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French Economist Piketty Links Inequality to Instability of Democracies

Categories: North America, Western Europe, France, Greece, U.S.A., Development, Economics & Business, Education, Ideas, Labor, Politics

French economist and Associate Chair at the Paris School of Economics [1], Thomas Piketty [2] recently published a book [3] called “Capital in the Twenty-First Century [4]” that has generated quite a buzz [5] among fellow economists and political leaders. Piketty's central thesis is that inequality is not an accident [3], but one of the consequences of the excess of capitalism. Piketty also opines that inequality could threaten the democratic process [5] as recently seen in Greece [6]. Critics of his thesis on inequality also abound [7]

Increase in the annual income of the top 1% of wealthy persons in the U.S. before economic crises using data initially published as Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez (2003) on wikimedia commons CC-NC-3.0 [8]

Increase in the annual income of the top 1% of wealthy persons in the U.S. before economic crises using data initially published as Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez (2003) on wikimedia commons CC-NC-3.0

Top1%USA