Capital in the Twenty-First Century

“Piketty accurately describes inequality in the past and present of countries like the United States, but when it comes to the future he’s not even wrong: he traces a trend but doesn’t explain it, simply claiming it will continue unless we enact a global wealth tax. Piketty’s proposal is not just unworkable, it shows his whole premise to be strangely incoherent: at the global scale, inequality has been falling as millions of people in China and India escape poverty. Meanwhile, in the United States, the most urgent debate isn’t for or against inequality, it’s whether or not to accept stagnation. State and local regulations make it hard for people to start new occupations and even harder for anybody to build affordable housing. Those policies deny people opportunities every day in tangible ways, unlike the abstract idea of inequality.

“Accurately describes inequality in the past and present of countries like the United States.