trend across developing countries has been little change in inequality will come as a surprise to those who have been following the big debates about growing income inequality in rich countries. Thomas Piketty’s blockbuster Capital in the Twenty-First Century sparked widespread debate on the nature of economic growth and income distribution in the world’s richest countries, especially the United States, France, and the United Kingdom. The debates start with the fact—and it is a well-documented fact—that income inequality improved between the end of World War II and the late 1970s but has worsened in many rich countries since then.

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Abacha, Sani, 99, 113 Abdullah II, King of Jordan, 187 Abu Dhabi, 159 Abundance (Diamandis and Kotler), 300 Acemoglu, Daron, 13, 129, 140, 249 Achebe, Chinua, 72 Aden, Zheng He’s trip to, 152 Afghanistan, 9, 208, 285 education in, 215 as landlocked, 202, 205 Soviet invasion of, 134, 146 US war in, 8, 10, 118, 119, 141, 146 Africa, 37, 44, 46 agriculture in, 261 climate change and, 284 democracy in, 108, 110–11 GMOs in, 172 Green Revolution and, 170–73 growth in, 50, 189 malaria in, 211–13 megacities in, 277 mobile phones in, 157 pessimism about, 12 protests in, 102 resources in, 261 Africa Betrayed (Ayittey), 140 African National Congress Party (ANC), 143, 182, 185 agricultural productivity, 22, 25, 38, 305 agriculture, 37, 44, 45, 56–57, 166, 258, 283, 293 in Africa, 261 in Asia, 201 in China, 35 geography and, 204–5 Green Revolution and, 38, 79, 170–73, 204 growth in production of, 273–74 improvements in, 194–95 trade in, 273 AIDS, 20, 75, 81–82, 83, 94, 95, 173, 174–75, 182, 205, 214, 221, 246, 266 air defense identification zone (ADIZ), 288 air travel, 168–69, 169 Aker, Jenny, 177 Akuffo, Fred, 189 Albania, 50, 108, 159 Algeria, 114 life expectancy in, 78 poverty in, 36 Allende, Salvador, 143–44 aluminum, 53 American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), 172, 281–82 American Indians, 112, 142 American Medical Association, 172 Amin, Idi, 127 Andes, University of the, 247 Andropov, Yuri, 134 Angola, 114, 145 forest loss in, 280 war in, 100 antibiotics, 77, 94, 267 antimicrobial resistance, 267 antiretroviral therapy (ART), 174, 214 apartheid, 44, 57, 68, 100, 103, 135, 141, 180, 182 Apple, 46 Aquino, Benigno, 143, 149 Aquino, Cory, 17, 104, 109, 184, 185, 186 Arabian Peninsula, 152 Arab Spring, 255, 263 Aral Sea, 285 Argentina, 100 financial crisis in, 255 slowing of progress in, 250, 262 Arias, Oscar, 18, 149, 184 Armenia, 113 and democracy, 248, 263 economic problems in, 255 Army Air Corps, US, 210 Arndt, Channing, 226, 227 Arnquist, Sarah, 176–77 Arrow, Kenneth, 62–63 artemisinin-based combination therapies (ACTs), 213, 267 Asia, 79 education in, 201 financial crisis in, 38, 39, 126, 144 health in, 201 megacities in, 277 values in, 121, 122–23 Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), 259 assassinations, 118 assembly, freedom of, 198–99 Australia, 25, 78, 167, 231, 281, 291 malaria in, 210 Austria, as landlocked, 202 authoritarianism, 3, 8, 22, 99, 101–3, 106, 107, 109, 120, 121–22, 125–29, 141, 146, 149, 188, 222, 224, 249–51, 255, 263–66 Ayittey, George, 140 Azerbaijan, 114 Babangida, Ibrahim, 99 Bali, 286 Bamako, 265 Banerjee, Abhijit, 14, 31 Bangladesh, 18, 37, 45, 127, 144, 159, 271 building collapse in, 162 data entry firms in, 178 democracy in, 124 education in, 87 garments from, 59 growth in, 6, 45, 238, 242, 271 inequality in, 67 jeans from, 56 MAMA in, 178 threats to gains in, 271–72 war in, 145 Zheng He’s trip to, 152 Ban Ki-moon, 284–85 banks, 56, 154, 241, 303 technology for, 175, 179 Bǎè Chuán, 152 bar associations, 110 Barlonyo camp, 287 Barre, Mohammed Siad, 99 Barro, Robert, 87 Bashir, Omar al-, 185 Batavia, 137 Bauer, Peter, 213, 220, 221 Bazzi, Sami, 225 bed nets, 94, 213 Belarus, 114, 185 Belgian Congo, 13, 140 Belize, 56, 69–70 benign dictators, 125–26 Benin, 103, 144, 216 Berlin Wall, fall of, x, 103, 123, 134, 143, 148 Bermeo, Sarah, 223 Better Angels of Our Nature, The (Pinker), 115 Bhavnani, Rikhil, 225 Bhote Koshi River, 203 Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, 95, 161, 171, 212 biodiversity loss, 9, 63 biofuels, 281 Birdsall, Nancy, 298 Birendra Bir Bikram Shah Dev, King of Nepal, 122 Bismarck, Otto Eduard Leopold von, 146 Black Death, 276 black markets, 192 Boeing 707, 168 Boğaziçi University, 247 Bokassa, Jean-Bédel, 222 Boko Haram, 287 Bolivia, 162, 202, 205, 280 Bollyky, Thomas, 268 Boone, Peter, 225 border disputes, 288–91 Borlaug, Norman, 170 Botchwey, Kwesi, 189 Botswana, 9, 37, 207 aid to, 214, 216 as democracy, 98, 263 education in, 190 growth in, 5, 7, 15, 50, 126, 128, 141, 236 as landlocked, 202 life expectancy in, 81, 266 Bottom Billion, The (Collier), 118, 188, 202, 205, 217, 303 Bourguignon, François, 25, 27, 28 Brazil, 20, 22, 36, 38, 45, 155, 186 coastal vs. isolated areas in, 201 data entry firms in, 178 democracy in, 123 economic problems in, 186, 255 future of, 234 growth in, 6, 7, 20, 22, 45, 58, 235, 262 household income in, 50 inequality in, 66–67 infrastructure financing in, 259–60 innovation in, 302 natural capital in, 63 protests in, 263 reforms in, 186, 192 trade encouraged by, 155 universities in, 247 breast feeding, 178 British Royal Society, 172 British Shell Transport and Trading Company, 138 British South Africa Company, 180 Brown, Drusilla, 165 Brükner, Markus, 226 Brynjolfsson, Erik, 166, 300 budget deficits, 295 Buenos Aires, 201 Bulgaria, 7, 134, 143 Burkina Faso: demonstrations in, 281 education in, 87 as landlocked, 205 Song-Taaba Yalgré women’s cooperative in, 178 Burnside, Craig, 225 Burundi, 49 inequality in, 69–70 lack of growth in, 50 as landlocked, 202 Buthelezi, Mangosuthu, 185 Cabbages and Kings (O. Henry), 97 Cairo, 206, 216 California, 281 call centers, 56, 178, 262 Cambodia, 11, 36, 106, 114, 159 camels, 152 Cameroon, 281 Canada, 47, 210, 231 Cape Town, University of, 247 capitalism, 122, 146, 147–48, 149, 156, 162, 163, 250, 264, 303 in Asia, 155–57 Capital in the Twenty-First Century (Piketty), 68–69 capital markets, 164 carbon dioxide, 278, 282 carbon emissions, 297 Cardoso, Fernando, 186–87 Caribbean, 36 Carnation Revolution, 105 Carothers, Thomas, 112 Case Studies in Global Health, 214 cash transfer programs, 38 cassava, 171, 215 Castro, Fidel, 100, 144 Catholicism, 120–21, 123 cattle plague, 215 CD4 cell count, 175 Ceauşescu, Nicolae, 143 Center for Global Development, 298 Center for Systemic Peace, 107 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), US, 210 Central Africa, 205 Central African Republic, 49, 50, 222 Central America: crime in, 264 megacities in, 277 wars in, 81, 141 Central Asia, 36, 141, 147 Central Bank, Gambia, 190 Central Military Commission, 134 Chad: child mortality in, 84 health improvements in, 93 as landlocked, 205 war in, 145 Chandy, Laurence, 42, 243–44 Chavez, Hugo, 113 Chen, Shaohua, 27, 29 Chernenko, Konstantin, 134 Chernobyl nuclear power plant, 134 childbirth, 74, 75–82 child mortality, 24, 72–96, 74, 85, 93, 246 Chile, 47, 127 coup in, 100 democracy in, 104, 123 growth in, 6, 7, 45, 128, 147 individual leadership in, 187 life expectancy in, 78 malaria in, 210 Pinochet’s rule in, 107–8, 122, 141, 143–44 trade encouraged by, 155 Chiluba, Frederick, 133 China, ix–x, 3, 7, 20, 22, 106, 126, 144, 203, 292, 298, 300 authoritarian capitalism in, 147, 265–66 Coca-Cola in, 46 in confrontations with neighbors, 273 demand in, 53 demographic dividend in, 236 and dictatorships, 222 emigration from, 284 exploration by, 151–53 exports from, 154 future of, 234, 249–52 growth in, 6, 8–9, 15, 17, 21, 35–36, 45, 50, 62, 71, 125, 128, 147, 154, 201, 232, 233, 235–37, 242, 269 health in, 201 income in, 201 individual leadership in, 187 inequality in, 66, 69–70 infrastructure financing in, 259–60 innovation and technology in, 154–55, 302 market reforms in, 35, 102, 134–35, 192 natural capital in, 63 opening of, 5 per capital income in, 153 pollution in, 62 poverty reduction in, 201, 244 savings and investment in, 235 slowdown in growth of, 235–37, 249, 255, 257, 293 universities in, 247 US relationship with, 298–99 cholera, 77 Chun Doo-hwan, 99 Churchill, Winston, 97 civil liberties, 99, 199 civil rights, 112 civil servants, 102 civil war, 7 in Africa, 12 decline in, 115–16, 116 Civil War, US, 142 Clemens, Michael, 225 climate change, 4, 9, 19, 21, 63, 233, 234, 256, 272–73, 278, 281–84, 285–86, 296–97, 301, 305 coal, 44, 53, 278 Coca-Cola, 46, 159 cocoa, 163, 189 Cold War, 4, 7, 11, 16, 44, 52, 81, 100, 103, 115, 116, 131, 135, 144, 145, 146, 150, 156, 183, 184, 214, 223 Collier, Paul, 14–15, 118, 188, 202, 205, 213, 217, 227, 292, 303 Collins, Daryl, 32, 33–34 Collor de Mello, Fernando, 186 Colombia, 22, 237 data entry firms in, 178 universities in, 247 colonialism, 43–44, 52, 140, 147, 148, 149, 156 and independence, 140–43 of Indonesia, 136–40 Columbus, Christopher, 152 Coming Anarchy, The (Kaplan), 11 Commission on Growth and Development, 86, 165–66, 188 commodities, 53–57, 55, 163 Communism, 4, 11, 124, 125, 135, 139, 143, 146, 147, 149, 150, 184, 250 demise of, 16, 183 Communist Party, China, 123, 138, 250 Communist Party, Indonesia, 138 Communist Party, Soviet, 133, 138 comprehensive capital, 62–63 conflict, see violence Confucianism, 122 Congo, 114, 144, 185, 213, 243, 285 child mortality in, 84 civil war in, 181, 206 coup in, 100 education in, 190 lack of growth in, 50 war in, 81 Congress, US, 298 construction, 37, 45 consumption, 40–41, 40 Contingent Reserve Arrangement, 259 contract enforcement, 261 Converse, Nathan, 198 copper, 53 corn, 162, 281 corruption, 112, 261, 264 in Brazil, 186 in Thailand, 254 in US, 142 Costa Rica, 18, 58, 159 aid to, 223 as democracy, 7, 98, 123 growth in, 50 costume jewelry, 56 Côte d’Ivoire, 163, 263 cotton, 25 creative destruction, 249 Cuba, 22, 141, 145 and democracy, 248 dictatorship in, 100, 106, 144 Cultural Revolution, 35, 128, 153, 185 currencies, and resource curse, 206 Cuyamel Fruit Company, 97–98 Czechoslovakia, 143 protests in, 134 Velvet Revolution in, 103 Czech Republic, 184 da Gama, Vasco, 152 dairy products, 280 Darfur, 8, 10, 206 Dasgupta, Partha, 62–63 data entry firms, 178 Davies, Sally, 267 DDT, 212 Deaton, Angus, 89, 213 debts, 11, 193 in Africa, 12 deficits, 101 dehydration, 94, 173 de Klerk, F.

Crashed: How a Decade of Financial Crises Changed the World
by Adam Tooze
Published 31 Jul 2018

America’s massively skewed distribution of income and wealth was the product of inherited assets, amplified by pervasive technological and economic change and Warren Buffett’s “class war,” which extended to every facet of the political regulation and deregulation of the economy. If this was so, what would it take to counteract the imbalance and to redress the astonishingly one-sided outcomes? A polite European social democrat like Thomas Piketty inferred from his inequality data that what the world needed was a global wealth tax. This was the message of his remarkable global bestseller, Capital in the Twenty-First Century, which redefined the public debate about inequality in 2014.42 That would certainly help to offset the tendency toward massive inequality. But in a system as starkly polarized and lopsided as that of the United States, what relevance did such well-meaning suggestions have?

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Schwartz, “Wealth and Secular Stagnation: The Role of Industrial Organization and Intellectual Property Rights,” Russell Sage Foundation Journal 2.6 (2016): 226–249. 40. J. Kollewe, “‘Political Crap’: Tim Cook Condemns Apple Tax Ruling,” Guardian, September 1, 2016. 41. P. Thiel, “Competition Is for Losers,” Wall Street Journal, September 12, 2014. 42. Piketty, Capital in the Twenty-First Century (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2014). 43. R. Reich, “Income Inequality in the United States” (testimony before the Joint Economic Committee, US Congress, January 16, 2014). 44. E. McMurry, “Fox’s Hasselbeck Knocks Obama’s ‘Class Warfare’ Speech: ‘He Is the System’ He Criticizes,” MEDIAite, December 5, 2013. 45.

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W., 119 Bush, George W., 131, 135, 136, 192 supports Paulson’s bailout plans, 173 UN General Assembly address of, 1–2 Bush, Jeb, 568 Bush administration budget deficits of, 27–29, 30, 36, 282–83 defense and security spending during, 28 G20 formation and, 262–63 loses support of congressional Republicans, 170 tax cuts passed by, 27–28 BZW, 83 Cable, Vince, 273 California, 65–66 CalPERS, 209 Cameron, David, 350, 354, 417, 538, 540, 543, 545, 546 Canada, 594 Cantor, Eric, 182–83, 353, 568 capital controls, 475 capital flows, 11 collapse in, 2008-2009, 162–63 cross-border, in eurozone, 103–5 into developing economies, 473–74 into Eastern Europe, 126–28 into Orban’s Hungary, 492 into Ukraine, 493–94 Capital in the Twenty-First Century (Piketty), 462 Capital Purchase Program facility, 196–97 capital ratios, 85, 303, 312 capital requirements, 84–88 Basel I accord, 85 Basel II accord, 86 Basel III requirements, 313–14 Dodd-Frank Act requirements, 307 Carney, Mark, 402, 404, 555 Carrier, 577 Carville, James, 29 Case, Anne, 457 CDOs.

Disaster Capitalism: Making a Killing Out of Catastrophe
by Antony Loewenstein
Published 1 Sep 2015

The challenge faced by opponents of rampant capitalism was how to focus their rage coherently against increasingly pervasive forces. The study of capitalism is soaring at universities across America, indicating the desire on the part of tomorrow’s graduates to understand the tenuous connection between democracy and the capitalist economy.12 The phenomenal success of French economist Thomas Piketty’s book Capital in the Twenty-First Century—a work arguing that social discord is the likely outcome of surging financial inequality —indicates that the public knows there is a problem and is in search of clear accounts of it. Piketty advocates a global system of taxation on private property. “This is the only civilized solution,” he told the Observer newspaper.13 In 2014, even the world’s leading economic think-tank, the Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, urged higher taxes for the rich to help the bottom 40 percent of the population.

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Index Abbott, Tony 279, 286 Abdul (asylum seeker) 286 Abu Ghraib prison 15 abuse 258–62 aid 123 child 102 drug 37–9 human rights 110 labor 29 outsourced 260–1 in prisons 216–17, 218 sexual 252–8, 280–1 accountability 16, 30–1, 180, 277, 291, 310 Adam, Harry 118 AECOM 53–4 Aegis Defence Services 33 Afghan Institute for Strategic Studies 44 Afghanistan 12, 19–56, 59–63, 117, 175 arrival of PMCs 20 asylum seekers from 69–70 Australian contractors 60 casualties 32, 326n27 Chinese support for 37 contractors 28–31 corruption 22, 24, 27, 42, 45, 328n48, 329–30n58 counterinsurgency 43, 52–3 departure of foreign troops 62–3 dependence on America 45 development support 62–3, 324n2, 324n3 drug economy 37–9 election, 2004 31–2 election, 2009 32 election, 2014 32 entrepreneurs 56 fear of resurgent Taliban 44–5 financial situation 62–3 future of PMCs in 23 GDP 330n61 human rights 42 inequality 56 insurgency 12, 32 intelligence gathering 51–6 intelligence-sharing nations 21 invasion of 20, 31 labor abuses 29 laws against PMCs 21 locals’ view of 48 mineral rights 24, 330n65 mining industry 24, 49–50, 330n65 Ministry of Interior 21, 40–2 Ministry of Mines 50 natural resources 49 night raids 43, 46, 52, 54, 55, 328–9n50 occupation of 22, 31–5, 36, 43, 44, 52–3, 63, 325n10 official line 40–3 past conflicts 36–7 PMC numbers 20 population surveys 330–1n66 private military companies 16, 19–25, 33–5, 41–3, 44, 46–8, 48, 50, 59–62, 331n69 propaganda 26 reconstruction 325n11 resource exploitation 49–50 security forces 27, 330n61 Soviet invasion 37 suicide attacks 41 suicide rates 332n83 Taliban rule 25 translators 55, 325n19 USAID 327–28n46 US military bases 28 violence 20 war economy 25–31, 38, 63 warlords 32–3, 44, 326n28, 326–7n30 women in 44, 47–8, 48–9, 50–1, 330n59 Afghanistan Analysts Network 54–6, 328–9n50 Afghanistan Reconstruction Group 26 Afghan police force 27 Afghan Public Protection Force 21 Africa 23 African-Americans, incarceration rates 195, 196 Agility Logistics 124 aid Afghanistan 62–3 Australia 50 contracts 123–5 corruption 126, 171 criticism of process 144–7 food 145–6 fraud 123–4 Haiti 12, 108, 120, 144–7, 340n56, 342n89 human rights abuses 123 NGO-ization of 137–41 Papua New Guinea 13, 158–9, 167, 171–5, 179 profiteering 139 waste 146 aid dependency 121, 126 AIDS 89 Alexander, Michelle 195–6 Alex, Commander 156–7 Al-Hussein, Zeid Ra’ad 277 Al Jazeera America 29 American Correctional Association (ACA) conference, 2014 202–11 American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) 201 American University of Afghanistan 43–4 Amnesty International 259 Anastasiou, Vassilis 102 Anti-Defamation League 93 anti-fascist activism 93–4 anti-Semitism 90–1, 93 Arab Spring 97, 127–8 Arawa, Papua New Guinea 158, 167, 180–4 Aristide, Jean-Bertrand 26, 112–13, 151 Arizona 200–2 AshBritt 108 Ashton, Paul 201 assassinations 323n33, 331n69 Assessing Progress in Haiti Act (US) 124 Asylum Help 234 asylum seekers abuse 258–62 austerity 69 Australia 269–305 children 249–50 closed hospitality centers 67–8 costs 304 demonization of 77, 288 deportations 258–63 destinations 68 detention centers 13, 64–71, 76, 77–80, 230–5, 245–51, 271 detention costs 281–3 detention network privatization 77 Greece 64–71, 75–7, 77–80, 89 indefinite detention 68 lack of sympathy for 287–8 medical care 77–80, 256–8 mental health 254–5, 285, 286, 295, 302 motivation 68, 302–3 numbers reaching Europe 96 privatized housing 230–5 processing times 300–1 public sympathy 271 racist violence 71 reception centers 67 refugee crisis 95–8 self-harm 295–6 sexual abuse 280–1 Syntagma Square protest, 2014 70 United Kingdom 230–5, 244, 245–51, 252–8, 258–63 women 253–4 Athens 67, 102–3 Metropolitan Community Clinic 80–4 AusAID 158–9, 161, 171–5, 182, 189–91, 331–2n77 austerity, opposition to 72–5 Austin American-Statesman 108 Australasian Centre for Corporate Responsibility 190 Australasian Correctional Management (ACM) 282 Australia 8, 104 and Afghanistan 50 aid 50 asylum policy development 275–85, 286, 357n4, 357n9 asylum seeker network 269–305 asylum seekers 13 Community Assistance Program 304 complicity with BCL 160 Department of Immigration and Border Protection (DIBP) 271, 274, 279, 281–2, 284,286, 289–93, 295, 297–8, 300–1, 303 detention centers 13, 271, 274, 276, 278–9, 280–5, 285–305, 356n2, 357n11 detention costs 281–3 economic reforms 322n16 exploitation of Papua New Guinea 169–75 foreign policy 173–4 goals in PNG 172 immigration policy 278 “Mining for Development” initiative 190 the Pacific Solution 276–81 and Papua New Guinea 154, 160, 163, 167, 169–75, 176–7, 179, 188–91 PMC contractors 60 privatization 361n51 and Rio Tinto 162 state-ownership approach to resources 177 tender process 289–90 turnback policy 280, 286 Australian Mercy 285 Australian Navy 276 Australian Strategic Policy Institute 190 Autonomous Bougainville Government 161, 167, 178–80, 184, 346n33 Avera eCare 205 Avon Protection 203 Bagram prison 31 Bainimarama, Frank 346–7n41 Baker, Charles 117 Baldry, Eileen 285 Balkonis, Thomas 78–80 Bamazon (TV program) 306–7 Bangladesh 341n65 bank bailouts 3 bankers bonuses 4 Ban Ki-moon 113 Bank of America 3 Barnardo’s 249–50, 266 Barrick Gold 174 Batay Ouvriye 126 Bauer, Shane 204, 207–8, 210 bearing witness 9–10 Becket House, London 263 Bedford, Yarl’s Wood detention centre 252–8, 265 Behavioral International 227 Berati, Reza, murder of 283 Berghorn, George H. 204 Berman, Steve 187 BHP Billiton 172–3, 187, 189 Bigio, Gilbert 108 Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation 114 Bishop, Julie 176, 182 black sites 16 Blackwater 16, 35, 59, 323–4n40, 331n69 Blair, Tony 60, 236 Blanchard, Olivier 99 bloggers 308 Bloom, Devin D. 307 Blue Mountain Group 30 Boeing 15–16 Bolivia 26, 125 Booz Allen Hamilton 15 border controls, privatization 241 Bougainville Copper Limited (BCL) 159, 159–61, 162, 163, 184–6, 188, 190, 343n6 Bougainville, Papua New Guinea 154–64, 167–9, 176, 178–80, 184–5 Bougainville Revolutionary Army (BRA) 154–5, 163–4, 176, 343n6 Bougainville Women in Mining 183–4 Bozorg (asylum seeker) 232–3 Brand, Russell 267–8 bribery 22, 38, 41, 329–30n58 Brown, Bob 174 Brown, Michael, killing 203 Buckles, Nick 283 Burma 14 Bush, George W. 7, 25, 43, 118, 149 Cable, Vince 236 CACI 15–16 California 5, 196–7, 208 Callick, Rowan 176 Call Sense 210 Cambodia 276 Cameron, David 50, 62, 243, 244, 252, 263 Campbell, Chad 201 Campbell, David 284, 359n30 Campsfield detention facility 246–9, 266–7 Canada 120, 304 Capita 241–2 Capital in the Twenty-First Century (Piketty) 6 capitalism 1–2 critiques 361n5 disaster 6–9 Klein’s critique of 7–8 predatory 11, 13–14, 162, 310–11 unregulated 135–6 Caracol industrial park, Haiti 116, 128–33, 133–6, 148 Carol (senior analyst) 54–6 Carr, Bob 188–9 Cash, Linda 279 Centre for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) 124–5 Centre for Public Integrity 34 Chalmers, Camille 151–2 Chaman (Afghan refugee) 64–71 Channel 4 News 253, 267 Chaparro, Enrique Mari 137–9 cheap labor 117, 127, 132, 133, 144 Chemonics 123 Cheney, Dick 28, 30 CHF International 138–9 child abuse 102 children detention 249–50, 272 immigrants 212, 225 malnourished 82 in prisons 208 child slaves 145 China 14, 16, 24, 37, 49, 170 China Metallurgical Group Corporation (MCC) 24 cholera 113–16 Chomsky, Noam 238, 310 Christmas Island 269–75, 356n1 Christmas Island Community Reference Group 356–7n3 Christmas Island detention facility 271, 272–3, 274, 276, 278–9, 285–9, 299–305, 356n2 Chrysohoidis, Michalis 67–8 CIA 15, 59, 110, 331n69, 331n73 Citizens for a Free Kuwait 25 City AM (newspaper) 236–7 civilian casualties, Afghanistan 32 Clarke, Victoria 26 Clayton Homes 118 climate change 1–2, 8 Clinton, Bill 116, 118–19, 122, 123, 135 Clinton Foundation 118, 126, 136 Clinton, Hillary 8, 30, 118, 125, 131, 135, 171 Clive (information management consultant) 51–2 Clive (Serco contractor) 289–92 Coffey International 162 Colas, Landry 131 Cold War 33, 111 Collective Against Mining 121 colonialism 109, 160 Comcast 5 Commission on Wartime Contracting (US) 34 Community Assistance Program, Australia 304 community mapping 58 Conflict Mapping in Afghanistan since 1978 (Independent Human Rights Commission) 32 Congo, Democratic Republic of 120 contractors, Afghanistan 28–31 Conway, Jim 208–9 copper mining, ecological damage of 173 Corcoran, Thomas J. 110–11 Corinth detention centre 64, 78–80 Corizon 209 corporate ideology 14 corporate power 7 Corporate Responsibility Coalition 187–8 Corporate Watch 255, 263 CorrectHealth 199 Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) 13, 197–8, 199, 201–2, 211–22, 227, 228, 284–5 corruption Afghanistan 24, 27, 42, 45, 328n48, 329–30n58 aid 126, 171 Greece 64, 72 Haiti 141 overcharging 240–1 Papua New Guinea 170, 171, 188 price-gouging 292 counternarcotics information campaign 26 Crocker, Ryan C. 43 Crockett, Greg 204–5 Crossbar 204–5 Cuba 122 cultural sensitivity 21 Daily Mail 235 Daily Telegraph (Sydney newspaper) 172 Damana, Chris 184–5 Das, Satyajit 309 Daveona, Lawrence 177–8 David (Serco source) 292 Davis, Raymond 57, 331n73 Davis, Troy 199 Davos conference, 2015 2–3 debtocracies 99 Defence Logistics Agency 29 democracy 16, 311 Democracy Now!

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Ashraf 42–3 Haiti 26, 105–53, 175, 308 aid 12, 108, 120, 123–8, 144–7, 342n89 aid delivery failure 340n56 aid dependency 121, 126 American colonialism 109–13 American corporate pillaging 111–12 American investment 116–20 American policy 115–16, 116–20, 134 Aristide rule 112–13 beggars 106 Canadian aid 120 Caracol industrial park 116, 128–33, 133–6, 148 challenge facing 152–3 child slaves 145 cholera outbreak 113–16 CIA involvement 110 and the Cold War 111 corruption 141 coup, 2004 112 death toll, cholera outbreak 113 death toll, earthquake 107, 145 debt 127 Duvalier dictatorship 109–12 earnings 117, 132, 144 earthquake, January 2010 12, 107, 117 earthquake, January 2010, aftermath of 105–7 economic exploitation 132, 133–6 economic fragility 109–13 economic resistance 150 eco-system damage 130 effect of neoliberalism on 112–13 exploitation 107–8 foreign investment 116–18, 121–2, 133–6 French aid 120 historical background 109–13 homelessness 107 housing 129–30, 140, 150–1 human rights 110, 116 indigenous development 147–9, 150–2 job creation 131 leadership 119–20 living conditions 105–7, 141–4 mining regulation 120–1 National Palace demolition 137–9 NGO-ization of 137–41 occupation of 127 organisations populaires 112 paramilitary groups 109 political freedom 109 Presidential elections, 2015 140 reconstruction gold rush 107–9 refugee camps 141–4 religious faith 106 resource exploitation 120–1 revolution 109 rice imports 122–3 sovereignty 135, 146, 152 tourism 152 unemployment rate 127 unregulated capitalism 135–6 UN stabilization force 113, 115–16 women in 142–3 workers’ rights 148 Haiti Economic Lift Program 133 Haiti Grassroots Watch 117, 120 Haiti-Liberte 108–9 Halliburton 28 Hallward, Peter 109, 111–12, 152 Hamburg 84, 311 Hammond, Philip 16 Harding, Richard 284 Hardwick, Nick 263–7 Harper, Stephen 120 Harry (Christmas Islander) 272–3 Hastings, Michael 26 Hayatullah (asylum seeker) 301–3, 360n49 Headley, Linden 220–1 health services privatization, United Kingdom 244–5 heart disease 14 Hellenic Broadcasting Corporation 74 Hellenic Foundation for European and Foreign Policy 96 Hellenic Republic Asset Development Fund 101–2 helplessness, feeling of 308–9 Higgins, Greg 128 Hill+Knowlton 25–6 History Channel 306–7 homelessness 107 Honduras 225 Howard, John 275–6, 279 humanitarian relief, NGO-ization of 137–41 humanitarian work, military and 58–9 human rights 123 Afghanistan 42 commodification of 308 disregard for 9 and economic freedom 2 Haiti 110, 116 Human Rights Defense centre 216 Human Rights Watch 47, 48, 67, 71, 196, 200 Human Terrain System 53, 331n67 human trafficking 29, 70 Huppert, Julian 249–51 Hurricane Katrina 26, 118, 124, 337n6 Hurricane Sandy 8 Hyman, Christopher 290 identity, questions of 103–4 immigrants children 212, 225 criminalization 198–9 demonization of 226 deportation 212, 227–8 detention centers 211–28 incarceration rates 195 legal representation 217–18 United Kingdom 243–4 United States of America 198–9, 211–28 see also asylum seekers imperialism, legacy of 10–11 Independent Human Rights Commission, Conflict Mapping in Afghanistan since 1978 32 Independent Timbers and Stevedoring 344n19 IndustriALL 187 inequality 2–4, 56, 242–3, 302–3 information management consultancy 51–6 Innocent, Alix 130–2 Integrity Watch Afghanistan 24 intellectuals, responsibility of 310 intelligence gathering, privatization 51–6 Inter-American Development Bank 123, 130 Interfaith Prison Coalition 216 Interim Haiti Recovery Commission (IHRC) 118 International Criminal Court (ICC) 43 International Health and Medical Services 295 International Monetary Fund (IMF) 4–5, 62, 72, 99, 112, 127 International Organization for Migration 74 International Relief and Development (IRD) 28 International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) 32 interrogators and interrogation, privatization 15 Inter-Services Intelligence 56, 331n73 “Invisible Suffering” (MSF) 75 Iran 23, 49 Iraq 12, 14, 25, 27, 28, 323n33 Islamabad 56, 57 Islamic State (ISIS) 16, 41 Jack (PMC owner) 20–5 Jalalabad 38 Japan 11 Jean, Arnolt 121 Jean, Wyclef 141 job creation 131 John (BCL manager) 160–1, 164–5, 166–7 John (detention center guard) 296–8 Jones, Justin 198 Josephine (teacher, PNG) 183 Josh (PMC contractor) 59–60 journalism, usefulness of 309 J/P Haitian Relief Organization 137–9 JSOC 59 Jubilee 159 Jubilee Australia 190–1 Justice Police Institute (JPI) 201 Justinvil, Pierre 130 Kabul 19, 36 drinking holes 59–62 drug abuse 38–9 population 45 private military companies 19–25 suicide attacks 41 women in 47–8 Kambana, Adrienne Makenda 258–9 Kampagiannis, Thanasis 93–5 Kandahar 55 Karachi 56 Karunakara, Unni 139 Karzai, Ahmed Wali 41 Karzai, Hamid 27, 31–2, 41, 44, 47 Katz, Jonathan 119, 139–40 Kauona, Samuel 161, 178–80, 346n35 Kavo, Havila 186 KBR 28 Keerfa, the Movement United Against Racism and the Fascist Threat 93 Kelleher, Joan 285–6 Keller, Ska 97 Kemish, Ian 189 Kentucky 205, 228 Kerry, John 30, 62 Khalilzad, Zalmay 50 Khan, Muhammad Alamgir 57 Khogyani, Saima 48–50 Khyber News Bureau 58–9 Kilcullen, David 53 Kim Woong-ki 133 Kirra, Bernadine 185 Klein, Naomi 6–8, 11 KOFAVIV 142–3 Koim, Sam 188 Koofi, Maryam 50–1 Korean Peninsula 23 Kosovo 26 Kotsioni, Ioanna 76–7 Krugman, Paul 243 Kuwait 25 labor abuses 29 Laleau, Wilson 116–17 Lamothe, Laurent 120 landowner rights 177 Langdon, Robert 60, 332n82 Lasslett, Kristian 159–60, 161 Lebrun, Jean Robert 148 Lemberg-Pedersen, Martin 96–7 Leonard (teacher, PNG) 181 Lepani, Charles 189 Libby Sacer Foundation 103–4 Libya 16, 30 Limits to Growth, The (Randers) 1–2 Lloyds Banking Group 16 lobbying 124 Lockheed Martin 31 Logan, Steve 198–9 London, Becket House 263 Louisiana 200 Lucke, Lewis 108–9 Lujan, Nathan K. 306–7 Lumpkin, Georgia, USA 222–3 Stewart immigration detention center 211–22 McDowall, Paul 252 McDowell, Janine 252 McFate, Sean 16 McGregor-Smith, Ruby 242, 245–9 McKibben, Bill 8–9 McLean, Murray 11 Malmström, Cecilia 98 Management and Training Corp 218–19 Management Today 242 Manjoo, Rashida 252 Manus Island 276–7, 280, 281, 282–3, 297, 357n11 market principles, application of 14–15 market system 2 Marr, David 282 Martelly, Michel 106, 110, 116, 117, 140, 339n34 Mason, Paul 73, 267 MASS Design Group 114–15 Matheson, Scott 299 Maywood, California 5 Médecins de Monde (MdM) 77–80 Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) 75–7, 114, 183 media outlets, ownership of 5 Medical Association of Athens 84 medical care asylum seekers 77–80, 78–80, 256–8 detention centers 77–80, 266, 295 Germany 84 Greece 80–4 prisons 205, 209, 214–15, 215–16 Medical Justice 256–8, 260 Medina, Roberto Martinez 218 Meek, James 234, 239 Mehmood, Tahir, death of 241 mental health 254–5, 285, 286, 295, 302 mentally disturbed people, incarceration rates of 201 mercenaries 20, 59 Merkel, Angela 73 Merten, Kenneth 107–8, 339n34 Metropolitan Community Clinic, Athens 80–4 Michael (asylum seeker) 230–2 Migration Policy Institute (MPI) 212 MiHomecare 255 military ideology 15 Miller, Phil 263 “Mining for Development” initiative, Australia 190 Ministry of Public Order and Citizen Protection, Greece 76 MINUSTAH 113, 115–16 Mitie 242, 245–9, 255 Mlotshwa, Emma 255–8 Moise, Rosembert 150 Momis, John 159, 161, 169 Monaghan, Karon 260 Monbiot, George 9, 236 Money Morning 49 Monsanto 267 Moradian, Davood 44–6 Morales, Evo 125 Morales, Pablo 107 Morauta, Mekere 188 Morrison, Scott 279–80 Mortime, Antonal 140 Morumbi 346n33 MSS Security 296–8 Mubenga, Jimmy, killing of 258–60 Mudd, Gavin 185 Mundell, Robert 84 Munnings, Kate 358n25 murders, private military companies 15, 46, 57, 60, 323–4n40 Murdoch, Rupert 5, 41, 359n30 Musharraf, Pervez 57 MWH Americas 124 Nader, Ralph 173 Namaliu, Sir Rabbie 160, 343n6 Namorong, Martyn 190 Nashville, Tennessee 209 Nathan (PNG resident) 167–8 National Audit Office 236 National Health Service 244–5 National Institute of Money in State Politics 201 National Research Council 198 nation building 23 Nation (magazine) 118 Nation (newspaper) 57 NATO 32, 55, 63 Nauru 275–6, 276, 276–7, 280–1, 283, 296 Needham, Emma 299 neo-colonization 190 neoliberalism 83, 112–13 New Economics Foundation 243 Newmont Mining 120 News Corporation 5 New York Times 8, 38, 101, 113, 115, 118, 131, 141, 199, 212, 226, 243, 284, 340n56 New Zealand 361n51 New Zealand Aid Programme 158–9 Nicaragua 134 Nicholls, Adelina 224–6 No Logo (Klein) 7–8 non-government organizations, and humanitarian relief 137–41 North American Free Trade Agreement 225 Northrop Grumman 35 Norway 2, 186–7 Obama, Barack 3, 31, 35, 45, 118, 124, 149, 195, 212, 221–2, 224 obesity 14 Occupy movement 5–6, 309 Occupy Wall Street 3 O’Faircheallaigh, Ciaran 162 Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, United Nations 139 O’Grady, Mary Anastasia 134 Ohio 197–8 oil prices 166 Ona, Francis 169, 178 O’Neill, Peter 159, 166, 171, 186, 188, 347n50 One World 117 Operation Enduring Freedom 31 organisations populaires, Haiti 112 Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development 6, 267 outsourcing 28–30 outsourcing contractors, United Kingdom 240–2 overcharging 29 overconsumption 8 Oxfam 191, 242–3 Pakistan 12, 56–9, 62 community mapping 58 Federally Administrated Tribal Areas 58 feeling of occupation 59 private military companies 56, 57 state absence 56–7 Taliban in 31 US army action 58 Palast, Greg 84 Panagiotaros, Ilias 91–3 Panguna Landowners’ Association 177 Panguna mine, Papua New Guinea 154–64, 164–5, 167, 168, 177–8, 181, 182, 184–6, 191–2 Panguna town, Papua New Guinea 165–7 Papua New Guinea 11–12, 12, 117, 154–92 agricultural exports 174 aid 13, 167, 171–5, 179 and America 170–1 and Australia 154, 160, 163, 167, 169–75, 176–7, 188, 188–91 Australian exploitation of 169–75 Australian goals 172 Australian government aid 158–9, 171–5, 179, 182, 189–91 Autonomous Bougainville Government 161, 167, 178–80, 184, 346n33 average age 158 baby boom 157 BCL legacy 160–1 Bougainville mining legislation 161 and China 170 civil disturbances 175 civil war 154–5, 158–9, 161, 163–4, 178–80, 180–2, 187 constitutional planning committee 169 corruption 170, 171, 188 desire for independence 176–8 education 158, 166–7, 167–8 environmental destruction 157–8 foreign investment 186–7 forest 336n19 gold panning 164 Grasberg mine 187 independence 169–70 lack of change 167–9 life expectancy 175 maternal mortality rate 183 mining boom 13, 156, 169–76, 184–91, 344n50 mining waste 157 officials’ role 175–6 Ok Tedi Mine 157–8, 173, 188, 345n23 opposition to mining 168–9, 174, 178–80 Panguna Landowners’ Association 177 Panguna mine 154–64, 164–5, 167, 168, 177–8, 181, 182, 184–6, 191–2 Panguna reserves 186 Panguna town 165–7 pollution 157, 164, 173 poverty 175 private military companies 180 Ramu nickel mine 174 reconciliation meeting, February 2013 158–9 resource exploitation 120, 154–64, 176, 184–91, 344n19, 346n33 the Sandline controversy 180 sovereign fund 188 sovereignty 156, 175–6, 176–8, 191, 192 Task Force Sweep 188 weapons decommissioning 181–2 women in 182–4 World War II 170 Papua New Guinea Sustainable Development Program (PNGSDP) 345n23 Partners in Health 113–14 Partners Worldwide 136 Pay Any Price (Risen) 11 Peace and Security Project 98 peace building 54–5 Peck, Raoul 118–19 Penn, Sean 137–9 Pennsylvania 209 Pentagon, the, waste 34–5 people-smugglers 70, 287 Peshawar 57–9 Peter (PMC contractor) 59–60 Petraeus, David 52–3 Piketty, Thomas, Capital in the Twenty-First Century 6 Pilger, John 10, 245 Pindar, Paul 241–2 Pipiro, Moses 184 Pita, Aaron 181–2 Platform of Haitian Human Rights Organizations 140 Podur, Justin 115, 147 police militarized 203, 238 privatization 240 surveillance 6 police brutality Greece 83 United States of America 203 pollution, Papua New Guinea 157, 164, 173 Port-au-Prince 105–7, 107, 116, 118, 127, 128, 146, 149–50, 150–1 Port Moresby 166 poverty 98–9, 175 PPSS 206 predatory capitalism 11, 13–14, 162, 310–11 press freedom 74, 75 price-gouging 292 Prince, Erik 16 prisons and the prison industry 197, 202–11 abuse 216–17, 218 access 219 American Correctional Association (ACA) conference, 2014 202–11 bed mandate 226–7 children in 208 emotional impact of incarceration 207–8 employee wages 223 exploitation 227 failure of private 200–1 female population 197 food 215 green technology 204 incarceration rates 195–6, 200, 201, 204 inmate labor 205–6, 211, 213 lack of oversight 216, 228–9 lack of transparency 225–6 medical care 205, 209, 214–15, 215–16 money saving 217 occupancy quotas 226–7, 228 opposition to private 223–8 overcrowding 196 phone call costs 214 prisoner costs 200–1 privacy 208–9 private operators 196–8 privatization 13, 195–229, 240, 264–5 profits 197, 201–2 Scandinavian 208–9 solitary confinement 208, 209, 218–19 state oversight 205 Stewart immigration detention center, Lumpkin, Georgia, USA 211–22 suicide rate 209, 217 United Kingdom 240, 264–5 uprisings 208–9 visit 211–22 private military companies 12 accountability 16 Afghanistan 19–25, 33–5, 41–3, 44, 46–8, 50, 59–62, 331n69 Australian contractors 60 casualties 32, 326n27 clients 20–1 connection between 23–4 contractor motivations 59–62 employees 22, 47, 57 exploitation by 22 fees 21 future 23 hiring practices 61 influence 41–2 justifications 22–3 killings 46, 57, 60, 61 lack of state control 34, 47 locals view of 46–8 motivation 23 murders 15, 46, 57, 60, 323–4n40 and nation building 23 need for 21 numbers 20 origins 33 Pakistan 56, 57 Papua New Guinea 180 problem of 42 recruits 20 regulations 21, 22 and sovereignty 22–3 static work 21–2 transparency 34 weapons 20, 21 private power 4, 9 private security contractors, motivations 59–62 privatization asylum seeker detention network 77 Australia 361n51 border controls 241 contractor privacy 248–9 costs 236 detention centers 13, 98, 230–5, 245–51, 280–5, 289–99 disaster relief 108–9 economic logic of 289–99 failure of 239 Golden Dawn and 92–3 Greece 72, 98, 100–2, 307–8 and the IMF 4–5 intelligence gathering 51–6 justification 238–9, 245–6 Klein’s critique of 6–7 opposition to 100, 101, 102–3, 251 overcharging 240–1 prisons 13, 195–229, 240, 264–5 public services 230–68 as recent history 311 resistance to 7 revolving door 197 scale in UK 244 school teachers 4 surveillance 15 tender process 289–90 transparency 246, 290–1 United Kingdom 230–68, 310 of war 7 and waste reduction 30 profit, and poverty-level wages 117 prostitution 102 Psarras, Dimitris 85–7, 93 public services, privatization 230–68 Public Service Strategy Board 245–6 punishment, outsourcing 264–5 Putin, Vladimir 90, 93 racism 80, 259–60, 294 Raleigh, Jeff 26 Ramsbotham, David 260–1 Randers, Jørgen, The Limits to Growth 1–2 rape 47, 142–3, 183 Rau, Cornelia 289 Reagan, Ronald 238 Red Cross 342n89 refugee camps, Haiti 141–4 refugee crisis, Europe 95–8 refugees see asylum seekers Regan, Tony 159, 161 Rendon Group 26 Rene, George Andy 136 Reporters Without Borders 74 resource curse 13 resource exploitation accountability 180 Afghanistan 24, 49–50 Christmas Island 274 as entertainment 306–7 Haiti 120–1 impact 164–5, 166–7, 168 landowner rights 177 opposition to 178–80 Papua New Guinea 120, 154–64, 176, 184–91, 344n19, 346n33 regulation 120–1 responsibility 161 toxic dilemma of 162 and violence 159–60, 163–4, 167–8 “Restore Haiti” conference 136 Rhiannon, Lee 50 Rice, Susan 116 Rio Tinto 154, 157, 159, 162, 180, 186–8, 189 Risen, James, Pay Any Price 11 Roches, James Des 33 Roka, Theonila 159 Rolling Stone 41 Rompos, Antonios 78–80 Rooney, Nahau 281 Roupakias, Giorgos 90 Royal Mail 236 Roy, Arundhati 5–6, 307–8 Rubio, Marco 228 Rudd, Kevin 289, 290 Rumsfeld, Donald 26, 29–30 Saddam Hussein 25 Sae-A 130, 131, 132, 134, 135, 148 SAIC 31 Sally (case manager) 300–1, 303–4 Samaras, Antonis 94–5 Sanderson, Janet A. 115 Sandline 180 Sanon, Reyneld 150–1 Sarantou, Elina 66–7 Sarobi 38 Sassen, Saskia 99 Sassine, George 134–6 Sathi (asylum seeker) 253–4 Scahill, Jeremy 15 Scarperia, Annette 206 Schäuble, Wolfgang 75 Schofield, Josh 206 Schuller, Mark 107 Schumer, Chuck 228 Schwartz, Timothy 144–7, 342n92 Schweich, Thomas 38 Sean (Serco source) 292–4 Security and Management Services 57 security, outsourcing see private military companies Sediqqi, Sediq 41–2 sentencing reform, United States of America 198 September 11 terrorist attacks, 2001 7, 33 Serco 13, 232, 235, 240, 248, 252, 264, 270, 271, 277, 278, 279, 280, 282, 284, 289–99, 359n30 Shah, Rajiv 123 Shahshahani, Azadeh 226–7 Shah, Silky 222, 227–8 Sharon (detention center worker) 298 Sheffield 230–5, 262 Shell 186 Shield Defence Systems 204 shock doctors 8 Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism (Klein) 6–7, 11 Sideris, Christos 80–4 Simon (teacher) 272 Singer, P.

Good Times, Bad Times: The Welfare Myth of Them and Us
by John Hills
Published 6 Nov 2014

Pensions Commission (2005) A new pension settlement for the 21st century. The second report of the Pensions Commission, London: HMSO. Phillips, D. (2014) ‘Personal tax and welfare measures’, Institute for Fiscal Studies seminar presentation, March, London: Institute for Fiscal Studies. Piketty, T. (2014) Capital in the twenty-first century, Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press. Power, A., Provan, B., Herden, E. and Serle, N. (2014) The impact of welfare reform on social landlords and tenants, Report by LSE Housing and Communities for the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, York: Joseph Rowntree Foundation. Rigg, J. and Sefton, T. (2006) ‘Income dynamics and the life cycle’, Journal of Social Policy, vol 35, pp 411–35.

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In fact, virtually all of this increase in both the Conservative and Labour years went to the top 10 per cent – from 21 to 26 and then 27 per cent of the total – with little change for the next-to-top-tenth.47 Going beyond that, most of the increase actually went to those in the top 10 per cent who were in the top 1 per cent. Information from the World Top Incomes database, established by Tony Atkinson, Emmanuel Saez and Thomas Piketty, shows that the after tax incomes of the top 1 per cent in the UK doubled from 4.7 of the national total in 1979 to 9.5 per cent in 1996 and 12.6 per cent on the eve of the economic crisis in 2007.48 There was a change in definition between 1989 and 1990 (when independent taxation was brought in), but even excluding the change over that period, the overall increase in their share over that period – just under 7 percentage points – was enough to account for the gain of the whole top 10 per cent.

Licence to be Bad
by Jonathan Aldred
Published 5 Jun 2019

And there was very little evidence of flight by the rich, or difficulty in attracting talented people to the UK, even during the period of historically high top rates of income tax in the UK in the 1970s: Fiegehen, C., and Reddaway, W. (1981), Companies, Incentives and Senior Managers (Oxford, Oxford University Press), 92. 42 Quoted in Mcquaig and Brooks, 249–50. 43 King, M. (2016), The End of Alchemy (London: Little, Brown). 44 Stiglitz, 119. 45 Cynamon, Barry Z., and Fazzari, Steven M. (2016), ‘Inequality, the Great Recession and Slow Recovery’, Cambridge Journal of Economics, 40/2, 373–99; Stockhammer, Engelbert (2015), ‘Rising Inequality as a Cause of the Present Crisis’, Cambridge Journal of Economics, 39/3, 935–58; Wisman, Jon D. (2013), ‘Wage Stagnation, Rising Inequality and the Financial Crisis of 2008’, Cambridge Journal of Economics, 37/4, 921–45. 46 Atkinson; Piketty, T. (2014), Capital in the Twenty-first Century (Cambridge: Harvard University Press); Stiglitz. 47 This is a simplified summary. People enter the market with different housing assets (some inherit a house) and some prices rise much faster than others, so there can be relative winners and losers from rising average house prices.

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There are deeper difficulties with Osborne’s argument, difficulties not widely known even among economists. It is often assumed that if the top 1 per cent are incentivized by income tax cuts to earn more, those higher earnings reflect an increase in productive economic activity. In other words, the pie gets bigger. But some economists (including the influential Thomas Piketty) have shown this is not true for CEOs and other top corporate managers following the tax cuts in the 1980s. Instead, they essentially funded their own pay rises by paying shareholders less – which led in turn to lower dividend tax revenue for the government. Allowing for this and related effects – the rich redistributing the pie rather than making it bigger – Piketty and colleagues have argued that the revenue-maximizing top income tax rate may be as high as 83 per cent.37 The income tax cuts for the rich over the past forty years were originally justified by economic arguments: Laffer’s rhetoric was seized upon by politicians.

We Are All Fast-Food Workers Now: The Global Uprising Against Poverty Wages
by Annelise Orleck
Published 27 Feb 2018

NOTES PROLOGUE—BRANDS OF WAGE SLAVERY, MARKS OF LABOR SOLIDARITY 1. Material for this reflection derived from interviews conducted between March 2015 and April 2017—in the US and abroad. All interviews cited in the book were conducted by this author. CHAPTER 1—INEQUALITY RISING 1. Thomas Piketty, Capital in the Twenty-First Century (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2014); Joseph Stiglitz, The Price of Inequality: How Today’s Divided Society Endangers Our Future (New York: W. W. Norton, 2013); David Harvey, The New Imperialism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003). 2. David Harvey, A Brief History of Neoliberalism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005); Friedrich Hayek, The Road to Serfdom (London: Routledge, 1944). 3.

Other People's Money: Masters of the Universe or Servants of the People?
by John Kay
Published 2 Sep 2015

It was not only Goldman that benefited from heavenly inspiration; Jeff Skilling claimed to have been doing God’s work at Enron: McLean, B., and Elkind, P., 2003, The Smartest Guys in the Room: The Amazing Rise and Scandalous Fall of Enron, New York, Penguin. p. xxv. 2. Putnam, R.D, 2000, Bowling Alone, New York, Simon and Schuster, brought the concept of social capital and the phrase into wide modern usage. 3. The data in the widely cited book by Thomas Piketty (2014, Capital in the Twenty-First Century, Cambridge, MA, The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press) relies primarily on the first of these approaches – the assessment of physical assets – although much of his discussion would seem to concern the second. 4. The quality of these estimates is not high, especially in relation to long-lived public assets.

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Philippon, T., and Reshef, A., 2012, ‘Wages and Human Capital in the US Financial Industry, 1909–2006’, Quarterly Journal of Economics, 127 (4): 1551–1609. Philips, C.B., Kinniry Jr, F.M., Schlanger, T., and Hirt, J.M., 2014, ‘The Case for Index-Fund Investing’, Vanguard Research, April, https://advisors.vanguard.com/VGApp/iip/site/advisor/researchcommentary/article/IWE_InvComCase4Index. Piketty, T., 2014, Capital in the Twenty-First Century, Cambridge, MA, The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. Porter, G.E., and Trifts, J.W., 2014, ‘The Career Paths of Mutual Fund Managers: The Role of Merit’, Financial Analysts Journal, 70 (4), July/August, pp. 55–71. Potts QC, R., Erskine Chambers, 24 June 1997, para. 5, citing Wilson v.

Uneasy Street: The Anxieties of Affluence
by Rachel Sherman
Published 21 Aug 2017

Piff, Paul K., Daniel M. Stancato, Stéphane Côté, Rodolfo Mendoza-Denton, and Dacher Keltner. 2012. “Higher Social Class Predicts Increased Unethical Behavior.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 109 (11): 4086–4091. Piketty, Thomas. 2014. Capital in the Twenty-First Century. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Power, Sally, Annabelle Allouch, Phillip Brown, and Gerbrand Tholen. 2016. “Giving Something Back? Sentiments of Privilege and Social Responsibility among Elite Graduates from Britain and France.” International Sociology 31 (3): 305–323. Pratto, Felicia, and Andrew L.

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In the past ten years, rich people have faced another symbolic challenge as economic inequality has emerged as a dominant issue on the national stage.26 The 2008 housing market collapse and the subsequent “Great Recession” brought economic struggles front and center. In 2011 the Occupy movement’s critique of “the 1 percent” dominated even the mainstream media. In 2014 French economist Thomas Piketty’s 700-page book on inequality became a bestseller in the United States. Strikes by fast-food workers and prominent debates about raising the minimum wage to fifteen dollars per hour also put the spotlight on low-wage workers in this period. The 2016 presidential campaigns of Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump, despite their differences, kept outrage about economic disparities in the public eye.

The Blockchain Alternative: Rethinking Macroeconomic Policy and Economic Theory
by Kariappa Bheemaiah
Published 26 Feb 2017

Romer’s analysis tests the mathematical foundations of a number of seminal articles in the field of economics including - Solow’s 1956 mathematical theory of growth, Gary Becker’s 1962 mathematical theory of wages, McGrattan and Prescott’s 2010 paper on price-taking models of growth and Boldrin and Levine’s 2008 paper on Perfectly Competitive Innovation. He also analyses the work of other prominent economists such as Robert Lucas (Nobel Prize in Economics in 1995) and Thomas Piketty (who wrote Capital in the Twenty-First Century) among others. His analysis shows how Mathiness has been used repeatedly to bend data to fit a model. More disturbingly, these practices have been accepted by the academic community which makes the discipline of economics divergent from Popper’s scientific method of testing.

Rich White Men: What It Takes to Uproot the Old Boys' Club and Transform America
by Garrett Neiman
Published 19 Jun 2023

And billionaires pay lower tax rates than America’s firefighters, nurses, and teachers. Saez has given more thought than most to what a just taxation system might look like. Now a household name in the economics field, Saez got his start by collaborating with Thomas Piketty, who made waves with his 2013 book Capital in the Twenty-First Century. Later, Saez was awarded a MacArthur “genius grant” and the John Bates Clark Medal, which the American Economic Association bestows on a rising star in the field under the age of forty.25 One question Saez has asked is, What is the tax system that maximizes tax revenue—which can then be reinvested in public services?

The Coming Wave: Technology, Power, and the Twenty-First Century's Greatest Dilemma
by Mustafa Suleyman
Published 4 Sep 2023

GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT Since 2010, more countries “New Report: The Global Decline in Democracy Has Accelerated,” Freedom House, March 3, 2021, freedomhouse.org/​article/​new-report-global-decline-democracy-has-accelerated. GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT A key catalyst of instability See, for example, Thomas Piketty, Capital in the Twenty-first Century (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2014), and Anthony B. Atkinson, Inequality: What Can Be Done? (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2015), for wider surveys. GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT Between 1980 and 2021 “Top 1% National Income Share,” World Inequality Database, wid.world/​world/​#sptinc_p99p100_z/​US;FR;DE;CN;ZA;GB;WO/​last/​eu/​k/p/​yearly/​s/false/​5.6579999999999995/​30/​curve/​false/​country.

The Lonely Century: How Isolation Imperils Our Future
by Noreena Hertz
Published 13 May 2020

Norton, 1991]) who have also written about the integral role the breakdown of the family has played in the collapse of community. So whilst the debate can be characterised along partisan lines, there are obvious exceptions. 4 For the authoritative view of modern inequality and its relationship to neoliberal capitalism, see Thomas Piketty, Capital in the Twenty-First Century, trans. Arthur Goldhammer (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2014). On race and neoliberalism, see Darrick Hamilton and Kyle Strickland, ‘The Racism of Neoliberalism’, Evonomics, 22 February 2020, https://evonomics.com/racism-neoliberalism-darrick-hamilton/; or for more detail, see David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race: Reflections on Racial Neoliberalism (Wiley-Blackwell, 2008).

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Norris, Pippa, and Ronald Inglehart, Cultural Backlash: Trump, Brexit, and Authoritarian Populism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019). Nowak, Martin A., and Roger Highfield. SuperCooperators: Beyond the Survival of the Fittest: Why Cooperation, Not Competition, is the Key of Life (Edinburgh: Canongate, 2012). Oldenburg, Ray. The Great Good Place (Philadelphia: Da Capo, 1999). Piketty, Thomas. Capital in the Twenty-First Century. Translated by Arthur Goldhammer (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 2014). Putnam, Robert. Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2000). Quart, Alissa. Squeezed: Why Our Families Can’t Afford America (New York: Ecco, 2018).

Geek Heresy: Rescuing Social Change From the Cult of Technology
by Kentaro Toyama
Published 25 May 2015

Piff, Paul K., Daniel M. Stancato, Stéphane Côté, Rodolfo Mendoza-Denton, and Dacher Keltner. (2012). Higher social class predicts increased unethical behavior. In Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, www.pnas.org/content/early/2012/02/21/1118373109. Piketty, Thomas. (2014). Capital in the Twenty-First Century. Arthur Goldhammer, trans. Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. Piketty, Thomas, and Emmanuel Saez. (2003). Income inequality in the United States, 1913–1998. Quarterly Journal of Economics 143(1):1–39, http://qje.oxfordjournals.org/content/118/1/1. Pinker, Steven. (2011). The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined.

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Capitalism is a terrific economic engine, and the developing world could benefit from more for-profit companies. (One problem with firms like Toms is that the owners are rich-world people, while their workers are not.) But capitalism on its own concentrates wealth (and therefore power) in the hands of a few, as so many have noted, from Karl Marx to Thomas Piketty (2014). Other forces are needed to spread growth widely, whether it’s cooperatives, unions, progressive taxation, universal provision of basic needs, private charity, or a combination of these and other factors. Social-enterprise hype glorifies market mechanisms and therefore crowds out important approaches that come with few extrinsic rewards.

The Establishment: And How They Get Away With It
by Owen Jones
Published 3 Sep 2014

Wealthy individuals shell out cash to think tanks who promote their economic interests, after all, and the rise of the New Right has purged dissidents from economic faculties, ensuring that climbing the academic ranks depends on conforming to the line. Yet there remains a diverse range of economists and other experts – some of whom I have interviewed in the course of this book – who refuse to adhere to the status quo. In 2014 the French economist Thomas Piketty caused an intellectual sensation with the publication of his book Capital in the Twenty-First Century, which exposed how inequality perpetuates itself and called for higher income taxes and a global tax on wealth. The problem is that such dissidents are often all too disparate and fragmented, working on individual projects that generally do not receive the attention of a hostile media.

Who Owns England?: How We Lost Our Green and Pleasant Land, and How to Take It Back
by Guy Shrubsole
Published 1 May 2019

was from the very beginning David Harvey, A Brief History of Neoliberalism (Oxford University Press, 2007), p. 16. hijacked … from the landowners Cited in Harrison, Finding a Role?, p. 140. the top 1 per cent Harvey, A Brief History of Neoliberalism, p. 17. 30 per cent of the country’s wealth Thomas Piketty, Capital in the Twenty-First Century (Harvard University Press, 2014), fig. 10.3. The Countryside Alliance Anthony Barnett, ‘Prince named as secret backer of hunt lobby’, Observer, 26 September 1999. fn Lord Peel as its chair Nicholas Schoon, ‘“Secret” pro-hunt group to go public’, Independent, 16 November 1995.

The Next Shift: The Fall of Industry and the Rise of Health Care in Rust Belt America
by Gabriel Winant
Published 23 Mar 2021

Margo, “The Great Compression: The Wage Structure of the United States at Mid-century,” Quarterly Journal of Economics 107, no. 1 (1992), 1–34; Stephen A. Marglin and Juliet B. Schor, eds., The Golden Age of Capitalism: Reinterpreting the Postwar Experience (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992); Thomas Piketty, Capital in the Twenty-First Century, trans. Arthur Goldhammer (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2014). An excellent example of the contemporary belief in the postwar industrial compact is Clark Kerr, John T. Dunlop, Frederick Harbison, and Charles A. Myers, Industrialism and Industrial Man (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1960). 6.

Limitless: The Federal Reserve Takes on a New Age of Crisis
by Jeanna Smialek
Published 27 Feb 2023

Chapter 11 CULTURE WARS AND CAPITAL The United States…on the one hand this is a country of egalitarian promise, a land of opportunity for millions of immigrants of modest background; on the other hand, it is a land of extremely brutal inequality, especially in relation to race. —Thomas Piketty, Capital in the Twenty-First Century “Yes, every life lost is one too many,” the Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, radio host Wendy Bell said into her Facebook Live camera on the first Sunday in April 2020, rocking back and forth slightly, apparently gripped by the animating energy of outrage. She appeared before a radio microphone, but her flawless bronzer and constant gestures toward the camera made it clear that she was working for a visual medium.

Evil Geniuses: The Unmaking of America: A Recent History
by Kurt Andersen
Published 14 Sep 2020

In the very same week at the beginning of 2011, the centrist Democratic Leadership Council disbanded and the Occupy Wall Street protest was announced. At that moment as well, the star economist Thomas Piketty, French rather than Austrian, was starting to focus people’s attention on the very rich—“transforming the economic discourse,” Krugman has said, especially after his remarkable 2014 bestseller Capital in the Twenty-first Century. In the 1970s the right coined (and still repeats endlessly) the genius term unelected bureaucrats to focus populist antigovernment blame. The economic left did something similar with the 1 percent (and unelected billionaires) in the 2010s.

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Invisible Hands: The Businessmen’s Crusade Against the New Deal. New York: W. W. Norton, 2009. Pierson, Paul, and Theda Skocpol. The Transformation of American Politics: Activist Government and the Rise of Conservatism. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007. Piketty, Thomas. Capital in the Twenty-first Century. Translated by Arthur Goldhammer. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2017. Piketty, Thomas, Emmanuel Saez, and Gabriel Zucman. “Distributional National Accounts: Methods and Estimates for the United States.” Quarterly Journal of Economics 133, no. 2 (2018): 553–609. Plunkert, Lois M.

The Rise and Fall of Nations: Forces of Change in the Post-Crisis World
by Ruchir Sharma
Published 5 Jun 2016

It is no doubt striking that multibillionaires like Bill Gates and Carlos Slim routinely see their fortunes fluctuate by hundreds of millions on any given day, but it signifies nothing in particular. Only in the broader year-to-year changes does the information get interesting. Lately some of this billionaire data has surfaced in serious economic discussions. In his generally admiring review of Thomas Piketty’s 2013 international best seller on inequality, Capital in the Twenty-First Century, former U.S. Treasury secretary Lawrence Summers questioned the French author’s claims about the enduring power of inherited wealth in the United States by pointing to the high degree of churn among American billionaires. Summers highlighted the fact that only one out of every 10 names on the original Forbes list in 1982 were still on the list in 2012.

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“Sustainable Economics: Mind the Inequality Gap.” Morgan Stanley Research, 2015. Pani, Marco. “Hold Your Nose and Vote: Why Do Some Democracies Tolerate Corruption?” International Monetary Fund, 2009. Parks, Ken. “Argentina Moves to Trim Costly Utility Subsidies.” Wall Street Journal, March 27, 2014. Pikkety, Thomas. Capital in the Twenty-First Century. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2013. “Putin Publicly Humiliates Business Tycoons Solving Social Crisis in Russian Town.” Pravda, June 5, 2009. Robertson, Charles. “Will Anti-Corruption Legislation Prolong Corruption?” Renaissance Capital, December 5, 2012. Sharma, Ruchir.

Horizons: The Global Origins of Modern Science
by James Poskett
Published 22 Mar 2022

‘China Overtakes Japan as World’s Second-Biggest Economy’, BBC News, accessed 20 February 2021, https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-12427321. See also Thomas Piketty, Capital in the Twenty-First Century (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2014), 78 and 585, and Jude Woodward, The US vs China: Asia’s New Cold War? (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2017) for a general account of both the geopolitics and the economics. 5Piketty, Capital in the Twenty-First Century, 31 and 412. 6‘Notice of the State Council: New Generation of Artificial Intelligence Development Plan’, Foundation for Law and International Affairs, accessed 12 December 2020, https://flia.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/A-New-Generation-of-Artificial-Intelligence-Development-Plan-1.pdf (translation by Flora Sapio, Weiming Chen, and Adrian Lo), ‘Home’, Beijing Academy of Artificial Intelligence, accessed 13 December 2020, https://www.baai.ac.cn/en, and Sarah O’Meara, ‘China’s Ambitious Quest to Lead the World in AI by 2030’, Nature 572 (2019). 7‘New Generation of Artificial Intelligence Development Plan’, and Kai-Fu Lee, AI Superpowers: China, Silicon Valley, and the New World Order (New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2018), 227. 8Huiying Liang et al., ‘Evaluation and Accurate Diagnoses of Pediatric Diseases Using Artificial Intelligence’, Nature Medicine 25 (2019), and Tanveer Syeda-Mahmood, ‘IBM AI Algorithms Can Read Chest X-Rays at Resident Radiologist Levels’, IBM Research Blog, accessed 16 December 2020, https://www.ibm.com/blogs/research/2020/11/ai-x-rays-for-radiologists/. 9Lee, AI Superpowers, 14–17, and Drew Harwell and Eva Dou, ‘Huawei Tested AI Software That Could Recognize Uighur Minorities and Alert Police, Report Says’, Washington Post, accessed 16 December 2020, https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/12/08/huawei-tested-ai-software-that-could-recognize-uighur-minorities-alert-police-report-says/. 10Karen Hao, ‘The Future of AI Research is in Africa’, MIT Technology Review, accessed 16 December 2020, https://www.technologyreview.com/2019/06/21/134820/ai-africa-machine-learning-ibm-google/, and ‘Moustapha Cissé’, African Institute for Mathematical Sciences, accessed 13 December 2020, https://nexteinstein.org/person/moustapha-cisse/. 11Shan Jie, ‘China Exports Facial ID Technology to Zimbabwe’, Global Times, accessed 14 December 2020, https://www.globaltimes.cn/content/1097747.shtml, and Amy Hawkins, ‘Beijing’s Big Brother Tech Needs African Faces’, Foreign Policy, accessed 14 December 2020, https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/07/24/beijings-big-brother-tech-needs-african-faces/. 12Elizabeth Gibney, ‘Israel–Arab Peace Accord Fuels Hope for Surge in Scientific Research’, Nature 585 (2020). 13Eliran Rubin, ‘Tiny IDF Unit is Brains behind Israel Army Artificial Intelligence’, Haaretz, accessed 12 December 2020, https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/tiny-idf-unit-is-brains-behind-israeli-army-artificial-intelligence-1.5442911, and Jon Gambrell, ‘Virus Projects Renew Questions about UAE’s Mass Surveillance’, Washington Post, accessed 12 December 2020, https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/the_americas/virus-projects-renew-questions-about-uaes-mass-surveillance/2020/07/09/4c9a0f42-c1ab-11ea-8908-68a2b9eae9e0_story.html. 14Agence France-Presse, ‘UAE Successfully Launches Hope Probe’, The Guardian, accessed 20 November 2020, http://www.theguardian.com/science/2020/jul/20/uae-mission-mars-al-amal-hope-space, and Elizabeth Gibney, ‘How a Small Arab Nation Built a Mars Mission from Scratch in Six Years’, Nature, accessed 9 July 2020, https://www.nature.com/immersive/d41586-020-01862-z/index.html. 15Gibney, ‘How a Small Arab Nation’, and Sarwat Nasir, ‘UAE to Sign Agreement with Virgin Galactic for Spaceport in Al Ain Airport’, Khaleej Times, accessed 16 December 2020, https://www.khaleejtimes.com/technology/uae-to-sign-agreement-with-virgin-galactic-for-spaceport-in-al-ain-airport. 16‘UAE Successfully Launches Hope Probe’ and Jonathan Amos, ‘UAE Hope Mission Returns First Image of Mars’, BBC News, accessed 16 February 2021, https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-56060890. 17Smriti Mallapaty, ‘How China is Planning to Go to Mars amid the Coronavirus Outbreak’, Nature 579 (2020), ‘China Becomes Second Nation to Plant Flag on the Moon’, BBC News, accessed 4 December 2020, https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-55192692, and Jonathan Amos, ‘China Mars Mission: Tianwen-1 Spacecraft Enters into Orbit’, BBC News, accessed 16 February 2021, https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-56013041. 18Çağrı Mert Bakırcı-Taylor, ‘Turkey Creates Its First Space Agency’, Nature 566 (2019), Sanjeev Miglani and Krishna Das, ‘Modi Hails India as Military Space Power after Anti-Satellite Missile Test’, Reuters, accessed 16 December 2020, https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-india-satellite/modi-hails-india-as-military-space-power-after-anti-satellite-missile-test-idUKKCN1R80IA, and Umar Farooq, ‘The Second Drone Age: How Turkey Defied the U.S. and Became a Killer Drone Power’, The Intercept, accessed 16 February 2021, https://theintercept.com/2019/05/14/turkey-second-drone-age/. 19John Houghton, Geoffrey Jenkins, and J.

Not Working: Where Have All the Good Jobs Gone?
by David G. Blanchflower
Published 12 Apr 2021

Finance and Economics Discussion Series, Divisions of Research & Statistics and Monetary Affairs, Federal Reserve Board, Washington, DC. Pike, A., D. MacKinnon, M. Coombes, T. Champion, D. Bradley, A. Cumbers, L. Robson, and C. Wymer. 2016. “Uneven Growth: Tackling City Decline.” York: Joseph Rowntree Foundation. Piketty, T. 2014. Capital in the Twenty-First Century. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. Piketty, T., E. Saez, and G. Zucman. 2017. “Economic Growth in the US: A Tale of Two Countries.” Vox, March 29. https://voxeu.org/article/economic-growth-us-tale-two-countries. ———. 2018. “Distributional National Accounts; Methods and Estimates for the United States.”

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Wolfgang Münchau has argued that the curse of our time is fake math. “Think of it,” he says, “as fake news for numerically literate intellectuals: it is the abuse of statistics and economic models to peddle one’s own political prejudice…. Fake maths has given us, the liberal establishment, the illusion of certainty.”28 He may well be right. Thomas Piketty has argued that “to put it bluntly, the discipline of economics has yet to get over its childish passion for mathematics and for purely theoretical and often highly ideological speculation, at the expense of historical research and collaboration with other social sciences. Economists are all too often preoccupied with petty mathematical problems of interest only to themselves.

The Making of Global Capitalism
by Leo Panitch and Sam Gindin
Published 8 Oct 2012

Yet it was especially notable that the fissures the crisis produced did not take the form of conflicts between capitalist states, but of social conflict within them. The significance of the fact that the political fault-lines of global capitalism run within states rather than between them is, we suggest, replete with implications for the American empire’s capacity to sustain global capitalism in the twenty-first century. It is also pregnant with possibilities for the emergence of new movements to transcend capitalist markets and states. I PRELUDE TO THE NEW AMERICAN EMPIRE 1 The DNA of American Capitalism The role that the United States came to play in the making of global capitalism was not inevitable, but nor was it accidental.

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Quoted in Russell Jacoby, “Politics of the Crisis Theory,” Telos, Spring 1975, p. 35. 97 See Simon Mohun, “Distributive Shares in the US Economy 1964–2001,” Cambridge Journal of Economics 30: 3 (2006). 98 For wages and labor compensation, see Economic Report of the President, Washington, DC, 2002, Tables, B-47, B-48, and B-60. For CEO compensation, see Emmanuel Saez and Thomas Piketty, “Income Inequality in the United States, 1913–1998,” Quarterly Journal of Economics 118: 1 (2003), Table b4, column 6, updated at elsa.berkeley.edu. 99 US Bureau of Labor Statistics, International Labor Comparisons: Productivity and unit labor costs in manufacturing, Table 1, available at bls.gov.

The Patterning Instinct: A Cultural History of Humanity's Search for Meaning
by Jeremy Lent
Published 22 May 2017

James Gustave Speth, The Bridge at the Edge of the World: Capitalism, the Environment, and Crossing from Crisis to Sustainability (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2008), 41–42; Clive Ponting, A New Green History of the World: The Environment and the Collapse of Great Civilizations (New York: Penguin, 2007), 337; Oxfam, “An Economy for the 99%,” in Oxfam Briefing Paper: Summary (Oxford: Oxfam, 2017); Royal Society, People and the Planet (London: Royal Society, 2012), 52; OECD,“Total Population,” in OECD Factbook 2011–2012: Economic, Environmental and Social Statistics (Paris: OECD, 2012), http://dx.doi.org/10.1787/factbook-2011-9-en. See also Thomas Piketty, Capital in the Twenty-First Century, trans. Arthur Goldhammer (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2014). 33. “Pollution and the Poor: Lawrence Summers’ Memo,” Economist, February 8, 1992, 66. The Economist, a magazine known for supporting the underlying values of capitalism, published Summers's memo and, while objecting to his explicit language, subsequently endorsed his position that migration of polluting industries to developing countries was “desirable.” 34.

The Story of Work: A New History of Humankind
by Jan Lucassen
Published 26 Jul 2021

Solow (ed.), Slavery and the Atlantic System (Cambridge: CUP, 1991), pp. 43–61. Pierre, M. ‘La Transportation’, in J.-G. Petit et al. (eds), Histoire des galères, bagnes et prisons xii-xxes siècles: Introduction à l’histoire pénale de la France (Toulouse: Privat, 1991), pp. 231–59. Piketty, Thomas. Capital in the Twenty-First Century (Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 2014). Piketty, Thomas. Capital and Ideology (Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 2019). Pimlott, J.A.R. The Englishman’s Holiday (Hassocks: Harvester, 1976). Pines, Yuri et al. (eds). Birth of an Empire: The State of Qin Revisited (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2014).

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China, too, deserves special attention, and very recently even India. This does not mean that nothing has changed on the European continent. The welfare state has clearly lost part of its pretensions, certainly after the deep financial crisis of 2008. The outcome is an increase in social inequality, as pointed out effectively by the French economist Thomas Piketty, who indicates the drop in the share of national income going to labour.164 To be clear, this is primarily about the widening gap and less about the stagnation of incomes at the bottom, in particular of wages over the past four decades. Despite the widespread availability of mobile phones and other electronic devices, Piketty believes that the real available income per household of ‘the bottom 50 per cent by income’ barely grew, if at all, in these years, certainly in the US.

Empire of Things: How We Became a World of Consumers, From the Fifteenth Century to the Twenty-First
by Frank Trentmann
Published 1 Dec 2015

Reifner & Springeneer, ‘Private Überschuldung im internationalen Vergleich’; and Ramsay, ‘Comparative Consumer Bankruptcy’. 94. James D. Davies, ‘Wealth and Economic Inequality’, in: Wiemer Salverda, Brian Nolan & Timothy M. Smeeding, eds., The Oxford Handbook of Economic Inequality (Oxford, 2009), ch. 6. And see now at length: Thomas Piketty, Capital in the Twenty-first Century (Cambridge, MA, 2014). In this section, I am focusing on income inequality (not wealth), because earned income, rather than inherited country houses, became the main marker in the twentieth century. Piketty focuses on capital’s share of income (such as dividends and capital gains) and argues that we are seeing a return to a widening gulf between capital and labour that scarred the nineteenth century.